Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:57:51 -0800
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Friday Philosophy: On Reliability
In-Reply-To: <BEEA7E61-8BA6-4541-B8DE-8B2A3F6B20A9@gmail.com>
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I think it's a great idea to keep a long term log for a vanagon focused
on how often there is some incident to deal with.
Ideally cars areidiot proof..
anyone can get in, turn the key, drive it, and it keeps going. Some
japanese cars are legendary for that happening almost *always*for
hundreds of thousands of miles practically in the extreme cases. That's
what we want ....
reliable as a stone.
I have a lot of 'incidences' on trips in vanagons ..odd noises ...
loss of air-free fuel to a diesel engine for exmpale ..........no
blow-ups or outright being broken down or strandedthough.
I carry a lot of parts and toolsso I can be self-rescuing pretty much.
My current good van ...has about 195K on the body , rebuilt manual trans..
I pulled the original 1.9 wbxr long ago ...run a 2.1 ..
It's been darn good ...and ..it also crapped out on I-5 about 3 hours
north of home base twice ..
in the exact same spot ..both times it was a distributor with about 180K
miles on it that crapped out.
One would have to count that as a 'breakdown incident' ..
or a regular consumer it would have meant a tow to a shop ..
waiting for it to open monday ..paying for diagnosis , then probably a
new distributor ..could have been a 2 day dealy and several hundred bucks ..
not good.
About engine blow-ups ..in my entire 50 year carreer of driving
..probably a million miles at least ( which is only 100K ten times so
not really that much ) ..there has onlyever been one engine that blew up
catastrphilosophically on me ..
stock diesel vanagon wouldn't ya know it.
Overall, one could make the case that VW's are on the 'require special
care andunderstanding' end of the scale for sure.
Iam sure ...quite sure..
that by brand, ..far more VW engines have blown up than any other make
...more than Fords, or Chevy's or Dodges, or Toyotas or volvo's etc etc.
etc.
And more VW's have caught on fire than any other brand too I'd say.
Those old bugs, for example ... ....the fuel inlet pipe to the float
bowl on the carb is just pressed in ...
Finally one day it just falls out , fuel sprays all over........that's
just one example of fuel line weakness on one model of VW.
so yeah ....they sure do better with good care and understanding ..
and I wouldn't dream of being out of town in a Vanagon without a nice
stash of spare parts like a known-good distributor ( or one with a new
hall sender in it ) ...an ecu ..
a fuel pump ..etc.
But we love 'em !
Synco's rugged ...sure ....and they can have all kinds of issues 2WD
vanagons will never have. They perform just great though.
I'll trade one of my near showroom condition early diesel vanagons for
one, maybe.
scott
turbovans
On 2/22/2013 8:51 AM, Jarrett Anthony Kupcinski wrote:
> My mother hates VWs, especially vans. She, like many, believes they are unreliable. When I traded my then 4 year old Honda Accord for a Vanagon, she shook her head and muttered something about me being just like my father. And while I disagree with her about the sensibility of my purchase, I have to concede that because of Volkswagens, she’s visited more than a fair share of garages across three continents. Maybe she’s entitled to her opinion.
>
> Reliability is an interesting concept. For everyone who decries the Vanagon’s lack of dependability, there is a guy who objects and points proudly to his own rig with an odometer reading of over 200,000 miles. That seems like a lot in a world where most people get rid of their cars at the 100K mark, but let’s do some math. Assume the aforementioned van was manufactured in 1986. To rack up those 200K miles, the driver would have to travel about 7500 miles per year, which isn’t really a whole lot to expect out of a vehicle.
>
> We could measure reliability in other ways: dollars spent per mile driven, minutes of uptime, days before the first major breakdown. Wouldn’t it be fun to see a page full of these kinds of Vanagon stats, complete with snazzy infographics? This is what consumer magazines do to lend an air of objectivity to their pages. And it seems like we should be objective on something which a) costs so much, and b) we depend upon so routinely. But while these numbers might be wonderful measurements of something, they aren’t reliable indicators of, well, reliability.
>
> The problem is none of those kinds of statistics take into account half of the reliability equation: the driver. A vehicle and its pilot are a system. The optimal running of that system isn’t just about how well the machine is assembled at the factory. It’s also about how it is maintained and driven, and that is the function of the driver. Even the most ruggedly engineered vehicles fail eventually if they aren’t cared for.
>
> Vanagons are pretty rugged, as any Syncro owner can tell you. But they’ve also got points of failure, like long, unprotected fuel lines. Fail to maintain these, and your ride will become a toasty testament to your negligence. It won’t be the van’s fault, even if you didn’t know there was a potential problem.
>
> Many people fail to understand that they are part of the system, and they are then disappointed when their cars fail. In some sense, however, it’s the driver who has failed. Perhaps what is really needed is better engineering of the driver.
>
> Of course, that is exactly what the Vanagon List is about.
>
> Jarrett Kupcinski
> 89 Westy
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