Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:52:08 -0800
Reply-To: "M. Jade" <tinho2010@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "M. Jade" <tinho2010@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Sealant necessary for coolant hoses?
In-Reply-To: <4d6696c5.0a81dc0a.45dc.ffffd1e8@mx.google.com>
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David, thanks a lot for the advice and I know what you are talking about. I already had an incident that the little hose from the top of the intake manifold to the plastic air bleeder suddenly went off when I was in the middle of a freeway at night. The coolant waning light started to blink rapidly and I really had no time to think. Luckily I was able to pull over off a ramp within 100 yards and came to a safe spot in the city of Oakland California at night. Believe me it is not a city you will want to camp at night there. People are murdered on a weekly basis there.
I managed to make an emergency repair successfully just short of using some duct tape. I emptied all my spring water bottles to fill up the coolant reservoir and restarted the engine. There was apparently no damage whatsoever and I was able to reach home shortly.
Well, the van is so old. There are really too many aging parts to worry about. There is no way I can go over every one of them and replace them. I will have to depend on my gut feeling to determine what needs to be replaced before any others. I am in the middle of trouble shooting the coolant leak issue. If I decide to reseal the heads I will take a serious look at coolant and fuel hoses. They are all old...
MJ in sunny California
--- On Thu, 2/24/11, David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Sealant necessary for coolant hoses?
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 9:34 AM
At 02:32 AM 2/24/2011, M. Jade wrote:
>Thanks a lot for everyone's quick reply to the question. The coolant
>hose is original. It was never replaced despite the thermostat has
>been replaced twice and the hose was disconnected and reconnected
>many times. I noticed that the hose is not as flexible as when it
>was very new. But it is not hardened to a point to need replacement.
You're talking about a twenty six year old hose here that's been
subjected to innumerable pressure/heat cycles. VW hoses are of very
high quality but they do have their limits, and the limits I've
observed (n of approximately ten) have all but one involved a roughly
3/8" long slit in the longitudinal direction of an old but apparently
healthy hose. No loss of flexibility apparent in any case. In the
anomalous case the hose (still flexible) split transversely at the
nipple. It was shortened a half inch and one week later split
again. This was the odd hose on the 2.1l that has a skinny end going
to the ring manifold surrounding the engine hatch and a very short
fat right-angled end going to the engine. The failure was at the engine.
My point is that these hoses are way past their intended service
lives, no matter what they look like. I'm sensitive to this, since
the '89 I got a couple years ago had four coolant blowouts in the
first four months of driving, all in hoses that looked and felt perfectly good.
Yours,
David
