Date:         Sat, 13 Dec 2014 08:22:47 -0800
Reply-To:     mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject:      Re: My Vanagon's blinking coolant light problem vs other
              peoples'---it all blends together
In-Reply-To:  <T39c1p00B08X5Fr0139flH>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Just about any alarm system you can mention will have more nuisance
indications than real ones. The smoke alarms in my house go off on
occasion for various reasons even though my house has never been on
fire. I doubt it ever will be on fire. I'm still keeping them.

The coolant level warning system is pretty simple. While some vans
exhibit symptoms that their owners find to be mysterious most of these
can be readily solved with a little guidance and perseverance.

If you get an alarm while driving the key thing is to see it and respond
appropriately. That usually mean stopping immediately and investigating.
Of course you may find nothing really wrong. Either way, deal with it.

This just happened to me over this past holiday. We did 1700 miles in a
recently acquired 87 Westy. For various reasons we took the new van even
though I never had a chance to put even 100 total miles on it first. I
had checked the different systems over and fixed a few things so off we
went hoping for the best. On the 5th day out we were on a stretch of I-5
where there were few exits or services. The coolant led suddenly started
blinking. The temp needle stayed ok so I nervously drove to an exit that
looked to have a place I could check things out. I expected to find
major leaking coolant but nope, all seemed dry with no drips on the
ground where we stopped. The main tank was completely full. What I did
see was a tiny weep at the sensor, pooled up around its connector on top
of the tank. I closed up the engine lid and we drove on. The flashing
was gone but an hour or so later it came back. Again I checked things,
still no real problem seen. This blinking happened a couple times a day
after that, always cleared when the key was turned off and then stayed
away sometimes for hours of driving at a time. I no longer felt the need
to stop and check but the flashing bothered me. Finally I reached into
the fuse/relay panel and pulled the coolant level relay. This stopped
the occurrences of false coolant level alarms but kept the other
important function of the warning led in case of a high temperature alarm.

Since this was a shakedown cruise we kept a list of things to fix or
modify before another trip. Obviously the coolant level sensor is at the
top of the list.

Mark

Don Hanson wrote:
> OK, I agree that the low coolant lights on Vanagons are good things, like
> many have pointed out...they can save your engine... And we have these
> cited episodes where indeed these things seem to have done that.  But
> nobody has bothered to post those  episodes where the light comes on and
> cuts a trip short when only the warning system is having issues.....
>    A warning system with little assurance of it being real, no good. I can
> cite plenty of episodes where my low coolant light simply fooled me and
> caused me problems that were just plain not there.
>