well, i poked around under the van for a while today and it indeed appears
that the seal i need to replace is the one that doesnt require dropping
the transmission, (whew) guess my tendency to imagine the worst got the
best of me :)

inside the bellhousing seems dry so it isnt likely the bellhousing seal,
and around the area where the o-ring is its dry as a bone. 

around the pan on the final drive portion of the autotrans all of the
tranny fluid has cleaned gunk off, making it very easy to see where the
fluid is coming from...

thanks for the replies, and Ron has informed me that aircooled vanagon
questions belong on the type-2 list, so in the future ill post there to
save watercooled bandwidth.

thanks again,

steve

 93 Corrado SLC - 87 Scirocco 16v (hurt) - 84 GTi (dead) - 80 vanagon (?) 
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     as long as you are looking for happiness, you will never find it	
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spwhite@artsci.wustl.edu               http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~spwhite
		CCA St. Louis Regional representative