Hi Bill .

I replaced the missing and broken boots on my ' 87 Syncro and am now
wondering if I should have.
I think they are just dust covers, although if they are there it wouldn't
hurt to have a little extra grease on the linkages. They slip on over the
length of the shift rods so are a bit awkward. I seem to remember driving a
pin out of the rearmost vertical cup attached to the linkage shaft there
and unclamping the middle joint, which you need to do anyway to align the
shifter as per Bentley. and yes you can hold the outer ends with clamps.

In subzero weather on bumpy roads ie. washboard etc. of a gravel road,  I
now find that the shifter will pull out of gear by the vibrations, and I'm
assuming its because of the rubber boots. They are stiff due to the cold
and resisting being compressed as required to shift into gear. with a few
bumps the compressed boot expands and pushes my easy to shift van into
neutral.

Has anybody else with intact shifter linkage boots experienced this
scenario ?

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 4/20/99, at 11:40 AM, Davidson wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
>Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
>Poster:       Davidson <wdavidson@THEGRID.NET>
>Subject:      shift linkage boots
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
>I was under my 90 Westy Syncro and saw that the second boot along the
>linkage from the transmission is cut up. The other boots (there are
several)
>are loose and expose areas that seem like the boots were supposed to
cover.
>Questions:
>Are these boots supposed to hold greese like a CV boot?
>Are they supposed to have clamps on them?
>Or are they just meant to be dust covers?
>How do I go about doing this job?
>Thanks in advance,
>Bill
>90 Westy Syncro

=================
Wolfgang  Carolsfeld
wolfgang@island.net