Engine bearings do not rattle. Hey may bang or clunk but no rattle. Most
likely, you are hearing a lifter that is bleeding down and clacking
until it fills. 10w-30 is way to light for the air cooled or water boxer
engine for summer operation. The leaky exhaust sound on a cold engine
may be a leaky exhaust but on the air cooled engine usually indicates
loose heads and failed upper gaskets.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of neil
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:21 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Engine bearing rattle at warm restart

Hi all.

An engine bearing noise question. (yes did search
archives for this one  :) I'll try to be brief  ;)

Warm restart; sometimes bearing rattle (main?) until
oil light goes out. Oil light flickers 1 or 2 seconds
but goes out/stays off. I let it idle til sound goes
away before revving/putting load on engine. Cold start
there are different sounds, (almost like a leaky
exhaust gasket) but no bearing noises that I can hear.
Oil light same. Experience tells me the "warm" sound
is a warning of things to come.

So here's my question:

How long can this "warm" sound go on before main or
rod (think sound is main) bearing fails? I understand
it's hard, nay almost impossible, to answer this
online, but any real life experiences with this
symptom, and how long others had this go on before
engine teardown/rebuild, would be helpful.

Engine details:

2 litre AC engine/4 spd. in 81 Westy. Pretty sure PO
put in 10W/30W oil. (will change soon) Sounds/runs
well. On 10 day trip used little if any oil.
Compression test healthy/even. Heads were replaced by
PO, engine had some kind of "rebuild" before heads
replaced. No idea how many km's on these parts as
odometer has intermittent operation, don't know what
was replaced, or machined for "rebuild". Quite likely
only some internal parts replaced due to a cracked
head, and not a total rebuild. Pretty sure about that
but can research PO's invoices more thouroughly if
need be....

Neil Nicholson.
1981 air cooled Westfalia.
Cheap-o web site:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/tubanick/welcomewesty.html

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