LEAKOIL Forum

Long winter and you know me, I'm not happy unless I'm needlessly pulling motors! Well, I'm graduating in 2014 to transmission pulls. This little '59 beetle has been crying to get on the road and hapless me hasn't been moving things along at an acceptable pace. I'm giving up on the later tranny that came with it. After leaking all over Bill Webner's place (thankfully cardboard intervened) and making some real creepy noises on the pull home, I found a period correct stock '57 splitcase tranny as a replacement. And it has non-syncro first gear!

Anyway I yanked out the later tranny.


Got a period correct mount installed.


Cjhanged the tranny seal and put in a Sachs throw out bearing.


Got it up in place.


Still need to get the backing plates back on and redo the rear axle seals. Stay tuned for that upcoming train wreck!

While I'm at it I didn't get a chance to show off all the fine work Bill did on this bug last fall. He did the headliner and all the seats and door panels. Also installed the glass (with an assist from Lurch) with the original style chrome trim.

Beautiful

Lookin' good brother!

Looking good Sean. I really like the vintage look of the Oval, especially the silver with red interior combination.

Sweet ride..

BEAUTIFUL!!!!! I am trying to get ahold of a 56 myself.

Very nice.......

It looks great, I like the colors and the pure stock nature of it.....

The split case transmissions are well known for always being the very best transmissions... at least for sound effects. My favorite is the whine of first gear. It is after all a period correct sound and used in all of the better retro-movies.

So I broke a stud on one of the tranny mounts delaying me once again. There are differences in quality between the ones Wolfsburg sells and the other aftermarket crap I had. I ordered the Wolfsburg mounts and you could see and feel the quality difference. Here's the broken one.


Got the tranny back in with all the nuts tight. If you're doing this job its best to get everything lined up and loosely bolted then tighten everything down.


Since Chuck raged on me about my 50 plus year old shocks I ordered the replacements from Wolfsburg. These particular ones also fit early bus fronts. I don't know the quality but at $25 each they were a lot cheaper than KYB.




Special thanks to THE Rick Lang and West Side Danny who came over and inspected my rear bearings. I think I'm good to go so I'll do the seals this week (hopefully) and get the rear brakes and wheels back on.