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Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:28 pm

I believe my 91 automatic may have a leak at this seal, are there any options for stopping it or do I have to pull the transmission off to replace it. Any idea how long this job would take on van with automatic tranny?

Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:20 pm

You really need to determine exactly what is leaking before you tear into things. The transmission does not have a rear main seal, the engine does. The tranny has a torque converter seal among others.

Unless you are experienced at it give yourself a day to pull and reinstall the transmission.

Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:23 pm

Wildthings wrote: You really need to determine exactly what is leaking before you tear into things. The transmission does not have a rear main seal, the engine does. The tranny has a torque converter seal among others.

Unless you are experienced at it give yourself a day to pull and reinstall the transmission.

I was told you have to drop the transmission to get at the rear engine seal?

Is there any additive that will seal a leak?

Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:33 pm

You either have to pull the transmission or the engine to deal with a leaky rear main seal There are no shortcuts.

Tue Jan 26, 2010 5:31 am

When you change crank seal make sure u change torque converter seal as well, just pull converter off and easily changed. Most likely that seal has been in longer than the engine one and like otherss they age and get hard and take a perm position, movement of converter when removing trans will in most cases loosen the sealing fit to trans and it will leak. After being bitten a couple times i change both, not worth the gamble.

Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:46 am

If you replace the end seal, you might want to take the extra time to check end-play as well. Usually a leak is caused by a bad seal, sure, but this can be made worse if you have too much play. It's also possible that your flex-pate has a groove in it in which case you will probably have to replace that.

This is my old flex-plate:

This is the new flex-plate I got from GoWesty:

As Wildthings said, make sure you're sure where the leak is coming from and as Morymob pointed out, replace the TC seal - it's cheap and easy.

New torque converter seal:

edited to fix horrid typing

Tue Jan 26, 2010 9:57 am

speedygeorge wrote: Is there any additive that will seal a leak?
NO. Nein. Niet. Boo.

That stuff is made for crusty old US boxes. Put that stuff in your vanagon box and you WILL have problems.

Ex: We bought a Jetta 2 back in the day when they were still new. This one has the same automatic as the Vanagon. We bought it knowing the automatic had bad shifting issues. No biggie, just needed fixing. It had a minor leak on the side from some external shaft seal. Instead of fixing the leak the previous owners put some stop leak crap in. Well that just made all the clutch packs fall apart. In other words, the stop leak made a small problem into a rebuild the transmission problem. Thankfully it was only the automatic half which is easy to drop, just like it is easy to drop in the Vanagon.

As others have stated, find out what the real issue is and fix it. Cars as old as these tend to mark their spots. If it is not too bad, just ignore it. A few drops is nothing to get excited about. BUT, if it is a big leak, you gonna have to fix it soon. There is more info to be found about the automatic by using the SEARCH function here on The Samba.