It doesn’t take hours to properly bleed the cooling system. In fact if it is taking more than 5 minutes it was done wrong. And once the cooling system is able to establish flow, if all is well it will finish bleeding on it's own, even the 1.9 set up which is not as resilient as the 2.1. The real trick to proper bleeding is that it has to be done while the engine is cold so that the coolant isn't trying to vaporize. That is my story and I'm sticking to it! Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of BJ Feddish Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 8:22 PM To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM Subject: Re: Coolant recommendations I feel like I'm at an AA meeting but I will confess I still have the green stuff in my van that was put there in 1996. I am a 100% believer that the problem with the Vanagons is air in the system. To make an extremely long story short that's what killed my ol' '84 GL in '95. I bled every ounce of air out of my 83 back in '96 and that temp gauge rarely passes over that led in the center, even when really hot. OK, sure, I could have catastrophic failure soon but I got more years out of that motor than many people that bought these vans new. Why haven't I changed the fluid? It's one of those "if it ain't broke don't fix it things". Sure, I'm ruffling a few feathers with that but I've gotten many good years out of my van. I'm convinced 1% of the mechanics out there, and that includes VW dealers, know how to bleed the air out. VW could have saved themselves allot of new heads and rebuilds if they only taught their shops how to bleed a Vanagon. It takes hours, not many people want to do that. Fire away. Bryan |
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