help identifying diff lock actuator mounting parts

[phlogiston]

i'm in the process of trying to sort out the horrific mess that the PO made trying to use the small size diff lock actuator mounting bracket on a transaxle that requires the larger size bracket.

he also took the liberty of sawing part of the bracket off, apparently to make installation easier.

i got a new bracket and went to install it, but i've noticed that there is a rectangular plate around the diff lock shaft that is held in place by a circlip. according to the picture in bently, the circlip is supposed to hold the bracket in place.

could someone confirm that i should just remove this metal plate and chuck it? the plate appears to have been painted along with the tranny at some point, so part of me wants to believe it is an important piece that i should not get rid of.

any hints on the correct assembly sequence? it appears that the rear of the long bolts that hold the actuator to the bracket can not be inserted with the bracket and actuator in place....

[IdahoDoug]

You need the plate as its preventing oil from coming out and provides proper depth of locker shaft movement. Those long bolts are trouble IMO and I replaced mine with long cotter pins. They takr no stress and just locate the actuator. My way the assembly comes off quickly. Factory way those long easy to strip screws sieze and cause people to saw bits off. I actually crushed the entire actuator with pliers to get it off and bought a new one. Hours of fiddling with a 23 year old plastic n rubber part or 2 mins of crushing and a new one certain to work. Have you checked to see if the actuator shaft easily slides in and pops itself out?
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1987 2WD Wolfsburg Vanagon Weekender "Mango", two fully locked 80 Series LandCruisers. 2017 Subaru Outback boxer. 1990 Audi 90 Quattro 20V with rear locking differential, 1990 burgundy parts Vanagon. 1984 Porsche 944, 1988 Toyota Supra 5 speed targa, 2002 BMW 325iX, 1982 Toyota Sunrader

[phlogiston]

thanks for the response, doug.

i pulled those pieces off and was surprised to see that they are stamped & plated... definitely a production part and not something that someone made on a drill press.

however, i don't think there was room between the transaxle case and the circlip for 2 plates and the thickness of the bracket. should there only be one plate, rather than the 2 stacked ones i removed?

i like the cotter pin idea, too. thanks. the tranny is supposed to have been rebuilt recently, and thankfully the shaft moves smoothly. i put a bunch of extra grease on and cycled it in & out a few times for good measure.

[phlogiston]

hmm... i checked to see if i could fit the bracket on top of one of those mysterious plates, and the pair is thick enough that the groove for the snap ring is not even visible. however, without the plate, the groove does not line up with the surface of the bracket alone, either.

i'm puzzled by a couple of things. the holes in the bracket are the same size as the ones in the plate, so i can't see how the plate would serve any sealing function that the bracket would not also accomplish.

and i'm not sure what exactly the snap ring is even for unless it is to prevent the sleeve around the diff lock shaft from sliding into the transmission. and if that sleeve is in fact not fixed in position internally, it seems likely that the way things were bolted up originally (with the snap ring under the bracket) that when the bracket was tightened down, it would have pushed the sleeve into the case, thus causing the scenario i know have, where i cannot fit the plate under the bracket.

so is it safe to try to pull that sleeve back out? i wonder if i could install the bracket and snap ring, then lever behind the bracket with a couple screwdrivers?

or is it just time to pull the transaxle and call darryl.....

[gears]

You want a single plate beneath the bracket. Pull the sleeve out a bit more to fit both plate and bracket, and to easily reinstall the circlip. Once the bracket's been tightened down with the two bolts, the sleeve can be pushed in so that the circlip is flush. Then the fun part ..
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aka Pablo, Geary
9.36 @ 146 in '86 Hot & Sticky
'90 Syncro Westy SVX
'87 Syncro GL 2.5
https://guardtransaxle.com

[syncrodoka]

[T3 Pilot]

Yeah, Good Times......

Go Here for lots of good pictures and a walk through of what you are working on.

http://www.syncronauts.org.uk/syncro-technical/syn...rs-removal

Two plates, that is strange.....
Good suggestion on using cotter pins to replace those annoying Bolts/nuts. Use stainless.

Also remember to fabricate a " boot" to protect the actuator arm when you are reassembled. 3/4 heater hose works great.
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1988 Vanagon

The most important part in every vehicle is the nut behind the wheel......

[IdahoDoug]

Yeah, the bracket doesn't have a seal on it as noted, but keeps the bits with the O rings from pushing their way out and leaking. As you are finding, this is not the finest area of design but it works very well. It seems to beg for a bit of mod to suit your needs, which is why I did the cotter pins. Your new bracket seems of thicker metal than I recall. Also there are no nuts welded onto it like the factory bit?

Give some thought to how you will put a new rubber hose over the shaft area like it had originally. A couple guys have found innovative ways.

DougM
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1987 2WD Wolfsburg Vanagon Weekender "Mango", two fully locked 80 Series LandCruisers. 2017 Subaru Outback boxer. 1990 Audi 90 Quattro 20V with rear locking differential, 1990 burgundy parts Vanagon. 1984 Porsche 944, 1988 Toyota Supra 5 speed targa, 2002 BMW 325iX, 1982 Toyota Sunrader

[phlogiston]

thanks for all the great info! it's a challenge at times trying to dial in my "new" syncro when all my past experience was with 2wd vans. and obviously the po took some shortcuts.

armed with a new understanding of which parts move relative to each other and an india session ale, i'm off back to the garage. got some front axles to reassemble as well before i can drive the syncro again...

[rubbachicken]

sorry for crashing the tread,





where can i buy the longer '87 on shaft, the longer 55mm bracket is easy enough to find, i cannot see anyone offering the longer shaft
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lucy our westy

lucy's BIG adventure

meet 'burni'

[syncrodoka]

Daryl at AA trans. Stainless upgraded part with new bushing just over $100

[phlogiston]

just to conclude this (now old) thread, i pulled the bushing out of the transaxle case until the step up in diameter was visible. the spacing between the step and the circlip groove was not enough to fit both the actuator bracket and the spacer plate without covering part of the circlip groove. so i put the plate on a mill and took off 0.060". then everything fit nicely.

i don't know what the history of my bracket is... it had clearly been used before it was sold to me, so perhaps it is aftermarket and not manufactured to the correct thickness. it certainly was not going to work without machining down the thickness of the spacer.

[derekdrew]

For the record, these are the parts to add a diff lock to a vehicle that did not have one before if you already have either a Peloquin locking diff or the OEM parts for the center differential and you already have a diff lock housing (or modify your existing non-diff lock housing to accept a diff lock. (whew!)

https://picasaweb.google.com/111803335891651546087...Components

Although this is called a "Kit" it is not offered anywhere as such, but anyway, these are the parts you'd want.

Here's a preview of what's on the other side of that link:

For the rest of them, go through

https://picasaweb.google.com/111803335891651546087...Components
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Derek Drew
derekdrew - a t - derekmail - dott - com

[derekdrew]

FOR THE RECORD on a related topic.

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About The Seal Between The Diff Lock Servo And The Transmission
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The factory put a protective piece of hose between the diff lock servo and the diff lock servo bracket on the transmission to keep dirt and water from fouling the servo. In early production runs of the syncro there was a factory OEM part for this purpose and you will see this part on many syncros. I took a picture of this hose here:

You can see in the background in the upper part of the picture the little flimsy shield that came on early Syncros in the USA. This black piece is documented in EKTA but if you click on it it says that the part has been discontinued. In later syncros, the factory switched to using ordinary heater hose. The middle heater hose in the picture above is for the rear transmission and it is a three piece design with two outer pieces of heater hose and a horrible rusting piece of metal in the middle position. In the foreground is the heater hose the factory uses for the front differential and it is one piece design. The inside dimensions of that heater hose should be between 16.2mm and 17.25mm and would ideally be 16.725mm. The VW OEM heater hose used at that location has an inside dimension of 16.25mm, which is a little too tight. Sourcing replacement hose is sort of a pain because it is fairly easy to find heater hose in the USA of 16mm inside dimension (that is too tight and could damage the inner seal) and it is fairly easy to find heater hose a lot larger than that, and this might let dirt get into the area you are trying to get the dirt out of.

The length of the heater hose is 35mm in the front and I haven't measured the back. By the way, the factory part that was originally produced, the black one in the background of the picture above (toward the top of the picture), is really a flimsy thing and probably should be discarded in favor of the heater hose approach so don't think that just because there was an OEM part there once that that OEM part was superior to the later method.

Note that when installing these hoses, the factory also migrated to installing, in addition, a coat of waterproof grease at the ends of the hose to prevent water or dirt from going around the end of the hose and inside of it, where this foreign matter will quickly rust the diff lock into an inoperable state. I have taken to smearing the end of the actuator shaft that comes out of the transmission with VW factory OEM CV joint grease in an attempt to keep water away from that actuator rod coming out of the transmission. However, I am now having 2nd thoughts about using that particular grease, and if I had it to do again, I might try something even more light weight. That is because in extremely cold weather I have noticed that it is hard for the diff locks to actuate, and I was speculating that perhaps the grease was becoming thicker at very low temperatures. Moreover, there is the risk of the CV joint grease getting to a rubber seal, and that grease eats rubber. So, what I will probably do in the future is to track down a grease or other rust preventative that retains a lot of flexibility down to 40 degrees below zero (going to visit my sister in Fairbanks AK soon).

I'd use oil instead, but imagine that the oil would drain off and then allow rusting to begin. Note that after only one winter of Tom Forhan's van having a non-rustproofed diff lock actuator rod, I noticed that this rod was already rusted in place on a brand new front differential, so it was a lot of work to get it freed up. So my guess is that 75%-85% of all vans that have diff locks that don't actuate may be due to insufficient rustproofing of the diff lock actuator rod where it comes out of the transmission. If you search the archives hard enough on this topic, you will see a post from Dennis Haynes suggesting that perhaps removing the oil seal from the diff lock actuator rod might help solve this problem by letting some oil seep out of the transmission passed the old seal location. Not having tested how much oil might thereby leak out of the transmission, I decided not to implement that solution at this time. Clever though.

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END 2003 Text
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The text above was written in 2003, since then there has also arrived in North America the additional solution of using stainless steel diff lock actuator rods. The rods are available for between $40 and $110 depending on where you can find them. Bel Ray marine grease won't wash off and might be a good candidate. I used Redline CV joint grease once, but I am not sure how compatible this one is to use with rubber. The Redline CV joint grease operates down to very low temperatures so it is less likely to harden in arctic conditions.

If you need a new red diff lock servo seal, you can either buy a new servo for $75 or you can buy just the seal for about $3. If you have a friend in the UK to remail it to you, you can get them here:

http://www.brickwerks.co.uk/index.php/t3-parts/t3-...yncro.html

That link will surely break some day, so you can see the red diff lock seal here:

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Derek Drew
derekdrew - a t - derekmail - dott - com

[insyncro]

I have had great success with light coatings of Fluid Film on the actuator shaft with the factory protector used to cover the shaft.

I feel the need to repeat "light" coating.
Any excess grease or coating will be effected by extreme low temperatures.