Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 15:48:02 -0600
Reply-To: jimt <camper@TACTICAL-BUS.INFO>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: jimt <camper@TACTICAL-BUS.INFO>
Subject: Re: Joy Hecht's problem's solved?
In-Reply-To: <428FA73D.8090701@adelphia.net>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
A year ago I ran over some scrap metal on the highway. Ended up getting two
new tires. However while the vehicle was up on a lift I examined th
underside and found where the metal had ricocheted around underneath with
enough force to put some heavy marks in the metal underside just inches from
my coolant lines.
After that I set up a quick test at the house with a couple containers and I
basically proved that if you have a catastrophic failure of one of the two
main coolant lines OR the heater lines you will have catastrophic failure of
the engine. In my testing I showed that on the water pump side going to the
radiator you would pump 3 gallons out in less than 8 seconds. On the return
side from the radiator it would still be just under 10 seconds for the same
dump.
It takes about 5 seconds for the circuit activating the buzzer and I can
tell you from experience what happens on that.
Several years ago my sons jetta had the motor mounts fail just as he hit a
dip and the engine dropped. The drop severed the lower radiator line. From
the scene when I got there he dumped his coolant in much less than 5
seconds. While he was pulling over to see what had happened the coolent
buzzer and light on his jetta just gave a flash and went to normal. The
sensors were no longer sitting in coolant to get a reading. The momentary
reading he saw was probably steam flash.
My under side westy pan was off when I had my incident and is now back on
and I have armored a couple of possible weak points.
A hole in the hose is one thing, you have some time for the system to warn
you... A burst or dropped hose is another thing again. Heater lines are
only slightly better.
jimt
On 5/21/05 3:25 PM, "Rocket J Squirrel" <j.michael.elliott@ADELPHIA.NET>
wrote:
>
> In the interest of learning from the experience of others, is there
> anything a fellow can do if his Vanagon springs a major coolant leak
> like that? Her buzzer (does my 84 have one? I don't think so) sounded
> too late to prevent conversion of engine into scrap metal.
>
> --
>
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
> 83.5 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> KG6RCR
>
>
