Well it's finally happened.  I've had a major breakdown far from home and 
will have to pay someone else to fix the 81.  Actually, it happened to my 
wife on her way to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival here in Colorado and she 
was forced to rent a car to get there.  

The story as I got it from the mechanic who has it is that when he went 
to turn the linkage at the transmission it just spun around in a circle.  
Having never been inside the tranny on the 81 I ask the van-gods for 
advice on what's broke and what their estimate would be of the time to 
fix it.  According to said mechanic it'll be somewhere between 4 and 6 
hours of labor to drop the engine/tranny and replace what he thinks 
should only be a $50 part.  

My questions are:can the tranny be dropped seperately from the engine, 
what do you think is broken and what do you think it should really cost 
to get the van roadworthy once again.

Opinions/advice gladly accepted on this Black Day.

Jack