Hey Jere,

It is not too bad of a job on a 2.1 liter and can be done in a good afternoon.  The tricky part is releasing the hose clamps and the allen bolts.   Have a good set of metric allen wrenches handy as well as a 13mm socket and wrench.  I also pulled the left skirting to access the area below the A/C compressor from underneath the van.

You don't necessarly need to remove the A/C compressor to do this job.  Of course you would have more room to work if you did.

Check the little metal pipes that go to the oil cooler for wear and rust cancer while you are fiddling in there.  These can cause a silent death to the cooling system and burst if they are rusted through.  If they are really rusty you will have to get new pipes or jb-weld yours.

I recently did one on a 1.9 and added new blue coolant from VW. think the damn thing was liquid gold.  It cost $28 per gallon of coolant.  Several years back it was $18 and that was outrageous.

On a 1.9 with the thermostat housing attached and the funky cross pipes it can take you the entire weekend.  A local shop in Roachester NY charged $700 for the waterpump replacement to a fellow van owner. It also took them a whole week to do the job.  And when I came over it took us about 1/2 hour to complete the job and flush the air out of the system the right way so that the van would stop overheating.

Good luck

Joel Cort
89 Syncro Westy
84 Westy

Jere Hawn <jghawn@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
Greetings all,

Sunday I am going to replace a water pump. Having never done one on a
Vanagon are there any tricks or tips on this adventure that anyone can
offer? And how much interference should I take off (AC, etc.) and are the
seals sufficient?

TIA

Jere

90 GL/Carat-a-version

---------------------------------
 Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page