Well, it just wouldn't be Christmas unless I had SOME kind of catastrophic
mechanical failure.  Driving along to mom's place, about 3 miles from home,
when I hear a loud POW! Sort of halfway between a backfire and a tire
blowout. I look in my side mirror and see clouds of white vapor spewing out
the back. Pulled over, shut off the engine, and ran 'round back with the
fire extinguisher in under 15 seconds (I've seen the burnt Vanagon pics,
and they scare me). As I rounded the back corner and smelled the vapor I
was somewhat relieved to find a stream off coolant spilling from the
driver's side of the engine and splashing on the exhaust pipe. No fire at
least.

By pure bizarre luck, Ross (my neighbor down the block) happened to be
driving by in his syncro Adventurewagen and he stopped and helped me
diagnose the problem. Coolant was coming out of the hole located at the
top-aft corner of the left/driver's side head-- a hole that should have had
a threaded stud through it and sealed with a cap nut. The head stud
apparently snapped and shot off like a projectile. Being only 3 miles from
home I decided to have AAA tow us bcak home, get the other car, and deal
with it later. I haven't pulled the head off yet, so I'm not sure the
condition of anything I might find. My neighbor has a spare stud and nut
he's offered to give me, so I'm wondering if just replacing the one stud is
a good idea. It's the 5th stud in the torque-down sequence in the Bentley
on page 15.23, which looks to me like it's right be the water inlet from
the water pump (this being the driver's side head). Does proximity to the
inlet make that stud more likely to snap due to accelerated corrosion while
the others remain serviceable, or am I just asking for trouble only
replacing the one that broke? I'd hate to get it all back together and
(bad) have one of the others snap when I torque it down, or (worse) blow
another one off the same way this one went, only 200 miles from home
instead of 3. It's bad enough that the side that went is OPPOSITE the side
where the head gasket is already leaking and I'll have to pull BOTH heads.
I'd hate to have to do one head twice because I was too cheap/lazy/dumb to
replace the studs when I had the chance.

John Bange
'90 Vanagon "Geldsauger"