Date:         Sat, 24 Oct 1998 18:37:49 EDT
Reply-To:     KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Ed's latest affliction
Comments: To: Route87@aol.com, vanagon@vanagon.com
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Let's not panic now.  First the dreaded head affliction really has nothing to
do with oil.  Second that oil you saw could have and probably did drip down
from a higher position on the motor.  My first clue, is that you said there
was some oil on the top of the air cleaner.  Check this oil's color.  Is it
black, tan or reddish in color.  If it is reddish then you might have a leak
in your power steering system somewhere that is spraying the reddish Automatic
Tranny fluid out of a small hole when it is under pressure.  If you are useing
power steering fluid in your power steering (which is a no, no) then this will
look brown or black too and you have just lost a postive identification of the
fluid.  My advice would be to look on top of the motor and try to visualize
where the spray must be coming from.  DO NOT try to turn on the motor and run
your hand along the powersteering hose to find the leak.  As the extremely
high pressures of the power steering system the spray could cut your hand in a
bad way.  You could try to visually observe the stuff squirting but I would
defineately wear some type of eye protection if you do (as we always should
when servicing our vehicles).
So let me know if the stuff really is oil and not ATF.  Also if it is oil then
start the motor and try to see it squirting out if you can.  We had a pin hole
leak in a pushrod tube one time that drove us nuts.  Fixed it with one of
those nifty collapsable replacement pushrod tubes.
Let me know what you find.
Ken Wilford
John 3:16