I believe my 83 westy has got the vanagon overheating syndrome which was said to be common among early watercooled vanagons. An indication of this syndrome is that coolant in the cooling system got expelled out back to the reserve tank. The cooling system is slowly filled with air and eventually the coolant sensor in the pressure tank detects low coolant. The temp gauge will run to the extreme right and the LED will blink, crying bloody muder. It was said that the problem was because of the poor quality of the head gaskets used on early watrecooled vanagons. My 83 westy has this problem and also suffers from relatively low power compare to my healthy 84 vanagon. My westy is too young, 60k miles, to suffer from this syndrome. I am considering to fix this problem by replacing the head gaskets. I also got an impression that these gaskets are very expensive, something like around $1500. I looked at my Bentley book and I saw only sealing rings between heads and cylinders. There is another seal surrounging each heads to seal off coolant from leaking to outside of engine. I can't see why these sealing stuff could cost me up to $1500. I am also considering to tighten all head bolts to see if it can cure it. Is this a good idea? Did anyone have any experience fixing this syndrome? Any info is very much appreciated. David K.
|
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.