Date:         Tue, 1 Feb 2000 16:25:50 -0500
Reply-To:     "Karl F. Bloss" <bloss@ENTER.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Karl F. Bloss" <bloss@ENTER.NET>
Subject:      Re: Tranny oil change: How to *not* do it.
In-Reply-To:  <200002012043.PAA19168@hammer.cs.jhu.edu>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

> Karl F. Bloss wrote:
> > Forget all the tricks with bolts and 2-3 nuts welded together.
> > Just spend the $ and get it.  It works great.
>
> Mechanics has just become too easy ;-) Before all these new-fangled
> on-line vendors it took some ingenuity to making tools and parts
> that the local hardware store didn't have. In protest I'll stick
> with my 3-nuts-bolted-and-epoxied-together ;-)

Nothing wrong with that.  But if the $4 part exists, why reinvent the wheel?
BTW, I did the 2-nuts&bolt thing too, but I could never get it to work
efficiently.  The commercial tool let you use both a 17mm wrench or a socket to
loosen the fill/drain plug.

> I still remember my first tranny oil change. Friends advise was:
> "Check that you can get the fill plug out before opening the drain
> plug and emptying the tranny.

Yes...can't be overemphasized.

> I was startled when suddenly the plug flew out of my hand, followed
> by a jet stream of hot tranny oil soaking me completely. Took me
> precious seconds to roll out of the way of the oil shower and
> manuever the drain pan in my place.

Sounds like my first flush and fill.  My wife came home from an errand and I
was a combination of green and orange from head to toe (changed to Dexcool at
that point) because I didn't have buckets ready for the torrent that followed
removing the pipe from the base of the radiator.

> Those were times when even a tranny oil change was a major accomplishment
> for me. Now several trannnies later it's routine. Even replaced the messy
> filling procedure laying under the bus with a piece of garden hose and a
> funnel outside the rear tire.

That I found to be straight-forward with a pump mechanism from Sta-Lube.  My
first tranny oil change was done with Sta-Lube GL-4 dino that only the local
Sears had (NAPA only had GL-5).  Next to the GL-4 display was a pump for the
Sta-Lube GL-4.  I've used it ever since.  Very handy and cheap.  The tube even
has a barbed end so it'll more or less stay in the hole while you pump.  Only
drawback is the pump intake doesn't go all the way to the bottom of the bottle
(whose idea was _that_?!?_), so you have to refill the stupid bottle every 2/3
of a quart...while under the van.  :-P~~~~

-Karl

Karl and Kristina Bloss, Trexlertown, PA
'87 Westfalia Weekender  "Beverley" - 192K miles
http://www.enter.net/~bloss/vw/
PA/NJ Vanagon owner's mailing list: http://www.enter.net/~bloss/vw/pavanagon/