Date:         Fri, 11 Dec 2015 09:10:40 -0800
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Sick of overheating....Friday question and comment....
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

I've been reading all the helpful suggestions on the overheating diesel
vanagon....   I've just been through something quite similar with my S.O.s
Subaru forester 2.5 liter....same weird  almost instant overheating
(sometimes, sometimes not at all)   Been to a couple of shops with it now
and the mechanics  have been stumped.....Internet wisdom says
"headgasket"....so what are you Subie conversion guys and gals doing for
motors now?  I am being quoted around $3k for a rebuilt motor or a
headgasket repair on that car....someone bartered it to her in the first
place, so we're thinking just junk the thing and get another..What say you
Subigon peeps?

   On the overheating diesel.....I have an inline gas motor in my van (same
castings as a diesel motor), mounted with diesel coolant hoses and
bars.....Mine has some hose routing that is.....'devious'?   anyhow, there
are some very arcane bends and junctions in mine that make no sense to
me...though I have been successful in driving it around for some years now,
I never bothered to try to follow the coolant path....it worked when I got
it, so I kept it the same..

When I first began with this van, I changed all the fluids and of course,
got a big air bubble in the cooling system...and being a Vanagon
Rookie....I went...."Hey, it can't be overheating, the heater is blowing
cold",,,,and then I read up on bleeding the systems...I could easily and
clearly see a stream of bubbles coming out of a small hose that spliced
into the larger hose that returns coolant to the pressure tank...."De Nile"
syndrome caused me to say...."Good, all that trapped air is coming out of
the cooling system"....but of course, it was a now-leaking headgasket....I
drove it over 3 thousand miles, Portland, Oregon to Mexico.... with the
leaking headgasket.    I got really good at topping up my radiator at gas
stations on that trip.....I could go along with my eye on the temp gauge
and my hand near the heater outlets...When the heater stopped heating, I
would stop for gas, knowing my coolant level was getting low....I made what
I guess is a Libby  Bong....I took a length of steel brake line and mated
it to a small funnel with an "S-bend" that allowed me to insert it into the
radiator bleed screw hole on the top of the  radiator....It became second
nature:   Get out the big flat screwdriver, release the grill, take the
13mm wrench and finesse off the bleed bolt.  Grab my gallon of coolant and
pour it in till the bleed overflowed....close up, take out the gas hose and
proceed for another hundred or two miles....

When the trip was done, I pulled the head and lapped it at home on my
bench, to true up the head surface, puttin another head gasket in. All has
been good now for another 50k miles or so.....The strange thing on Vanagon
cooling systems is that they aren't very consistent, sometimes....
   Another tip....do NOT rule out the possibility of coincidence.....I've
encountered two completely un-related problems on a single vehicle....it
does happen.  I once did an alignment on my 928 Porsche racecar and it
wouldn't start after.....We scratched our heads and racked our brains
trying to figure out what we'd done to cause that....when it was actually a
failed engine control module that just coincidentially  failed while we had
it up on the rack....

 anyhow, Subie motor source for cheap?  anyone?  happy friday..