Very nice sneaky work there !
I was wondering about the pilot brg ...seems that you attended to that
as well as possible without making the project much bigger.
'some lube' on input shaft splines is important, I use a tiny about of
'black slimey' grease there ( molysufide I think might be the real name ) .
there's about 15 or more spots I lube in that whole bell housing/clutch
area.
A bit of lube in the right places really helps !

On 10/5/2015 7:02 AM, Neil N wrote:
> I had long suspected that the clutch disk on my '88 was sticking on the
> input shaft.
> Symptoms: starting engine cold, in gear clutch pedal down, I'd hear a
> "thud" and the bus would lurch forward a bit. I'm certain this was the
> clutch disk releasing from pressure plate. For a while it shifted fine but
> eventually it was tough to get bus in 1st at a stop light and it would
> "stick" in gear shifting from gear to gear. I didn't know which parts were
> getting hurt when doing this but as per Pauls' comment, all I could see was
> something on each syncro getting damaged each time I pulled it out of gear.
> Bleeding clutch didn't help. What I did: slide transaxle away from the
> engine, use inspection mirror to help in applying a little lube to very end
> of input shaft splines. There was enough room to check that throw out
> bearing was properly secured, spin it a little to see how worn it was
> (careful; don't knock it loose!) and, I could do a quick inspection of the
> clutch operating shaft arms. I left CV's attached. A piece of thick steel
> between support blocks and transaxle helped allow transaxle to slide.
> Something like a piece of wood with counter top laminate might allow same?
> A bottle jack was handy to tweak engine height at end nearest transaxle
> when pushing the transaxle back on.
> There was also enough room to *just* see the end of the input shaft where
> it rides in pilot bearing. In my case, it was a bit shiny. In hindsight I
> wish I'd tried to apply a ***small*** amount of grease to that part of
> input shaft. Regardless, though I haven't put a lot of highway miles on it
> yet, it shifts much better and no "thud" when starting in gear, engine cold.
>
> Neil.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 9:16 AM, paul guard <gears@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
> It's extremely rare that a "problem disengaging 1st gear" would be
>> internal.  These symptoms sound like clutch release issue.
>
>
>
> --
> Neil n
>
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>
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>
> 1981 Westfalia "Jaco" Images, technical <http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/>
>
> Vanagon-Bus VAG Gas Engine Swap Group <http://tinyurl.com/khalbay>
>