Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 02:38:30 -0700
Reply-To: The River Clan <staff@EARTHNOW.ORG>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The River Clan <staff@EARTHNOW.ORG>
Subject: Wiring! Will I make it through it??
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
After all has been said and done, and the conversion of the bus to a westy,
including cutting out the roof, welding in the crossmember, installing the
cabinets, etc. etc.... nothing compared to the wiring!
Luckily we had the wiring harness that connects up the fridge/water tank
sender, etc... but since I have never really seen a Westy in it's "natural"
mode, we're not quite sure what's up with a few things. We're getting ready
to drive it from Oregon to New York, down to Florida, then up thru the
South over a month or two. I'm scrambling trying to get it all wrapped up.
Thanks to all your help, it has gone very well so far, and such a project!
1. There's a white wire, 14ga.. in the same harness as the red wire that
goes to the fridge relay that appears to "click" a relay (assumption) in
the back of the fridge. The Bentley says the wire for the fridge is bigger
than this, and also red. They don't even show a white wire. I tried it
thinking it was the fridge 12v line, but alas, nothing happened after a
couple hours and a thermometer in the box. What could be clicking behind
the fridge? And if it's not the proper wire... where did mine go? ; )
2. The LED's are funky to me. After looking at this site:
http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/LEDpanel.htm it appears they were
funky to him too, cuz he rebuilt the LED panel.. but doesn't really explain
why. Basically, the water tank (it's probably an ' 81 wiring and interior)
even at 3/4 full still shows on the second from the bottom red led. If I
touch the top plugin.. it goes to green. It was at green while filling it..
but when we stopped the fill, it went to red. What happened to the yellow
LED? Is this just funky?
3. We found when filling the water tank, if we didn't pull of the cap
inside the cabinet, it filled soooo slowly that it kicked back about 3/4 of
the water out the exterior fill box. Is this normal? What a hassle if it's
packed! Is there a workaround on this?
4. The pilot light LED stays on all the time. Strange. Since the fridge
didn't work on propane (we have never been able to get it started) we're
gonna pull it out tomarrow and try to get it running where we can see
everything. We installed it in a leap of faith <sigh> Should have tested first!
5. Our water temp gauge isn't registering anymore. It quit today. Nothing.
Zip. It blinks when we're starting, but it never goes about the bottom peg.
Is this probably just a connection thing? Is it a normal bug in vanagons
that someone might have a place to point to to save us a bunch of
diagnostics? I am installing a oil pressure gauge, should I just blow off
the stock one and install a vdo with a new sender?
Thanks so much for your opinions here!
Rianda
87 GL Westy
67 Single Cab
