Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:20:11 -0700
Reply-To: Old Volks Home <oldvolkshome@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Old Volks Home <oldvolkshome@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Do U carry spare ECU?
In-Reply-To: <4bc7478b.017c8d0a.58e1.43b3@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Dear confused :) (David) -
Alzheimers hasn't struck yet, but I've been in the habit of activating fan
manually in three situations when driving Ole Putt. One is when pulling a
grade (like the Grapevine here in LA area) and the other is when getting off
the freeway and in stop and go traffic. To be honest, I've been lazy to
replace the auto fan switch and switch it back or go further and have it
switchable both ways. I've never thought that VW was wrong in the design
except for requiring an almost impossible-to-find (at the time) deep socket
for the damn thing. I now have the socket and a new auto switch. I'll get
to it sometime soon :)
BTW, when the auto fan switch went out I was in stop and go traffic in
Sevierville, TN and what saved my butt from overheating was to open & crank
up the heater fans fore and aft until I could get to a spot to work on the
modification. That quick action brought that needle down enough to breathe
easy.
--
Jim Thompson
84 GL 1.9 "Gloria"
84 Westfalia 2.1 "Ole Putt"
72 411 Station Wagon "Pug"
75 914 1.8 (No Name Yet)
Full Timing Since March 1999
oldvolkshome@gmail.com
http://www.oldvolkshome.com
***********************************
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 9:59 AM, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:
> At 11:52 AM 4/15/2010, Old Volks Home wrote:
>
>> Had a fan switch go bad once, didn't have a spare, so I rigged to have it
>> manually switched using a spare rear defogger switch in 1999 and haven't
>> switched back since.
>>
>
> Dear Jim,
>
> 'Splain me dat, please? Keeping it that way, I mean -- it's not as if it's
> a difficult install. Why take a chance on cooking the engine by a lapse of
> attention (or much worse, a bad reading on the temp gauge), when there's a
> perfectly good automatic method to take care of it? Would you use a
> manually operated valve to control cooling flow through the engine (don't
> laugh, people have been known to do it with Atomic 4 marine engines)?
>
> There was a big discussion of this on the list maybe ten years ago and I
> was amazed at the number of people who apparently thought that VW got it all
> wrong and they needed a supplementary switch to turn on the fan when the
> driver felt like it, but even they didn't go *without* the automatic. Color
> me confused...
>
> Yours,
> David
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