magical merlin strikes again! got my isuzu tcase seals yesterday and brought them to the driveline shop - the guys there are very cool and talked to me for about a half hour about the vx before i got out of there and they could start working on it - total price for rebuild with all new parts is less than $700 (plus my $70 seals)

all 5 gearheads in the shop at the time agreed that if they remade the vx today they would sell like hotcakes

asked them how a shop in chicago did a rebuild in two days without ordering the seals from japan and they said either they already had some in the shop (highly unlikely) or they reused the old ones which is a bad idea and they refuse to do that there