Date:         Tue, 06 Sep 94 19:31:49 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "J. Walker" <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: To those '83-'85 Vanagon folks

On Tue, 6 Sep 94 18:43:31 CDT George Ruff said:
>Mechanics in Palo Alto, Salt Lake City, and Lewiston, Maine have told me
>that leaking sleeve-to-head gaskets are a common problem in all water
>cooled vanagons, not just the '83-'85 years.  My appeal to the vanagon
>list a few weeks ago and a later appeal to the vw USENET group produced
>only 5 responses, however, so I assume there are quite a few owners who
>have *NOT* experienced the problem.
>Would any such persons who read this please say so?  No sense having a few
>of us ruining the van's reputation...

well ... i'm sort of ashamed to admit it, but i haven't had the problem on
my 88 bus. at least, not yet. at 75,000 miles. but i've replaced the coolant
every two years, and never run anything but the vw blue coolant in it.
whether that has anything to do with NOT having the head-gasket leaks, i
can't say  ... it might be that mine was just torqued correctly on the head
bolts, or some such.

i do, however, seem to go through coolant temp sensors and rotors and dist.
caps rather often (like every 25,000 miles).

joel