Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:12:21 -0800
Reply-To: Larry Carter <lcarter@COWICHAN.COM>
Sender: Vanagon mailing list <Vanagon@Gerry.SDSC.EDU>
From: Larry Carter <lcarter@COWICHAN.COM>
Subject: 87 thermostat replacement
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hello; Here's what happened yesterday, I finally convinced my wife to go
flying (model planes) at the local lake with me, when we arrive there there
is steam rising from the left rear wheel well which smells like coolant. I
crawl under to see the source, it's coolant dripping onto the exhaust pipe
under the thermostat housing. I open the hatch, remove the planes and
stuff, and open the engine cover, and can see the hose on the right of the
thermo. hous. is weeping where someone, PO, installed a worm style hose
clamp on the hose. I wiggle the hose, and it breaks off clean in my hand,
sploosh, coolant gushes out under pressure. I jam the hose back into
position which quells the flow to a drip. A fellow flyer offers his car as
a parts runner. We drive over to the local VW guru, no he doesn't have one,
phone the local VW wrecker, no he doesn't have one, call the distant VW
dealer, he has one $107, can courier it to me by 5:30. Freind drives me
home (42miles) so I can gather tools and buckets, a tarp, overalls, and the
wife's BMW. Go back to the lake and drain the coolant, and begin to remove
the thermo. hous., the top bolt is an allen socket with the flats stripped
out, I have to use my pipe pliers to loosen that off, about 1/128 of a turn
at a time. By this time it's dark, about 5 o'clock, run over to the Gurus
place for the parts, run back and crawl under, install the 2 temp senders
with O-rings, gave the clips to wife, wife drops one of the clips after
banging her head on the hatch(for the second time), we move the BMW around
so we can use the headlights to find the clip in the gravel. Look for that
for about an hour. Install the thermo housing with the new allen bolt I
picked up at Gurus, hook up all the hoses. Look for the stupid clip for
another half hour, finally find it, install it fill the expansion tank,
fire it up and check for leaks. The lights go out on the Beemer, hmmm
that's weird, the wipers go on on the Beemer, hmmm. Pour as much coolant
into the van as it would take while revving it, cap it, replace the hose
onto the cap, and close up the back end of the van. By then the
municipality wanted to ckose the gate to the park where all this happened.
So we head out, with me watching the temp. guage, and her with no
headlights. after 2 stops we get her lights working by jerking the turn
signal stalk we finally make it home at about 9 o'clock. I don't think I'll
be able to persuade her to go flying with me next monday. Larry Carter
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