TheSamba.com :: View topic - Building a better Vanagon automatic transaxle

Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:45 am

vwhammer wrote: h00drat wrote: I had a clutch plate in the Direct Drum break. I do not believe it was a "stacking issue," but as we have narrowed down here, an issue with the piston for the direct drum. I'm going to order a new piston to confirm.

I was just rolling back through this thread and noticed something in one of your pictures.
Just looking at this pic I can tell you that the top surface of that piston is way thinner than the one I bought.

I am pretty sure that you have already come to this conclusion but I would feel pretty confident that that piston is the cause of your excessive gap and likely the cause of your failure.

I don't have any pictures of my piston but I am sure you will see a difference once you get the new one.

Thanks for the follow up. That is the conclusion that I came to, and I ordered new piston's from WIT. I went ahead and ordered all three since the other two were super cheap. Even if I don't use them, I would like to compare them.

Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:05 pm

Well I got the trans part mostly assembled.

I need to get a smaller torque wrench so I can adjust the brake band but this part is assembled and it seems to have gone together the way it is supposed to.

I took all the springs and pistons out of the valve body and plan to take it to work tomorrow to run both parts of the valve body through the ultra sonic cleaner.

Speaking of valve body I noticed that all of the plates I have have the typical wear in the holes where the balls are located.

Has anyone purchased on of the plates from ALIKA T3?

Maybe I need to look at my valve body more but what does all the "FFB, FBP and FF" stuff mean?

ALIKA T3 wrote: Aloha!
Keep in my if you guys need for a complete rebuild, I have brand new stainless steel separation plates for the VW010 valve body FFB , FBP and FF and the plastic thrust washers 010323161A for sale in the classifieds :vw:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2186917

I figured since I already sprang for the Audi parts and the kevlar band and having the diff rebuilt by a pro I might as well spend a little more and get a new plate just to make sure that is not the part that F's this whole thing up.

Anyway I also got around to measuring for my shims between the trans and diff and have some questions there.

In the Bentley when they talk about this measurement

Are they measuring to this bushing?

The other measurement just looks like you are measuring from this surface to take into account for the straight edge you are using.

Why not just tell you to subtract your straight edge thickness?

Anyway I also noticed in the Bentley that the numbers they give for examples are really big except when they get to the final number.

Are the other numbers just arbitrary numbers to give you something with which to practice?

I still got a reasonable number for the final number and just happen to have enough shims for my set up.

Are they supposed to just lay here until the two parts are bolted together?

what keeps them from floppin around?

Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:19 am

vwhammer wrote: Has anyone purchased on of the plates from ALIKA T3?

I have. I have not used it yet. I opened the bag and looked it over with a close eye. I could not tell the difference from a factory new one.

So take it from a Butcher, it's worth the cost.

Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:04 am

Yeah I think I already determined that I want it and sent ALIKA a message this morning.
Just need to sort out what valve body code I have.

Wed Oct 09, 2019 11:00 am

vwhammer wrote: Yeah I think I already determined that I want it and sent ALIKA a message this morning.
Just need to sort out what valve body code I have.

I responded to your PM but will add it here for others, the valve body code is stamped on a little aluminum plate bolted to the underside of the valve body.
If it`s missing, the peripheral notches and a picture will help to identify it for you.

Quite a few people have used the stainless plates I make, rebuilders included :wink:

Aloha!

Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:08 pm

This is addressed to Kourt or anyone who can help. On page 6 of this thread there is reference to jPat pdf catalogue. I am struggling with item "226" or part number 65226a indexed in that pdf.

I don't see how this bearing fits with the brass thrust washer on the oil pump or final drive.

On my bench after disassembly I end up with only two bearings one bigger than the other, but neither seems to interface properly with the function of the three tabbed brass washer on the oil pump shaft surface or direct drive (therefore doesn't seem to be part number 226 referenced), (actually they seem to fit better on each of the two planetary gear surfaces) where a bearing is indicated in the diagram.

Help appreciated please.

Let me know if I am not being clear enough.

Jeff

Mon Oct 14, 2019 1:41 pm

Looks like you are referring to the diagram below.

Item 226 is the bearing on the forward drum:

I think Step 11 of the rebuild thread describes how the washer works. It sounds like the washer you're referring to is item 229.

If I remember correctly this should be a washer that is round, plastic, and with circles embossed in it. It's not like parts 244 or 251. There's a thread about these thrust washers here. I think this is what you're talking about.

Have a look at that and let me know if that helps.

kourt

Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:11 am

My pistons from WIT finally arrived, and they confirmed what I suspected. The pistons I got from eBay were either the wrong parts, or just not of the same quality.

The only one that was identical was the Forward clutch piston. The 1st piston and the DD piston were not even close.

Both the 1st piston and DD piston have Audi stamps on them (from WIT).

For the 1st piston, you can see that my eBay one didn't have the ball bearing. I'm planning on using the one from WIT.

Here are the two from the forward clutch which are identical.

And the comparison of the two DD pistons:

You can see the obvious height difference:

This made up for the gap that I had, and my clearance is now dead on spec. 2.05mm.

Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:34 am

This is good news.

Before you put that back together, do you want to get a few more good pics of the direct and forward piston so that I might compare them to the stock parts i removed from my Audi trans?
You can send them to me in a message if you would like or post them here.

I was told to look for some factory pistons because most of these after market pistons are junk, at least the direct and forward pistons.

I can not find any factory pistons and if I recall I compared my WIT parts to the factory stuff and felt pretty good about it.

Matt might sell me some factory stuff but from what I understand they are not cheap.

Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:48 am

h00drat wrote: My pistons from WIT finally arrived, and they confirmed what I suspected. The pistons I got from eBay were either the wrong parts, or just not of the same quality.

You can see the obvious height difference:

This made up for the gap that I had, and my clearance is now dead on spec. 2.05mm.

This is a great thread. Thanks to all for posting this info. I doubt I'd ever get an automatic Vanagon, or attempt a tranny rebuild but who knows?

Neil.

Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:00 pm

kourt wrote: Looks like you are referring to the diagram below.

Item 226 is the bearing on the forward drum:

I think Step 11 of the rebuild thread describes how the washer works. It sounds like the washer you're referring to is item 229.

If I remember correctly this should be a washer that is round, plastic, and with circles embossed in it. It's not like parts 244 or 251. There's a thread about these thrust washers here. I think this is what you're talking about.

Have a look at that and let me know if that helps.

kourt
For the vanagon, there were 2 designs. The early version had a pump end with a machined surface. On top was a small one piece thrust washer with two tabs that the forward clutch had slots the tabs fit in to. Later the pump end was not machined and had a 3 piece needle bearing. Forward clutch had no slots. This is illustrated in the manual. You can mix and match some parts with caution.

Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:34 pm

vwhammer wrote: This is good news.

Before you put that back together, do you want to get a few more good pics of the direct and forward piston so that I might compare them to the stock parts i removed from my Audi trans?
You can send them to me in a message if you would like or post them here.

I was told to look for some factory pistons because most of these after market pistons are junk, at least the direct and forward pistons.

I can not find any factory pistons and if I recall I compared my WIT parts to the factory stuff and felt pretty good about it.

Matt might sell me some factory stuff but from what I understand they are not cheap.

At this point I feel good about the parts that I am using. After all, I got 3k miles out of the sh*tty DD piston, so I would expect that with the Audi parts, and the correct tolerances, the transmission should last at least... 6k miles? ;)

Tue Oct 15, 2019 5:37 pm

h00drat wrote: At this point I feel good about the parts that I am using. After all, I got 3k miles out of the sh*tty DD piston, so I would expect that with the Audi parts, and the correct tolerances, the transmission should last at least... 6k miles? ;)

Ha! Yeah I was talking with Matt the other day and he was curious what pistons I was going to use.
He was curious how these particular parts (from WIT) compared to the Audi units.
He suggested that I be the guinea pig and run them to see how long they last.
After looking at your pics and the ones I have I think I have decided to do just that.
We can both be guinea pigs.

I just want to get this thing mated back up to the diff and bolted to the engine so I can carry on.

It would be super sweet if I could drive this thing before winter hits.

Wed Oct 16, 2019 10:08 am

Confused by your comment on the WIT pistons vs. Audi pistons. Maybe my comment wasn't clear, but 2 of the 3 pistons I got from WIT were clearly stamped with the Audi badge on the underside. The only one that was similar to what I got from eBay, non-Audi, was the forward clutch piston.

I'm curious what you're referring to if not the Audi stamped pistons from WIT.

At any rate, I reassembled everything last night. It looks like we have some new people in the thread, and I'm always looking for input, so I'm going to post my step by step assemble. Any concerns, please raise them before it's too late. ha!

Apologies if I get any of the part names wrong...

1st Piston:

+ Apply Shield:

+ oil pump w/ thrust washer:

+ spring plate (7nm torque iirc):

+ Direct Drum:

+ 2 of the 3 piece bearing (the 3rd piece is in the forward clutch) & thrust washer:

+ Forward Clutch:

+ another bearing:

+ planetary gear:

+ sun gear:

+ shell:

+ another planetary:

+ clutch plates:

+ one way clutch:

+ can't remember what this part is called:

Wed Oct 16, 2019 1:27 pm

h00drat wrote: Confused by your comment on the WIT pistons vs. Audi pistons. Maybe my comment wasn't clear, but 2 of the 3 pistons I got from WIT were clearly stamped with the Audi badge on the underside. The only one that was similar to what I got from eBay, non-Audi, was the forward clutch piston.

I'm curious what you're referring to if not the Audi stamped pistons from WIT.

Sorry. I was not very clear in what I was trying to say.
Allow me to clarify.

Matt asked me what pistons I was using.
I told him some stuff I got from WIT.
He suggested only Using OEM stuff which, naturally, I would like to do.

While I did look at my pistons from WIT pretty hard and compared them to the factory parts, I do not recall seeing any Audi stamp on them.
Perhaps I did not look hard enough.

I have heard of some bum pistons on the market but mine looked to be pretty exact replicas of the factory parts.

Matt mentioned that the cheap ones are made of thinner material, as you had in your ebay DD piston, and have sharper radii in a lot of the corners, which you may also notice in your DD piston.

Mine were not like this and, as such, I am inclined to run them whether they have the Audi stamp on them or not.
At this point I don't feel like taking the trans back apart to check but I probably will just to do a more thorough comparison and check for any factory markings.

While rebuilding these things is not that hard, in my opinion, it's a real pain in the butt to drop them from the van and I don't want to do that in 3-5k miles.

Anyway Matt jokingly suggested that I be the guinea pig and see how long these "aftermarket" pistons hold up.
At this point I am inclined to do so.

Wed Oct 16, 2019 1:33 pm

Right on. Sounds like we're in a similar boat. I'm sure you got the same parts from WIT that I did.

Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:04 am

Couple of quick Q's here.

Not really a question, but I remeasured for shims and I had this wrong too. I don't know how I could have gotten it wrong before, but my measurements last time showed that I didn't need a shim. My measurement this time is 2.5mm, so I need two .4 shims, or one 1.2 shim. Curious what your measurement is VWHAMMER.

I don't know how this could have contributed to the failure in my DD, but it was definitely too much play. Glad it didn't cause more damage.

This actually is a question. The torque value for the bolts that hold the throttle body to the transmission housing seams REALLY light. 4nm / 35in lb. Can this really be right?

Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:21 am

there's a few hundred pounds of hydraulic pressure inside/acting on that as well as hydraulic vibration while in a slippery heated oil.

it's probably that so it stays in place nice and tight.

Edit,, 35in pounds is only 2.9 Ft pounds..

so that's not that tight at all.

Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:21 am

I will have to look when I get home to see what my exact number was but I know it was in the 1.25-1.64 range that required two 0.4mm shims.

From the way I am reading this I believe if yours measured 2.5mm then you actually need two 0.4mm shims AND one 1.2mm.

Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:26 am

vwhammer wrote: I will have to look when I get home to see what my exact number was but I know it was in the 1.25-1.64 range that required two 0.4mm shims.

From the way I am reading this I believe if yours measured 2.5mm then you actually need two 0.4mm shims AND one 1.2mm.

Oh yeah. I think you're right. I was reading that as an either/or scenario not both. I'll have to get on the phone to see who carries them.