And Bill Johnson thus wrote:
> 
> I am looking at a 1959 bus.  The owner says that it has a bad transmission.
> I talked to a local VW mechanic and he says to make sure that it is the
> transmission and not the gear boxes out near the wheels.  He says that
> neither the transmission nor the gear boxes can be rebuilt.  He says that a
> transmisson can be found if it is not a split case, but the gear boxes can
> not be found.  He told me that the gear boxes are not made by anyone.  He
> has a couple of bus transmissions on hand with bad gear boxes and says they
> are junk.  Is all this true?  I just find it hard to believe that no one
> rebuilds these things.

Those transmissions can be rebuilt, just takes know-how.  I'm told
by reputable sources that it takes rebuilding several before you
actually get one right. 

Up to sometime in mid-'59, busses used a split case trans.

Not much can really happen to reduction box gears, since they are
pretty much locked together.  Bearings go bad, which are not all
that expensive.  The only thing you can do wrong is run out of
fluid.

If you have a "split-case bus" like my '56, you can get an adapter 
put in a later transmission, otherwise known as a "tunnel case."

Thom
--
> Can you imagine a world with no hypothetical situations?.
Thom Fitzpatrick 
thom@calweb.com - http://www.calweb.com/~thom
Keeper of the Barndoor Bus Page: http://www.calweb.com/~thom/barndoor.html