Transmission fluid leak/foaming question

[tornik550]

I have been rebuilding my engine for the past couple of years. I finally have everything close to where I want it. Last week, I was able to drive my 914 for the first time in a long time. During the rebuild, I did nothing to the tranny except flushed the fluid and refilled it with swepco tranny fluid.

When I was driving, after about 15 min of 55mph cuising, I found that the engine seemed sluggish at times. It also was somewhat difficult to get into 4th gear. When I got home, I saw blue fluid under my tranny. I got under the car and saw that a fairly decent amount of tranny fluid that was extremely foamed. It also had a small amount of sand sized metal. I am not 100% certain of the source but it appears to be from the main shaft seal or somewhere in that general area.

I had never filled a tranny with fluid so it is entirely possible that I did it wrong. I did my research, I thought I was correct at the time. I do not remmeber exactly how I filled it because I did it last year.

My questions- why the foaming? Overfilled/underfilled? I am assuming that the metal peices were from the resulting oil starvation. Any ideas on the leak source? I am not very swift with trannys so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Some car info- 73 914 1.7l increased to about 2.4l. Side shift tranny. New clutch/ pressure plate, flywheel. Swepco tranny fluid.

Thanks,
Steve

[tornik550]

forgot to say where I found the leaking oil. It was on the right side fo the tranny. Not coming from the output shaft. Lots of oil in the area where the fork comes out of the bell housing. Could a issue with the breather cause these type of symptoms? It appears that the leak is eight from the main tranny shaft seal or the breather.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

If the hole in the breather is not pointing right and forward, it will spew oil out. Quite a bit of it. Mr. Haynes would have us believe that it needs to point 60 degrees right of straight forward.

The ball stud that is the pivot for the clutch throwout arm can leak. I don't think its mounting hole is always a through hole, but it can be in some cases.

Could be the input shaft seal.

Overfilling would be more likely to cause foaming than underfilling. Metal bits are, well, not good. Drain the fluid and see if it looks bad... You might contact Dr. Evil over on the 914world BBS (he goes by Mike something or another on this BBS), who has torn apart a lot of these transmissions. Even put most of them back together again!

--DD