Date:         Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:11:40 -0800
Reply-To:     Mark Drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark Drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject:      Re: major fuel leak
Comments: To: Allan Streib <streib@cs.indiana.edu>
In-Reply-To:  <ir1cv7hs.fsf@envisagenow.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Cars need repair. Check the phone book yellow pages. See how many pages
have to do with repairing cars. Car companies have to build cars that
will sell. Making everything last forever would make them too expensive.
We would not have all these great old vans around to cry about if they
cost so much that nobody bought them in the first place. We have to
spend money to keep them safe and operating well.

What makes you think you need a $100 kit? Until you look at yours up
close you don't know what parts are truly needed. I have replaced quite
a few of those crossover tubes and found the grommets ok most of the
time. Sure, it makes sense to a lot of us to just buy the whole kit and
replace everything so we don't have to do it again but then we should
not complain about the higher cost to do it this way. If all you have is
a broken tube you can probably splice it somehow and save most of the money.

Clean the areas around the grommets before doing anything to them. Use
vasoline on the grommets to make installing them easier. Use vasoline on
the barbed tube ends to make pushing them into the grommets easier.

Mark



Allan Streib wrote:
> Mark Drillock <mdrillock@cox.net> writes:
>
>> Come on guys. It is a simple and inexpensive design. Most last for
>> 15-20 years, many even more. Vehicles are not designed to last
>> forever without parts being replaced. It is not hard or costly to
>> fix if needed.
>
> Well I disagree.  This is in an area where the deterioriation cannot
> be easily observed and won't be noticed by most owners until it fails
> completely with potentially catastrophic results.  A more robust
> design was called for in this case.
>
> And it is costly to fix, the repar kit is $100 for what?  A few
> grommets, tee fittings, a couple of feet of tubing?
>
> Allan
>