Date:         Tue, 18 May 1999 09:36:13 -0700
Reply-To:     Pete Cassidy <pcassidy@APPLE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Pete Cassidy <pcassidy@APPLE.COM>
Subject:      Tales of woe
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Hi again all,

     Well .... pride comes before a fall, as they say. And didn't
it just!

     Spent a little time at the weekend giving our new Wolfsburg a
little loving care; a little polish here, a little tidy there. My -
doesn't it look *good*! Myself and baby Kate, Lynda & her brother
Paul (the Busman) decided to take off for lunch a few miles away.
Cruise slowly through the neighbourhood in our sleek new Vanagon -
you get the idea!

     Anyways - disaster struck on the trip home. With only 50 yards
to go I turned the last bend for the home stretch. *Kerrrash*!!!
The air conditioning ducting ripped itself from the ceiling & came
crashing down between the seats, narrowly missing beaning poor baby
Katie! Plenty of finger-pointing and giggles from the neighbours' kids.
(guess there goes our street cred!)

     You know the next bit. When we got back, myself and Busman Paul
checked out the ducts. The plastic around the mounting points had
got brittle and had cracked around the bolts. We 'appropriated' a
handful of 2" round washers from the back seat mounts of his '70
Westy & re-bolted the A/C ducts. The only difficult part was getting
those awkward air seals back on, and we had to remove the sun visors
and lower the front section. Result; a *much* more solid roof & no
sagging in the middle (at least not of the A/C ducting! 8-) ) Funny
that it should have been mentioned on the list during the week.

     So .... yesterday evening I got down to some more maintenance
work. Picked up some Platinum plugs & stuck 'em in. Checked the
air filter (it's new!), drained the oil & popped off the oil
filter. No bypass valve on the old one! Added a new K&N oil filter.
The oil glopped into the drain pan in big treacly lumps. Blop!
By the way, there was no copper seal on the drain plug on my
van either! I put one in as Mr. Bentley seemed to want one fitted.
Threw in 4.5 litres of Mobil 1 synthetic oil, topped up the coolant
& started the van. Fingers crossed!

     Almost straight away I noticed a constant drip-drip-drip
from the right side of the engine. The drip rate increases as the
engine speeds up. There was also a water drip from the other side,
nearer to the back. Oh no!!

     It seems that the expansion bottle is cracked at the seam on
the left side. This is the water drip problem. The second one
appears to be coming from the corner of the cylinder head seal.
I stopped the motor & checked the seal. It's a bit perished & 'bulgy'
in spots. I could find where the leak was in the seal.

     My questions; do I need a new cylinder head seal? There's no
traditional head gasket, right? I'd need to pull the exhaust
system, pull the injectors & the intakes, remove the rocker
cover & valve train? Remove the pushrods & pop the head?
Do the cylinder seals need replacing too? About how long will
the job take?

     Hellllllp!!!

Pete C

'88 Wolfsburg with a leak
--

--
Peter Cassidy,                     pcassidy@apple.com
Sr. Test Dev. Engineer             (916) 394-5302 - phone
Sacramento Operations Center       (916) 815-0762 - pager
Apple Computer Inc.