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Date:         Thu, 26 Sep 2002 00:05:34 -0500
Reply-To:     Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@MTS.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@MTS.NET>
Subject:      Saga of the missing oil was Re: Dipstick readability tip (getting
              kinda long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Well, I was going to wait for the Friday Funnies for this mystery but since it came up today I might as well get a head start. I should mention that I've always had trouble reading the dipstick - higher on top, lower on the bottom, the whole thing seems to be wet, etc. Could be part of my problem here but who knows.

So I'm taking my 85 Westfalia GL from Winnipeg to Vancouver to San Francisco this summer and back. 250k kilometres on the original motor and automatic transmission. No oil leaks or burning oil or anything like that. Getting pretty low on power but hey I'm not in a hurry.

I take it to one of the few VW dealers in Vancouver who would look at the van without an appointment. Some were downright ornery about the whole thing. I'm off to San Fran with fresh oil and everything seems to be fine. Checked the oil every two fills and never needed to add (unless I'm reading it wrong, but I don't think so).

Coming home near Glacier Nat. Park in Montana the motor starts rattling and I lose power. The next 3 hours I'm going up hills at 5 mph until I hit Alberta where things flatten out and I can putt along at 70km/h. It sounded like an exhaust rattle which made sense to me because I knocked it around a bit on some particularly nasty potholes on Vancouver Island. Wasn't sure why it would cause me to lose power though.

So I make it to the VW dealer in Lethbridge Alberta where they tell me I was down about three or four litres of oil! How about that. The oil warning light never came on, although it lights up when starting the motor so I guess the sender must be toast. They assumed I had some sort of catastrophic leak so I pick up four litres of 20/50 at Canadian Tire and stop every 20 minutes on the way home. Even decided to bypass Ikea in Calgary it was so serious. So I drive 1600 km home from Calgary, and the oil level on the dipstick never dropped. I still haven't had to add any oil.

Where did my oil go? I have to admit I didn't check it from San Fran to Montana where I lost power. The van seems to be running fine now - still sluggish but not consuming any oil. How much damage did I do? I didn't realise you run out of power when you run out of oil. Obviously I'm not the most mechanically inclined guy out there but I'm pretty conscientious about maintenance and I feel like a big idiot for running out of oil. Anything in particular I should do now or just start saving for the new motor? This one sure didn't owe me anything with that many miles and one head failure repaired at 80k km, but I would like to squeeze another few miles out of it if possible.

Darn.

Jeff 85 Westfalia Winnipeg

> At 11:08 AM 9/25/2002, Chuck Hill wrote: > >Drilling a tiny hole in the dipstick at the marks makes it very easy to > >read the oil level. > > > >Chuck Hill > > Do you have trouble with false high readings? I often find that the > reading on one side of the stick is much lower than the other side... > > david


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