Well, I'm an air-cooled guy and may be wrong here, but that sounds just
like the front transmission mounting bolt the manuals all tell me to
loosen when I remove my engine.  Loosening it helps the
transmission/engine assembly to rotate down at the rear so the engine can
be pulled out under the rear apron.  If the same reasoning applies to
removing water-cooled engines, then I'd guess the mechanic loosened the
bolt but forgot to re-tighten it when the engine was replaced.

On Tue, 25 May 1999, ncdragonfly wrote:

> [snip]
> A good friend of ours and his two young sons were on their way to camp with
> us. Last week our friend got his 85 Westfalia back from a shop near his
> home after 5 months of having the engine rebuilt. He traveled around town
> last week and felt relatively confident in the vehicle. On their way to our
> place last Saturday the transmission came loose from the front mount and
> the engine/tranny dropped to the pavement! Yes, fell out on the road.
> [snip]
> When I got to him and we crawled underneath the vehicle we saw that
> the +/- 4 inch bolt that holds the front tranny mount to the frame was
> simply not there. No sign of the bolt shearing, the bolt was not found on
> the road thus we were unable to inspect it. My question is this, is the
> mechanic responsible?
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Tom Young               young@sherlock.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU
Lafayette, CA  94549    '81 Vanagon
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