Gear shifter all over the place...

[Paddingtonfire]

Evening from England... I’m recommissioning a 57 Bus, a few issues, nothing major but need some assistance if possible please.

The old girl is lowered slightly, and is running a 1641 lump. When I got her the gear shift was a bit wavy gravy to say the least, and I’ve since changed the front bushes and rear connection, and removed the spacer in the cab because the shifter ball wouldn’t reach through to the rod. At the end of this process I had terrible trouble adjusting everything to be able to select 1st and 2nd gears. I’ve managed to get these now, but you can see from attached YouTube clip something’s not right. I’d appreciate any guidance... the only thing I can think of is the front gearbox bush?

Thank you!

https://youtu.be/NxxWn4mIM0M

[/youtube]

[campingbox]

Obviously by the squeaking everything is as dry as a bone. Time to go through it.

Remove shifter, inspect ball and lower shelf on stick for wear
Inspect lockout plate
Inspect bell and spring
Remove engine and tranny, remove long shift rod and short shift rod, inspect for damage.

Early ‘57 uses two metal bushings, you probably need to replace both
Late ‘57 might use the same as above, long rod might have two plastic ones replace all three with correct type
Reassemble everything with good stuff and grease all of the moving parts

Might as well do the nose cone bushings, but they aren’t going to fix the issues in your video

Also, make sure that quilted whatever you have on the front floor doesn’t extend under the shifter bell. If it does, cut it back and clean up. Bell should be against the floor.

[BarryL]

It also looks like you don't even have to push down to get in reverse. Does it push down and spring back up?

[Paddingtonfire]

[Paddingtonfire]

Morning,

So I’ve removed the engine, trans and gearshift mechanism. Working from the back to the front, these are my observations so far.

The gearbox is very dirty, suggesting leakage for some time. I’ll remove the boots and renew etc.

The nose bush appears to have significant play, but on a box such as this is this normal for a VW? Is it the correct nosecone? It’s number and markings are 211 301 211 G and there is a 3 and VW symbol cast in to the nosecone. The gearbox number is 113 301 103 E with a 48 and VW in there too.

Moving forward from the nosecone the coupling is new.

The long rod looks a bit battered and there was a little resistance extracting it from the pipe, so I will clean that. Now to the interesting stuff...

The coupling to the shorter rod which I purchased would simply not allow any gear change at all, so I made one with offset holes, see pic which allowed me to (with considerable and fine adjustment) to select all gears as in the first post in the thread but with massive play, hence why I’m here.

The short rod has been mucked about with, see pic, where it’s been cut and bent, most likely in an effort by a previous owner to solve this problem. It obviously hasn’t.

Forward to the ball joint and gearshift - I’ve tried all combinations of spacer, new striker plate, old striker plate adjusting the position in the cab, and I got the best balance but I don’t have to push for reverse, and I’m fishing for gears.

I’m just wanting the solution to this, I could just buy all new components but I’m not certain that’s going to help.

Appreciate it all, Mike

[John Ghia]

Did you ever solve your shifter issues? What was the problem?
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BUS BOYZ