Repointer 1st gear slider

[red-beard]

Check it out. The one on the left is pretty close to the way the one on the right looked before.

James



Look at the blunted point vs the sharper points.



The cutoff wheel seems to give a good flat side, and lasts a long time.



Take the slider to the tool store and find a file that just barely fits in the slot. You need to make the slot straight and get rid of the mushrooming.

James

[Tango]

How bad was 1st gear when you decided to do this?

Was it a complete cure?

Always keen on innovative fixes, I have a new(to me ~80k) side shifter for my 2.0, it has low miles but I was thinking of replacing the first gear syncro at least... maybe a little fine tuning too if it helps.

Ta

[JWest]

This may be a great fix, but I have two concerns.

The first is the new height of the points and the effect on engagement. It actually might be better to have them lower because the syncro band will act for a longer time before the teeth come into contact. So this might be a design improvement!

The second is any heat treating of the teeth and how deep it goes.

Your real-world testing will hopefully prove these issues one way or another.

[red-beard]

The slider I used was on it's way out. The typical way the tranny will exhibit this deterioration is when the car is at a full stand still and you cannot get it to engage 1st, and you have to move it out of gear, release clutch, and try again. If you shift into 1st gear while coming to a halt, this generally doesn't happen.

The points on the dog teeth and the sliders are not for engagement. The flat portion is for that. The points rotate either the gear or the slider if they are slightly mis-aligned. The exact taper of the point isn't important, but I believe in removing as little metal as possible to make it work.

I don't think these parts are heat treated, as they are designed to be soft and to wear. I don't think they are getting too heated up by the dremel tool. I haven't burned myself on a point. Sliced my finger and hand with a rotating cut off tool - yes. Burned, no.

This is going to go into the 914/6 this weekend.

Now, repointing a totally gone, flattented slider, I think would take a machine shop and would make the slider a little bit thinner. You would expose a little bit of the spline, then machine a point. I do not believe it would change the funtionality of the slider, except maybe make the engagement stroke a little longer for 1st gear. I am looking into this, since new sliders are almost $400. I can't imagine it would cost a machine shop that much to do the work to fix one.

I'm not really planning on repointing for 2nd/3rd or 4th/5th but it could be done...

You know, some sort of hardening wouldn't be a bad idea. These are the expensive pieces. Let the dog teeth and the Synchro's get ground to bits. Synchro's are cheap and dogteeth are 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of sliders.

I swear, I should get a metal lathe and small milling machine.

Tools - tools - tools

James

[Brant]

James I hope I'm wrong... but here is an experience I once had...

The first (of 4) tranny I ever had rebuilt, was also the cheapest. I took it to a true back yard mechanic who claimed that he had built many VWs and would have no problem..... seemed to shift fine and work great when I got it back.... for about 3 months.

lost the tranny at a track event. Pulled the guts and trailered the car 300 miles... The guts went to a local guru... same guy who has built my last 3 trannies....

He examined everything and informed me that my "affordable" builder had repointed the 1st gear slider... and that this is not an acceptable practice....

hope your experience is different though....
brant

[red-beard]

What was actually wrong with the transmission? The only gear I'd consider is 1st, because of the expense. I wouldn't think that 1st would get that much abuse at the track, but I may be wrong.

James