Date:         Tue, 4 Nov 2003 20:20:27 -0500
Reply-To:     machfive@EXCITE.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark G <machfive@EXCITE.COM>
Subject:      Re: Mystery Coolant leak
Comments: To: tlmurphy73@YAHOO.COM
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I am going through the vaery same thing you described.  I had the mechanic flush and fill with VW Blue coolant. (It had been a year and a half, so it was time...) Anyway, a few days later, feeling good about doing something preventative for the van, I noticed the coolant level low in the expansion tank and non-existant in the overflow tank. Scary, but not untoward, as I figured it was just air working itself out of the system. I refilled but kept a keen eye on the levels daily. It seemed to stabilize, then just the other day I noticed the levels down again.  This time I found the culprit. The small 7mm(?)hose coming off the coolant manifold had a pinhole, shooting a perfect little stream (like that from a water gun,) of hot coolant onto the distributor. Lovely. (Almost as good as when my Type 3 lost an injector seal and the injector was shooting gas onto the distributor. Sometimes I wonder why I'm still alive...)Anyway, it turned out to be a fairly difficult fix in that in order to remove the hard, rotten hose with the pinhole, I had to move the power steering pump and alternator a bit to get to the original German crimped hose clamp and cut it off. What a pain, but it made me realize...those hoses are old and in the near future I will HAVE to change out all the old coolant hoses and fuel hoses.


Mark Garcia
Alhambra, CA
So Cal VW Campers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoCalVWCampers/

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