Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 00:09:23 -0400
Reply-To: pokeswagon@blazenet.net
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "(Donna Cassano)" <pokeswagon@blazenet.net>
Subject: Re: Repair nightmare on vacation! (long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
This story really makes me uneasy as I prepare for a month of cross-country
traveling. If this can happen to a knowledgeable guy like Ron, I shutter to
think of the possibilities for me. I won't have internet access, so I won't have
the list for support. I've got to get the LIMBO travelers guide. Maybe a couple
of Rosary Beads, garlic strands and rabbits feet might be in order as well.
Wish me luck!
Peace - donna
'84 Westy (Pepe)
PS - will be sending out a few questions/concerns to the infinitely wise list
soon.
The Bus Depot wrote:
> I went to the Grassroots Music Festival in Ithaca, NY this weekend with my
> wife and 2-year-old. Left in my '89 Westy. Ended up camping in the back of
> a D*dge van while my Westy got towed 200 miles home with the engine in
> pieces.
>
> On the way to the festival, a small coolant hose sprung a leak. Not a huge
> leak but it was definately dripping and hissing a bit. The hose was located
> in a tough-to-reach place under the AC compressor, and it was dark and I had
> my wife and kid in the car, with no chance of getting another hose at the
> moment. So since the leak was relatively minor, I decided to continue on,
> pulling over frequently to check my coolant and make sure the leak hadn't
> worsened, and running the heat so that if the situation worsened to the
> point of lack of coolant flow, I'd know because the heat would go cold (even
> if the gauge/light didn't tell me).
>
> Most of the way through our trip, on the highway, I felt the heat go cold
> (even though there was plenty of coolant in the system; I'd just checked it
> a mile earlier). About a minute or less later, as I was looking for a
> suitable place to pull over, the hose burst completely. Within literally
> three seconds, I had the engine off and the van on the side of the highway,
> whereupon we called AAA and a nearby friend. The van got towed to the
> European auto specialist that works on my friend's Vanagon, and we went to
> his house for the night, planning to deal with the hose in the morning.
>
> The next morning, the mechanic at the shop started the van and drove it over
> to his bay (it ran fine). But he saw some coolant blowing out of the
> tailpipe when they started the van, so he decided it must have a blown head
> gasket. When I arrived, he had already removed the rocker arm on one side
> and was about to remove the cylinder head. I stopped him, and asked him to
> reinstall the rocker arm and simply replace the hose. Not that the van
> didn't neccessarily have a head gasket leak, but it was also possible that
> some coolant could have escaped through the gasket during expansion and
> contraction when it overheated. Running the engine for at least 10 minutes
> or so would probably be enough to see if the existing coolant in the exhaust
> simply blew through, or if more was continuing to leak into it. In any
> event, nobody near the little town of Horseheads, NY had a gasket kit in
> stock anyway, so if I needed one I'd have to have my shop overnight it to
> me. Hopefully, even if the gasket were leaking, the leak might be minor
> enough to allow us to continue the one hour to the festival, and replace the
> gasket after it was over (and the part had arrived). So he reinstalled the
> parts he had removed, I opened up the Bentley manual to the page on bleeding
> the cooling system (he had never done it before), and we jacked the front of
> the van up to start bleeding the system.
>
> And this is where the nightmare really begins. The van, which had started
> and run fine when he pulled it in, now wouldn't start at all. The mechanic
> pulled out a multimeter, and decided that the injectors weren't getting a
> signal. So while we waited (now very late for our festival), he spent 4
> hours futzing around trying to figure out why the injectors wouldn't fire.
> The more I saw him guessing at things, the more I got worried, and finally,
> when he went to take a phone call, my friend and I pulled an injector and
> held it into a rag while I cranked the engine. Sure enough, the injector
> that "wasn't firing" spat fuel right into the rag!
>
> It was at this point that the mechanic admitted that he had just spent 4
> hours looking for a nonexistent electrical problem because he had misread
> his own voltmeter!
>
> We quickly determined that we had spark, fuel, and air (something the
> mechanic had been unable to determine in four hours). So why wouldn't the
> van start? We did a compression test. No compression in one cylinder! It
> turned out that when the mechanic reinstalled the rocker arm, he had put the
> pushrods in wrong. When he then cranked the engine, he bent the pushrods!
> Of course, at that point the valves had to be checked because he could have
> bent one as well, due to the incorrect pushrod installation.
>
> So my blown hose turned into major cylinder head repair. The shop admitted
> their mistake, and while insisting that I still needed a head gasket, agreed
> to do all other repairs (to fix their mess) at no charge and pay for parts.
> At this point it was obvious that I wasn't going to get back on the road
> that day, so I ordered the neccessary parts in next-day-air and left the van
> there, borrowing a conversion van to use for the weekend.
>
> A call to the shop later showed that they were having difficulty figuring
> out how to reinstall the head. They wanted to know where the valve guide
> orings were (there are none), and had been planning to use the head sealant
> that comes with the gasket kit as valve cover gasket sealant instead! They
> had a Bentley manual on hand, and had never done a Vanagon head gasket
> procedure before, but apparantly had felt it unneccessary to crack open the
> manual even once and read through the procedure.
>
> At that point, I decided that I should just cut my losses and tow the van
> home in pieces. It was clear that the more those monkeys worked on my van,
> the more they would damage it. Their intentions were good and they really
> did want to fix what they had damaged, but they clearly did not know how.
> So I had the van towed 200 miles home with the engine in pieces on the
> floor.
>
> What remains now is to determine exactly how much severe damage the shop did
> to my engine while trying to replace a $10 hose.
>
> - Ron Salmon
> The Bus Depot, Inc.
> http://www.busdepot.com
> (215) 234-VWVW
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