Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 23:10:09 -0500
Reply-To: Paul Borghese <paul98@PRODIGY.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Paul Borghese <paul98@PRODIGY.NET>
Organization: Prodigy Internet
Subject: Re: Antifreeze Sauna
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Taking the seat out is not a big deal but I can not figure out why he would
need to remove the carpeting. The most suspect place as to where the steam
is originating is from behind the rear seat which is very accessible. This
may be a dumb question but do they know that the seat lifts up? I one time
spent two hours at Pep-Boys stranded 300 miles from home while a bunch of
mechanics looked at my Van. Only to have the mechanic come out two hours
later confessing that they could not find the battery (step one remove
ground cable from battery...). You should be able to remove the box
surrounding the rear heater with a screw driver and ratchet set.
I an very leery with the secondary heater. Last year I was driving from
North Carolina to Atlanta and found a Vanagon on the side of the road with
smoke pouring out. I jumped out with my fire extinguisher to find the smoke
was from the rear heater box. The entire thing was on fire and starting to
engulf the Van! By using the extinguisher through the now melted lower
vent, we were able to extinguish the fire. The Van looked quite salvageable
with just some smoke damage and a destroyed seat. Of course another few
minutes and the van would have been a total loss. Just like in your case
there was a huge amount of steam from the anti-freeze, mixed with the real
smoke was quite an impressive site.
I looked at the dash and noticed that the rear heater was turned on. So it
looked as if the fan was running and somehow caught on fire. I have not
used my rear heater since :-).
Do not ignore the problem just realize to get to the rear heater is a 5
minute job (20 minutes if you seat is filled to the rim with stuff like mine
:-) requiring a screw driver and ratchet set. You may want to take a look
yourself before paying $60/hr to have someone else do it.
Best of luck,
Paul Borghese
----- Original Message -----
From: - Lauren Pelzer <VeeDubVan@AOL.COM>
Newsgroups: groupstudy.vanagon
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 7:01 PM
Subject: Antifreeze Sauna
> Hi! I'm hoping someone out there can shed some light on my problem:
>
> My '85 Vanagon overheated the other day, and became a sauna of steam
smelling
> strongly of coolant. The steam came from the secondary heater vent under
> the rear seat. I'm guessing it's the heater core. I can't emphasize how
> much steam there was...it poured out of the open windows for at least 10
> minutes after shutdown.
>
> Anyway - it is in the shop now. Not my regular shop, but these guys have
> worked on the van before. They called today and told me that it was
going
> to take longer than expected because (and here is my concern) they need to
> take out the seats and pull back the carpeting to get to where the steam
is
> coming in.
>
> I realize that the Vanagon is engineered like nothing else, but...I'm very
> nervous about this. It just seems to me there's got to be a better way.
Has
> anyone else experienced this? If so, I'd appreciate any light you can
shed!
>
> Thanks so much!
> Lauren
> ---
