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Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:52 am

how is the gearing for the highway? are you happy with the auto or do you wish it was manual? the reason i ask is i have a 77 bay with 2.0 auto that hasnt run in years only has 87,000 miles but was thinking about putting motor and trans in my 62 sc. just hate to go to the trouble to get it running before i pull it

Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:01 am

I love mine, I can easily cruise 75mph all day on flat ground and I don't loose that much speed up hills either, sometimes I don't loose any speed at all. I wish it was manual just because I like the simplicity of it and I find shifting gears to be enjoyable but my auto has never let me down. I think my Bus has approx 168,000 miles on it, drive it every day.

Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:26 am

I drove a 1979 Auto Westy for over a decade and would NEVER of traded it for a manual....I loved it.

Gearing is great, super smooth shifting and very quiet....great for sleeping kids....

Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:23 am

dill58 wrote: how is the gearing for the highway? are you happy with the auto or do you wish it was manual? the reason i ask is i have a 77 bay with 2.0 auto that hasnt run in years only has 87,000 miles but was thinking about putting motor and trans in my 62 sc. just hate to go to the trouble to get it running before i pull it
That's going to be quite the involved swap, take lots of pics.

Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:42 am

dill58 wrote: how is the gearing for the highway? are you happy with the auto or do you wish it was manual? the reason i ask is i have a 77 bay with 2.0 auto that hasnt run in years only has 87,000 miles but was thinking about putting motor and trans in my 62 sc. just hate to go to the trouble to get it running before i pull it

I've got a 77 westy camper with automatic. Very dependable and solid, i've owned it for probably over 10 years. It is very fun to drive, i rebuilt the motor at about 125,000 and the transmission shortly after that (some moron put a little motor oil [about 1/2 qt] by mistake instead of ATF, and thought it wasn't enough to matter and could make it home to drain it out, WRONG ! not adviseable !).

The rebuilt transmission I put in was from a 78, and it took quite a bit of work to re-align the linkages from the transmission to the throttle so that I could get a good top speed, and still be able to have a "kick down" at certain times when needed. The geometry of this affects the top speed.

My cruising speed in this bus is about 65mph, i can go 70 with a tail-wind and down hill, but i've never been able to achieve 70-75 out of this configuration on any type of serious high way driving with hills and winds.(both rebuilt engine and transmission, done locally at vee-village in Kansas City). The only thing I think that would get a bit more speed and power is to have the fuel injectors rebuilt, but everything else is stock and working as it should.

I enjoy the auto, as it allows my wife to drive on the long camping trips, as she doesn't like manual. I've got a 69 sunroof manual bus for my shifting enjoyment !

I've always wanted to drive a 75-79 manual bus to compare my speeds around town (kansas city to clinton missouri) and determine if my 77 auto is truly under powered in comparison to the manual.

The hardest thing with my auto was replacing the shift linkage when the cable broke, i've got some old posts from the type 2 lists but it was a very hard part to find; and finding someone to rebuild an auto tranny is very difficult as well. I was lucky that V-Village had an old reliable hand at the time, he's now gone and they want touch an auto-tranny or a type 4 engine [they do rebuilds but no maintenance of any kind].

YMMV.
Bob

Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:12 am

i think i will go for it. probably be a couple of weeks before i get time to start. dont think it will be to bad of a job i hope.

Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:41 am

I daily drive a 77 westy auto.

I love it aside from the fact that it won't shift into 3rd gear.

It's no sweat really as i've pretty much traced it down to a dirty valve body or governor.

I easily cruise around town with no sweat and if i need to I will run it on the hwy a little raw maxing out at around 85-90 klm/h .

Once I fix the 3rd gear the bus will fly.

It's very relaxing to drive.

Do a samba search on autos and you will see that whoever drives them LOVES them.

Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:44 am

dill58 wrote: dont think it will be to bad of a job i hope.

Famous last words :P

Document it very well on here for others who might want to venture into this territory in the future.

Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:42 pm

i will document it and try to take some pics. might be wrong but i dont think it will be to bad. but owning a machine and fab shop make things easier.

Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:24 am

i love my 78 westy. i can cruise very easily at 70-75 no problem. shifting is smooth. sure is nice to be able to keep up with traffic in an old bus!

Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:36 am

...................... new owner of an auto here ...................................... and it needs work .. how bad of a job is it to rebuild the trans in one and where do i get parts?? is there any kind of interchange info out there?? i got a 73 t2b bus with the engine for an 80 vanagen :?

Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:36 am

dravin21 wrote: ...................... new owner of an auto here ...................................... and it needs work .. how bad of a job is it to rebuild the trans in one and where do i get parts?? is there any kind of interchange info out there?? i got a 73 t2b bus with the engine for an 80 vanagen :?

You should have the 003 transaxle so rebuilding the automatic section would be pretty easy to do yourself. You just need to keep careful track of how everything came apart so you can put it back together exactly the same. When I did the one in my 411 5'ish years ago I found the parts readily available and quite inexpensive, don't know if they still would be today or not.

I seem to remember that the only special tool I needed to come up with was just a 1/4 inch torque wrench.

Thu Nov 03, 2011 6:08 am

Does a '62 have reduction gears? If so, how will you get around that?