Transaxle / Transmission Reseal

[Steve Marshall]

1991 Vanagon Transmission reseal.

I just resealed the 4 speed manual transmission on my 91 Westy. There’s tons of information in Sambaland about various aspects of this job but I couldn’t find one post with everything consolidated. I made several parts orders with Bus Depot so I thought I’d start with the parts list first. It’s by no means complete but its a good start.

Trans main shaft input seal 11331111A

Flywheel O-Ring 021105279
Engine Crankshaft Seal Sabo - 029105245
Engine Crankshaft Seal Reinz - 029105245B*
Bell Housing Gasket 091301131
Axle Shaft Seal 091301189 x 2
Final Drive Flange Cap 002517289A x 2
CV Joint Boot Kit 251598201 x 4
SKF or National Speedi Sleeve Flywheel - 99289
SKF or National Speedi Sleeve Axle Shaft - 99177 x 2
M10 Wedge Locking Washers

* Reinz seal actually came packaged as a Bilstein and had a thicker spring. More about this later.


If you’re doing just the axle seals you can probably leave the transmission in. If you’re doing the input shaft and flywheel seals it has to come out.

Taking the trans out is pretty straight forward. A few suggestions I have are:

There are 2 studs and two bolts that mount the transmission to the engine. The top two bolts, throttle cable bracket and clutch slave cylinder are easily accessible from the top through the engine bay. (I didn’t find this out until after we did the entire job. It would have saved a couple hours had I known this). Note: one of these bolts is also the starter bolt and utilizes an allen wrench.

Take the axles completely off. It doesn’t take much effort and it’s just easier if they are out of the way.

Lower the rear of the the transmission as far as possible for better access to the back bolt that of the slave cylinder. (We did this before we realized how good the top access was. But keep this in mind if you are tight) This is the hardest part of the of the whole job. Before you reinstall transmission, weld the impossible to get to nut to the bracket that holds the slave cylinder. Sorry no pic. But you'll know it when you see it!

Drain the transmission if doing the input shaft seal. You don’t need to if you’re doing only the axle shaft seals.

I found the standard double headed seal puller to be almost completely worthless. To get the axle seals out you need to pry out the Final Drive Flange Caps in the center of the flanges. Do this carefully and you can reuse them. Use snap ring pliers to remove snap ring and thrust washer. You will need a puller to remove the final drive flanges. Then remove the plastic seal covers. I used an impact driver to keep from buggering the screw heads.

Removing the Axle Shaft Seal. Drill a small hole in the outer metal portion of the seal. Screw in a deck screw a few turns but not too much. You don’t want to drive the screw in into the bearing. Use the handle of the almost worthless seal puller, or something equivalent, to protect the case and a claw hammer to pull on the deck screw. I tap the claw hammer with a 3 pound sledge to pull out on the seal. Once you’ve pulled the screw out of the seal, go to the next bigger diameter screw. Repeat this process on either side of the original hole until the seal comes out. Be patient. It took me three holes before it came out.

The engine crankshaft seal came out easily with the almost worthless double headed seal puller. Be careful of placement so you don't bugger the bore. I.E. hook the seal closer the ID than the OD. There's some washers behind the seal. We removed them and reinstalled them the exact same way.

Note: Transmission main input shaft has a good amount of wobble in it. More than you will expect if you've never done this before. The endplay is what matters. Tug on the end of the shaft see how much it moves in and out. If it moves too much you might have an issue. How much is too much? The answer is here on the Samba somewhere. On mine, I could feel the shaft move in and out, but I couldn't see it moving in and out. Since my trans was working 100% I figured it was fine.

The transmission main input shaft seal was a beast to get out as well. Remove the bell housing. It’s 8 bolts and they are easy to get to. Be careful not to damage the bell housing bore or misalign the oil slinger that’s pressed into the bell housing. Have plenty of light available. I tried knocking it from the back with a flat head screw driver but it wouldn’t budge. So I flipped it over and hammered toward the seal back until I had about a 1/3 to 1/2 of it peeled away from the bore. Then I flipped it over and hit from the back again and popped right out. I think the key on the hard to get seals is to weaken them enough so they give eventually.

Speedi sleeve. Seals can wear a groove into the shafts. Particularly the drive axle shafts or the flywheel stub. If you can feel a groove with your finger nail you want to put a speedi sleeve on the shaft. Drive axles are simple. Put the sleeve and tap tap them in place with the installation tool that comes with them. Done. Mine had visible wear marks but no discernible grooves. I did them anyway because there are plenty of stories of reseal jobs that still leak.

The flywheel is little bit of a different story. The sleeve is too tall and extends past the end of the stub. The straight section of the stub is about 8mm. The sleeve is about 17mm. This needs to be machined off. I took mine to a friend with a lathe. It took longer to chuck it into the lathe than to actually trim it off. I guess you could cut off the excess some other way but I didn’t want to bugger it up. It’s in a super critical location. We also trimmed off the installation ring on the sleeve. In retrospect, we could have machined the straight part of the stub about 3 mm longer and seated the sleeve against the back of flywheel.