Need help diagnosing trannsmisstion issue on '57 bug

[tommott77]

Hi all. My girlfriend has had her beloved Oval sitting up for the better part of the year and she misses driving her! Need some help and guidance in attempting to get her back up and driving.

Earlier this year she ripped the splines out of the hub on her output shaft. She doesn't have a lot of money to spend on her and relies pretty much on very cheap or donated parts and donated labor to keep her going. So she opted to just swap trannies as opposed to going through the trouble and cost of performing the open hear surgery on her transmission to replace the drive axle.

It took a couple months, but after a while the job was complete. Now that transmission is making a pretty bad whine in 1st gear. We've changed out the shifter bushing under the back seat with no change. I also had I thought I had her fixed when I noticed that there was virtually no gear oil in the tranny. We topped it off and had her running great in 1st gear on jack stands without any type of noise present. But as soon as we took if off the jack stands and back on the ground she was making the 1st gear noise again when driving her around. Every other gear does not have the noise present.

For the last couple months she's been 'bugging' me to fix it, but I have basically written it off as a bad transmission and there really isn't anything we can do without her getting a hold of and installing yet another one. She is relentless though and feels that there must be something that can be done so I am now sitting before my wise and great brethren of the Samba with my plight.

Is there anything else we can try other than getting yet another transmission and taking our chances with one that somebody has had laying around? The one installed was supposedly good. The only thing I can think of is that possibly the nose cone could be bad, it is odd that it was not making the noise while up on jack on stands, I'd think that if it was a synchro it would also make the noise. Would trying to take the old transmission, which drove fine, to a machine shop to attempt to rethread the hub be a cost effective alternative?

Any help, guidance, and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Though I've had a single cab, and currently have a Devin project sitting on a '57 bug chassis I'm still not quite familiar with every single nook and cranny of VWs so pardon any of my ignorance.

[57BLITZ]

[bdub475]

If you had a 57 split case trans installed then first gear will whine. First is not synchronized and the gear is not helical so it will whine and grind if you try to down shift to first if the car is even slightly moving. The reason it was quite on the jack was there was no load on the gears so no noise.

[tommott77]

[tommott77]

[Snort]

The split case transmission is somewhat user-serviceable as long as you stay away from the ring and pinion gears, but you're looking at replacing the main shaft as that's where one half of the gear set is and first gear on the pinion shaft and it's still a crap shoot as far as how much noise you'll have unless you have two brand new gears. There are two styles of main shafts depending on the year of production and the matching gear should be the same for all of the split case models.

I saw an ad the other day here for a completely rebuilt split case from Rancho in California for about $1700 but for some reason it eludes me at the moment, but you could call them and I'm sure they could set you up. I know it's a lot of money but how many times do you want to pull that beast out looking for the right solution?

[3foldfolly]

All the ovals I've driven with the original split case style transmissions have had more gear whine in all gears than the later tunnel case mid 60s trans. Is this characteristic of these transmissions or should a freshly rebuilt sound as quiet as a tunnel case in 2nd through 4th gear?

[sunroof]

Does the transmission pop out of any gears? What oil did you put in it?

If it does not pop out of any gears it is probably OK.

I put Redline MTL in my '59 split case and it worked miracles.

Pull the fill plug out and put a rare earth magnet on it and put it back in. The magnet will capture any metal in the oil and this can tell you a lot about the condition of the gears etc. If after a week of driving it is not popping out of gear and the magnet does not have any large pieces on it, I would suggest turning the radio up and ignoring the noise.

Don

[tommott77]

Thanks for the replies. It doesn't 'pop' out of any gears. Getting it into 1st, 2nd, and reverse is a bit more arduous a task than it was with the old transmission. I don't remember exactly what gear oil we used, but it was an off the shelf brand at O'Reillys (want to maybe say Valvoline). I've used Red Line in bunch of my cars back in my track driving days, it's definitely the good stuff.

I'll maybe see if she wants to get some and try that before pulling the motor and transmission again. If we do we'll definitely check for metal. You all have put my mind at ease a bit with the situation. My advice to her originally was that if the tranny is bad it is not going to fix itself, and if it's just a noise but everything works properly, she should just drive it until it stops working. She's real particular about noises and such though, it usually takes about 4 test drives and subsequent adjustments of the V belt after a change until she's happy with the noise its making, lol. She's also complaining about the difficulty in shifting, and may be reluctant to drive her because of that too. I believe I've been told that this is sometimes a function of the nose cone, which has me wondering if that may have something to do with the issue. It's also good to know that they are somewhat serviceable.

I think I'll try to take a video of the noise and her driving condition and post it on this thread when I get a chance and see what everybody thinks.

[henry roberts]

try what everyone above said first, then if it still bugs her, look for another axle/drum for her old gearbox.

you might want to double check this, but I think the axles are the same for split case gearboxes and the later short axle tunnel boxes (only one part listed in the parts manual).
if you are only swapping an axle you just need to split the box, pull out the diff, swap axles and re-assemble, no need to re-shim/adjust anything. the only thing you need to measure is the axle/trunion block clearances (and the gasket thicknesses at the nose cone if you use new gaskets)