Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:38:41 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Good/bad vanagon design,
waS - Soft Brakes after driving with E-brake on for 30
miles
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oh boy we could go a long way with this topic.
For sure the shorter parking brake handle fitted before mid-85 is really
weak and poorly designed.
I have not had any problems with heater valves..
but any smart 10 year old could do a better job designed the cable and lever
that controls it ..
it can't work long time ..
particularily since the cables are seldom lubed ...
it pulls to turn on water flow, but it has to push the inner cable in a
not-very-desireble arc to push the cable back in ...with no lube, about the
400th time the temp is reduced ..the cable buckles.
then it's always on some.
not hard to fix, but ultra cheap and not-well-thought out design.
I havn't had any problems with head lights swtiches. Still havn't gotten
around to putting in head light relays that I have ..
mostly the switches are not that bad. 'vw grade' I'd say.
the waterboxer head gakset design is a total joke.
it's obviously a converted air-cooled design.
Virtually *all* normal engines have a head or heads with flat bottoms..
so the combustion sealing and the coolant sealing take place on one flat
plane ..
and the flat head gasket is held down with thousands of lbs of force.
on the water boxer ..the bottom of the head is not flat.
combustion sealing takes place at the top of the barrels, with metal rings.
the head stud nuts are torqued to only 37 ft lbs...not a huge amount of
force there..
but that part isn't 'that bad'..
what's super dumb, is the heads are suppossed to sit on the barrels so they
squaze the outer rubber 'water retention gaskets' ....exactly the right
amount.
sometimes that works. sometimes...the head squeazes that rubber gasket too
much, and they pinch and split ...and leak after a year or so.
Sometimes the head does not squease the rubber enough ..and those can leak
after a while.
sometimes the head even sits tilted on the barrels.....
and the rubber is squeaszed to tight on one end, not enough on the other.
a pure joke ..
no engine running around anywhere..
uses rubber to keep the coolant in the engine arond the heads.
like duh !
lol.
but we love 'em anyway.
and we manage to deal with them well enough ..but as far as
engine-block-to-head sealing ..
purely a joke effort.
I like what pual guzak said ..
" I know how it got that way ....they told the engineers they had 30 days to
come up with a water cooled opposed four alumnum engine." ...and this was
their 'solution.'
VW probably nnew that 'most' waterboxer engines would hold together long
enough to get through the warrantee period. If VW wasn't loved so much ...
that could have been a real marketing and financial disaster.
it's also an example fo something that 'theoretically' should work ...
but the real world is different ...stuff happens ..
even if engineers' calculations say it should work.
overall though ..
I have few complaints about vanagons mechanically . Might have changed a
few things here and there for sure ..and quality could always be higher ..
take the little cheap plastic igntion switch for example...the equivilant
part in a mercedes or volvo or whatever quality car is about 5 times more
robust than VW's little part there.
but we do fine with vanagons despite their various little gotchas here and
there.
They ain't bad ...
not at all, and there's nothing around, quite, that they are. ..
a sporty van.
for what they are .....the last of the rear engine genre in vans ...they're
great !
Decent ground clearance is a brilliant design element too !!
That one single element adds massively to their utility ..
even if it only means it's easy to dive under it and eyeball the fuel pump
or whatever.
Mabye 15 things not so great..
about 75 to 150 things that are great on them.
Scott
www.turbovans.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Hanson" <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 4:55 PM
Subject: Re: 90 Westy - Soft Brakes after driving with E-brake on for 30
miles
> I've done it, too. Doesn't say good things about the parking brake as
> supplied...or is it called the Emergency Brake? Probably not called the E
> brake because of liability...If you tried to stop your vanagon in an
> emergency with these brakes, you would probably hit whatever you were
> trying
> to stop for...I mean, if we can drive around with our 'conservative on
> power' motors and not even notice the effects of having that hand brake
> on....
>
> Mine will now hold my van on a 4% slope without the aid of the
> transmission...before....with the old style handle...no...
>
> So, can we add an ineffictive parking brake to the list of 'misses' or
> 'less than perfect designs' from VW and the vanagon designers?
> We surely have to begin the list with not so great headgaskets on the WBX
> motor..
> We should include the heater valve and maybe the headlight switches..any
> others?
>
> Don Hanson
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Bill Shawley
> <easywind1975@hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I've had the same experience as Michael, (embarassed to say I've done it
>> twice). I did flush out my fluid as early as convenient figuring it was
>> "shot". No problems since.
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>>
