end of the Hockey stick looks ok, although thats with the old ball on it. no wear or step that i can see
You may have to fettle the ball a bit. Sometimes the internal clearance is tight as they vary in dimension like lots of replacement stuff.
It does but only just and depending if there is load on the gear or not the reverse lights flicker. Nobody should fit the plate with machining the nose cone, but nobody did. I have a new switch to fit and that might make a difference.
You may also have to look closely at the slot in the lever that the ball is pushed through before you rotate it and push the end of the hockey stick through .. I had to file down the burring where it changed gear metal to metal. before and after ball. On mine the hole wore larger..
Yes, that looked like a strange shape in your picture considering it began life as a section of a sphere in profile.
I wonder if VW made the pea ball out of nylon(?) intentionally as a wear component, as well as being self-lubricating?
It's in a fairly oily place , more likely that the plastic is cheaper than a precision metal component.. And that everything VW after 1973 was cheaper rather than better unless laws prohibited it, or they could hide it from those who checked. (The ball is probably not nylon knowing how that swells up with water or oil.) Please explain why the drain screw on a Perkins CAV diesel water separator seems to be nylon.. I am surprised the one on my boat didn't shear when I undid it to drain the separator the other day because it had swollen up..15 years sitting in diesel and water..
Yup. It has a hard life in there. Cheaper to replace the ball than the selector assembly and hockey stick. VW acknowledged there was component wear in this area by hardening the later hockey sticks. By then it would have been considered an issue for the warranty organisation because the 091 gearbox was evolving into 091/1 units for the forthcoming water-cooled T3. Early air-cooled T3 boxes show phase 1 modification in this area by using a bushed internal hockey stick and side selector on the nose cone. Our ball and spring loaded selector mechanism was deleted and this new system was used only for a couple of years whilst the whole box was redesigned around gear selection. The market was evolving in many ways I guess. Customers wanted a more luxurious experience from the driver's seat and the rear engine posed challenges with 8ft of sloppy linkage that needed workshop time to keep in good order. The new 091/1 internal selection assembly also makes sense from a factory production perspective. Stamped forks rather than machined rods and lower cost replaceable linear bearings rather than expensive toleranced holes bored through cases. I don't really know why the aftermarket doesn't produce these balls in some sort of plastic. Maybe that's more expensive than stamping out the metal ones! Selector and spring assemblies new are currently NLA as far as I know so we'd better hope these metal balls don't damage the metal housing too much. It's a bearing surface after all...
Can't remember if I still have it on my box, but I had a 5-rib box with needle bearings in the nosecone for the hockey stick. Have you seen any of those?
I haven't but it makes sense. Its just a bush there normally which is adequately and low cost for most. I haven't done enough of these to see all the mods. Lack of decent parts is a big driver in my decision. Folk like Paul at Bears had stacks of stuff collected over the years. That's depleated now. He was telling me he once had a whole container of gearboxes stolen from storage a few years ago. Presumably melted down for scrap...
It could have been modded but as it was 5 Rib which was some sort of halfway house before the 6 rib I wondered if it was something VW had been trying out. @Bigherb would know.
In my box it has 2 Linear motion bearings (needle bearings). both are ok fortunately, but in my searching I did find some part numbers. 091 301 207 or INAF80574. the INA part number is available from bearing suppliers by the looks of it.
I'm surprised that mechanism works at all, tbh, given the forces involved. I think the nylon ball is probably a better choice from the design POV, rather than metal on metal.
If it's a good fit and soaked in gearbox oil, does it really matter? Do you remember when you could only get nylon ones that people (naturally ) wanted a metal one?
Who knows. Aftermarket metal are as a result of 'racing' upgrades when the driver for creating this sort of stuff was the dune buggy and sand racer market. Like you I'm sure they'll be fine for the amount of miles that are done in these vehicles generally these days. I recall there's a whole thread on Samba regarding the vibration down the stick attributed to these tiny bits of metal. No one I know who's fitted one has an issue and most are glad there's even an alternative!
Good shout. Went down the rabbit hole. Those bearings are interesting. Not needles but what appear to be rows of balls in an inner cage. That makes sense coz the cage allows for rotational movement and the balls the in-out. I think I'll get a set on my next Weddle order and have a play...
Then of course you will need more functional dust seals on the nose to protect the precision bearing over using a sintered bronze thing hammered in that doubles as a bearing and a partial seal at the same time.
