Tonight, I ground down the walls of a 19mm socket to fit the tight
clearance between the oversized drain plug bolt and the recess in the
case.  Drained the oil, seemed thinnish which I hope accounts for the
intermittent oil buzzer I get when decelerating.  We'll see, I'm
refilling with 15-50 Mobil 1.

While I had the case drained of oil I decided to fix the leaky
junction between the case and the filler tube.  This was heavily
smeared with black RTV, apparently from the outside, and when I got
it off sure enough there was no gasket.  I fabricated one from my
stock of gasket paper, but while I had the tube off I noticed that
the telescoping plastic section was cracked where it joins the metal
section of the filler.  More RTV was evident, and a hose clamp had
been applied in an attempt to hold it all together.

I hunted around on the usual vendor sites and did not see that this
telescoping section is available as a replacement.  So, I'm thinking
of making up one out of some PVC drain pipe.  I'm pretty sure this
could work; I've seen rubber clamping unions and threaded end caps
for this stuff in the plumbing section at Lowes.  Might even be able
to get a telescoping function with two different sized lengths.

Allan
--
1991 Vanagon GL