Date:         Thu, 11 May 2000 11:14:03 -0600
Reply-To:     "Jon B. Kanas" <kanas@QUALITY.QADAS.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Jon B. Kanas" <kanas@QUALITY.QADAS.COM>
Subject:      Mouldings / Overheating
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi everybody,

I've been following the threads on shrinking interior mouldings in
Westfalias.  Many years ago, a friend who restores 30's vintage Buicks
suggested that with heat the mouldings can be 'stretched'.  Turns out, he
was absolutely right.

Before you try this trick, you need to pull the moulding off of the table
or cabinet.  I use a heat gun (you can probably use a potent hair-dryer).
Gently and evenly apply heat until the moulding is pliable.  Gently and
evenly are the key words here;  too much heat in one place will discolor
or melt the plastic.  It will stretch very easily (pay attention, and
don't stretch it too much!).  Once I had mine the correct length, I
drilled holes in the mouldings, about 2 inches from each end, and then
reinstalled the mouldings.  I then used the holes in the mouldings as
guides to drill small pilot holes in the cabinet, and secured the
mouldings using automotive trim screws.  The appearance is excellent, and
there has been no subsequent shrinkage.  I have done this on my 1971
(white mouldings), 1983 (brown mouldings) and 1987 (grey mouldings) over
the past fifteen years or so with great results.

If you're not totally comfortable with this process, I recommend getting a
piece of expendable moulding material from your local scrapyard as a
practice piece.

Regarding Ken's overheating problem:

I've been following your "overheating" thread with some interest.
Fastened to the front (front of Vanagon) of the instrument cluster,
plugging into the flexible printed circuit board is what Bentley calls the
Voltage Stabalizer.  It looks like an integrated circuit with three pins
which slide into recepticles on the circuit board.  The purpose of this
thing is to reduce the voltage to the instruments to 10V.  If it fails,
and I have had two fail, either your instruments appear to be dead, or
they get full 12V and read high.

Take a carefull look at the pod and you can figure out which side of your
temperature gauge is +.  If you have more than 10V here, Vanagon running,
I would suspect that this little regulator has failed.

Regards to all
Jon Kanas