I've polished up slightly trashed input shafts where the pilot bearing goes.
it's a bearing surface , not under that much load or stress..............use your judgement.
with a proper dust seal to protect the pilot brg, , good synthetic grease, and new german pilot brg, it'll do just fine for a long time - but you also have to apply the 'Psychic Healing' factor.

to swap input shaft - remove bell hosuing,
see circlip keeping a collar/gear in place, spread ciclip - slide it and the coupling thing down the shaft so the end of the input shaft is exposed.
it's a very clever way to keep the two shafts engaged.  All you have to at this point is unscrew ( normal counterclickwise ) the input shaft you want, from the 'real input' shaft that goes into the trans.
However...........it can be desperately fiddly.
If they would have made 1/16th's of an inch more clearance in this hole in the side of the differerential ..........where the spider gears are..........which is a recess you'll 'park' that collar/gear in to be able to unscrew the shaft you're after...........it sure would have helped ! - like a LOT .
sometimes I put the trans in gear and hold both output flanges to keep things from turning to unsccrew the input shaft.  
Sometimes they're a bit stuck together, but not usually.
it's getting that last 1 % of clearance you need that's the hard part.   In principle it's easy and a nice set up, and would IF they would have just made a bit more room to work.
scott
www.turbovans.com 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Marshall 
  To: Syncro@yahoogroups.com ; TDI-conversion@yahoogroups.com ; vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com 
  Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 9:03 AM
  Subject: [Syncro] HELP - Pilot bearing marked up my input shaft

  OK - vehicle is a 1986 Syncro Westfalia with a high powered TDI engine
  installed.  After 50.000km on the swap I noticed gear oil coming out
  between the engine and gearbox.

  Upon removing the gearbox, I
  noticed that the pilot bearing is now just an outer shell with all of the
  insides totally gone.  The input shaft where the pilot bearing was
  resting is mildly chewed up with some scoring where it was bouncing
  around.  On the sleeve where it enters the gearbox is some more mild
  scoring but not on the area where the seal is.

  Does this mean
  it is time for a new input shaft or would buffing it at the pilot bearing
  area with some emery cloth be all that is needed?

  How does one
  one correctly remove the input shaft as I do have a 2nd gearbox here that
  I can remove one from.

  Thanks in advance!

  David
  Marshall

  http://www.hasenwerk.ca
  Box 4153, Quesnel BC,
  Canada V2J 3J

  [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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