Date:         Thu, 13 Jun 1996 23:26:16 -0400
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Remuse@aol.com
Subject:      81 oil pressure

I took the newly rebuilt camper out tonight to see how it felt on the
highway. It's awfully subjective but I do feel like it did alot better job of
holding 55 on a long incline than before. Also the heat seemed to manage in
the 210-220 range which was an improvement. It did 65 -70 easily but that
sent the temp climbing back over 230+ so I guess 55-60 becomes my comfort
zone (if not that of anyone behind me).

Now for my question about oil and pressure. At the moment I am using straight
40 wt oil which my vw shop uses. Previously I used 20/50 and even  very hot
temps only triggered the warning light after a hard run. Now I find that the
40wt seems to hit the warning light on a regular basis at idle. Part of the
deal also is that this is an automatic and the idle speed in neutral is
adequate to prevent the low pressure warning but being in drive lowers the
revs enough to set off the warning. If the conditions were already right on
the edge for the 20/50 would this result be predictable for the 40wt?

Re-reading the above makes it look obvious that the next step is to simply
discard the 40 and to return to the 20/50.What puzzles me is that the temp
range indicated for the 40 wt in the manual is actually higher than the other
and therefore I would think it would be more suitable. What do you oil gurus
think?

Thanks,

Weston