Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:13:12 -0400
Reply-To: Kenneth Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Kenneth Wilford <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Radiator fan debacle (86 Vanagon)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Had a recent comedy of errors I wanted to share with the list. 86 Westy
running excellent went out on a 800 mile trip. I just took this van to
Georgia and back a little over a month ago with no issues. In Maine the
customer calls me to say that "steam" was coming out of the front of the
van. I asked if her A/C was still working and she confirmed that it was
not. She was sitting idling when this happened. The van was not
overheating and there was no coolant on the ground under the van. I figured
that the van had blown an A/C hose. An inconvenience in the heat but not a
show stopper. I told the lady to take it easy and just drive back in the
mornings and evenings when the weather wasn't too hot. She agreed.
She got to Boston area when the next level of naughtiness occurred. She was
driving down the road when someone behind her started honking. She looked
down to see the overheat light on and also Alt light. Here is what
happened: She kept the A/C on even though it was not putting out cold, the
fans still worked and she was using them to keep cool. On the older A/C
systems there is no pressure switch to kick out the compressor when the
refrigerant is too low. Anything 86 and older is like this. So the
compressor kept turning those whole time from Maine to Boston while the oil
was being forced out the blown hose. This cause the compressor to lock up
and this flung the A/C belt off which also caused the alternator/water pump
belt to fly off as well.
We had the van towed back and here is the kicker. The cause of the whole
debacle was the radiator fan resistor. Apparently when she was idling, the
resistor went out for the lower fan speed. This killed the radiator fan
which caused the A/C pressure to rise too high and blow the hose, which
caused the oil to leak out, which caused the compressor to lock up, which
caused the belts to come off, which caused the van to overheat and now we
might be looking at a cracked head. What a neat domino effect :-( This
would not happen in an 87 or newer van because the compressor would never
stay on when the refrigerant pressure is low. Only in the earlier version.
Also it probably wouldn't happen in the 84-85 Vanagons either as their fan
speeds don't have the achilles heel of the radiator fan resistor. It could
probably only happen in 86 Vanagons. Again this van left here with the low
speed fan, but with no warning the resistor can fail. The only warning sign
is to visually look at it. If the green coating is flaking off, it is on
the way out. However how many of us pull our driver's side headlight
assembly off to look at this beast? No one of course. I just thought I
would share this comedy of errors in case someone runs into this in the
future. You are not alone!
Thanks,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
http://www.vanagain.com
http://www.strictlyvwauctions.com
http://www.eurovan.org
http://www.vwcabrio.org
Phone: (856)-327-4936
Fax: (856)-327-2242
| 
