ShopTalk Forums | Aircooled VW Tech & Restoration Help

so how do you inspect a used swing axle? i've got a bore scope, if that will help.

There's not much you can tell without tearing it apart, and that's much more involved than it is with the average conventional transmission. Even with it completely dismantled only an experienced eye could assure you that it has no problems; bolting it into a car and driving it would be a better use of the time. What you can do is look at a few things and see if they're definitely bad.
http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=81061

thanks Marc...i didn't type in "test tranny" for the seach. my bad.

thanks for the repeat

anyone have a pic of a good reverse gear they can post?

Heres a link to a webpage with pics of reverse gears.

http://www.geocities.com/Baja/Dunes/970 ... Gears.html

What you can see through the fillplug hole is the Reverse teeth on the outside of the 1/2 slider (put it in 2nd to bring it forward into view). The little idler gear (the picture bugvert linked) takes the brunt of the wear but if it's bad there'll be corresponding wear on the slider teeth...if they're curved-over on one side it's an indicator that the trans has been jumping out of Reverse.