Congratulations!
You are well on the way to becoming a certified DIY Vanagon mechanic, where necessity
is often the mother of invention, along with her sisters, ingenuity and ruby goldberg.
I have used Channel-Lock pliers to tighten that nut.
Jerry

----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Maglott" <emaglott@BUNCOMBE.MAIN.NC.US>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 11:08 AM
Subject: Re: replacing oil cooler O-ring

> I replaced my O-ring.  took off my oil filter and decided that I needed to
> buy a 27mm socket to get that nut off.  Came back from flaps and found that
> I didn't actually need any socket, because the nut was actually
> loose!  Maybe I could have just tightened it and fixed the problem, but
> since I was this far, decided to replace it anyway.  Others may find that
> the nut just needs tightening.  I next went about trying to remove the pipe
> that goes up through the oil cooler.  I didn't have another nut to use as a
> lock nut, so I cut the top off of an oil filter, and used that.  That pipe
> was pretty tight, but it came out.  Then there was actually plenty of slack
> in the hoses to move the oil cooler, pull out the old O-ring, and put the
> new one on.  Put it all back together and torqued the nut to 18
> ft/lb.  Haven't tested it yet because I realized I don't have oil to put
> back into the crankcase--D'oh!
> Edward