Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 10:59:43 EDT
Reply-To: JBowen7@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: James Bowen <JBowen7@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: It's not moving...UGH!!!
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Tom,
I too have this thing about doing all of my own work. It's definately a 'bonding' thing. My wife tells me she can't understand the love I have for my "Lola"... So far I've rebuilt the motor, tranny, all new brakes, replace those damn plastic coolant pipes (that the end blew off of at 70 mph and blasted coolant all over the back of the van and every car behind me).
My tranny had about 130000 miles on it when started giving me some trouble. I finally decided to tear it out at 135000 miles. Until this, I'd never opened up an automatic. "Fear of the unknown." Once in there much of my fear subsided. It's amazing to me that this tiny little transmission can propel a Vanagon. The Bentley manual, List Wisdom and the boys at Austin Vee Dubs were my sources of information.
I forgot, one special tool that I had to buy ($3) was a small metric slide rule. You'll need this to measure the space between the tranny and final drive to determine the thickness of a spacer. This is outlined in the Bentley manual. Hope this helps.
Jim Bowen
'88 Wolfsburg Weekender (Lola)
'74 Super Beetle Sun Bug (Goldie)
In a message dated Wed, 20 Jun 2001 6:20:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Tom and Dana Cates" <dcates1@home.com> writes:
<< Thank You!
I have this thing about performing all of my work myself.... but I have
never tried an automatic. I fortunately haven't had any problems with mine
yet, but I have been thinking about getting one from a jyard to play around
with and have ready for the eventual failure of mine. But I have 140K on it
and it hasn't given me a bit of trouble yet - List Wisdom is that this about
as long as they last.
Oh, I did have one problem, I overfilled it and it blew the excess right out
the vent all over the back of the hatch - traumatic, but ultimately
harmless. Of course, I always have good vehicular karma too.
Did you have a special manual?
Tom and Dana Cates
Asheville, NC
83 Air-Cooled Westfalia, 'Hammurabi'
Member: http://www.fullmoonbusclub.com/ "Home of the World Famous Breakfast
Burritos"
http://www.type2.com/rescue/
http://members.home.net/fullmooninjoon/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: <JBowen7@aol.com>
To: <dcates1@home.com>; <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: Re: It's not moving...UGH!!!
> The only tools I used that might be considered special were a vice (used
to press in new bushings) and an air compressor (used to blow parts clean
and to test the operation of various pistons when reassembling). All of my
other tools were good old Craftsman.
>
>>
