Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:14:45 -0700
Reply-To: Joel Cort <joel_cort@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Joel Cort <joel_cort@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: rear heater
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Oy Vey Arlene, What are you doing?
You dont need no stinking hack saw to remove things on a Vanagon!
The rear heater unit is held in place with two phillips screws mounted in the floor of the van.
There are two hoses that come from the firewall that are easy to unhook and there is the little wiring harness on the side of the fan blower. Remove the two phillips screws and wiggle it out of there to diagnose. There should not be much coolant coming out of the hoses, but be ready to capture it with rags and newspapers. There is lots of coolant in the heater core so teeter it so the coolant does not come out and all over the back as you remove the heater. You should drain the coolant in an appropriate recepticle and cover it up so that your cat or dog does not try to taste it. Animals are attracted to the sweet coolant which is poison.
It could have been leaking coolant from several places:
It can leak from the heater core itself. You can tell that because it will have drops of coolant all along the fins or where the fins meet the top or bottom lids.
It can also leak from the leak from the spitcock valve where the hoses connect. This is a shut off valve to close the flow of nice warm coolant during the summer month. This valve can leak and where the valve is attached to the heater core element it can leak from there. There is a rubber o-ring that often needs to be replaced.
It can be leaking where the hoses are clamped on.
It can leak from the little vent either being loose and not tight enough or the rubber o-ring seal has worn out as well.
WIRING:
There is a wire harness that come up on the driver's side of the heater. It may come from under the van. There should be a shielded housing with 4 wires and a white plug to insert on the fan blower motor.
If these wires are cut, it should not be too hard to re splice them together since they are all color coated. Make sure that you insulate the splices with electrical tape or use insulated connectors to rewire this.
The fan runs under 3 speeds High-Medium-Low so there is a wire for each level plus a grounding wire for the complete circuit. The chocolate brown wire is most always the ground wire on VWs.
And by the way, your van may be out of commission due to an open coolant circuit without the rear heater in place. You can reconnect the hoses together with a little hose adapter to allow you to still run to the parts store or the hardware store.
When you get it all back together, you should be OK without doing a coolant circuit purge since there is a little bleeder valve on the heater that you can flush the air out from. Just check the coolant levels in the back once your are back and running.
Hope this helps.
Joel Cort
Rochester NY
----- Original Message ----
From: Arlene K Sondergaard <asonder@USGS.GOV>
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 1:04:54 PM
Subject: rear heater
my rear heater was leaking coolent under the seat.
i have been reading the posts as to how easy it is to fix-without removing
the seat.
so i got out the small hacksaw pushed it thru the sides of
the vent opening till the housing swung free.
as i examined the heater i noticed a loose wire-a big wire with 4 smaller
wires in it.
it had been freshly cut........
looking at the diagram in the book showed this wire to be coming up from
under the
van at the mid right side of the heater.
not on mine.
this is one of the most important parts of my van- a strong dependable
heater.
can anyone tell me where the other end of the blower wire is located and
the part number?
thanks
arlene
1987 wolfsburg carat
washougal, wa
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