Date:         Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:11:50 -0700
Reply-To:     Greg Baxter <gregbaxter@SHAW.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Greg Baxter <gregbaxter@SHAW.CA>
Subject:      87 Syncro Westy Puking Coolant
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Hi!

I'm a first time poster - I've been lurking for the past month or so since we bought Bastian, our new toy. On both of our major trips, I've been plauged with this problem.

After a few hours of driving - we're obviously up to temperature - when compression braking downhill, I end up with all of the coolant in the filler tank, and none in the expansion tank. It seems that the coolant is being pushed out of the expansion tank when it's working hard, but when things start to cool down (?) and the coolant shrinks (?) the coolant is not being drawn from the filler tank, and I end up with a dry expansion tank and a blinking coolant light, which leads to a little bit of swearing and a quick pull-over to the side of the road.

I can siphon the coolant out of the filler tank by removing the hose from the expansion cap and drawing it into a bottle. I can't open the filler tank as the coolant level is higher than the filler cap. The back of the Westy is covered in specks of coolant. Once I've manually equilabrated the coolant level, we're good to go until the next downhill run or cool-down period, and then this starts all over again.

Between trips, over the past month I've done the following:

New expansion tank cap;
New hose between filler tank and expansion tank;
New Thermostat;
New Pipe between water pipe & thermostat housing; (Thanks Frank!)
New hose between this pipe and the t-stat housing;
New Gauge temperature sender;
Bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

When I replaced the water pipe, I did a poor job of reseating a clamp, so I lost some coolant yesterday. I reseated the clamp properly topped it up and rebled the system - this was all before the expansion tank ran dry yesterday.

What could be causing this phenomenon?

I'm currently parked in Osoyoos BC at a park with wireless, but I can't send outgoing emails. I'm also a digester, so please cc: any responses to this pmail account.

Oh yeah - it's a stock 2.1.

Thanks in advance everyone!


Greg

87 Syncro Westy 'Bastian'