I have a 90 GL that I purchased last summer in North Carolina and brought home to hot, dry Arizona. After a couple of failures of plastic connectors on my cooling system, my mechanic is now suggesting that I consider replacing every plastic and rubber hose and pipe in the van, on the theory that with continued exposure to the extreme conditions here (Tempe) I will be nagged by annoying failures and possibly risk something more serious. The engine was rebuilt just before I bought the van, and my mechanic (Perri at German Auto Repair in Mesa, who's a straight-up guy) says he always recommends cooling system overhauls at the same time as a rebuild on vans as old as mine. As he puts it, if I end up doing it piece by piece, I'm going to buy a lot of coolant and redundant labor.

Well, as you can imagine, my initial response to his suggestion was that this would be too expensive and too speculative in its benefits. After all, he really means every part (except, of course, those replaced since last summer). But then I caught mention in some recent postings of other listees doing this, and now I'm giving it more thought.

Is it a reasonable thing to do? How many of you folks have done this?

It might help to know that when we travel, we stay as far away from the busy roads as we can, so we can be a long way from help when something goes wrong -- and I'm not a mechanic.

Mark Pry 1990 GL