It's a hard life without AC these days, 120 in the van sometimes for me, but what the heck
its part of the fun, i tell my wife you feel the trip.. ;) OPEN the windows.. hehe

Joe
L.V, NV

-----Original Message-----
>From: David McCallum <boris89.david@GMAIL.COM>
>Sent: Jun 26, 2006 3:32 PM
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: Denver to San Diego and back - Lost my cool in the desert (a trip              report)
>
>Well, once again the bus performed admirably, given the 2000+ miles of
>either climbing fairly steep grades or driving through desert conditions. I
>only had one incident, but it caused me quite a bit of concern and even came
>back to scare me again.
>
>After about 600 miles of fun road trip, about 10 miles north of St. George,
>UT, as I'm glancing at the instrument panel I see the coolant and alternator
>lights go on. The VW gods were smiling on me, as I was just coming up on an
>exit with services. I quickly shifted into neutral, shut off the engine, and
>coasted around the exit ramp cloverleaf, over the bridge and had enough
>momentum to glide into the gas station and under the gas pump shelter. After
>quickly emptying the back of the bus, I removed the cover and immediately
>confirmed my snap diagnosis...a broken alt/water pump belt. I could hear the
>coolant boiling in the engine, the expansion tank was half empty, and the
>overflow tank was completely full and leaking precious coolant. I carefully
>removed the overflow tank hose and slowly opened the expansion tank pressure
>cap, hoping to depressurize the system to avoid damage and more boiling.
>
>I replaced the belt with the obligatory spare from under the back bench,
>withstanding a cardiac moment when I saw coolant pooling under the right
>side of the engine...turned out that the overflow tank hose had slipped from
>where I wedged it and was draining out! Filled the expansion tank from the
>overflow tank using a Nalgene to transfer, put everything back together,
>started the bus (so far so good), opened the radiator bleeder (wife revving
>the wasserboxer to 2k RPM) to make sure there wasn't an air/steam bubble up
>there, let it idle for about 10 minutes. No leaks from the heads and hoses,
>no bubbles apparent in the cooling system, we headed back out on the road.
>
>Everything remained stable for the rest of the trip, except for the
>squealing replacement belt. Turns out that I didn't tighten it well enough
>for the 1/3 wrap around the crank pulley to turn it all under full
>electrical load. After retensioning with the help of a Really Big
>Screwdriver, no problems at all. Coolant level is stable and I'm hoping that
>I got very lucky in not breaching the head gaskets internally or externally.
>I'll pressure test the cooling system at earliest opportunity. Any other
>testing suggestions, other than empirical observation, to confirm that I
>didn't harm the engine?
>
>Other than that, a great trip, although my wife declared that we will never
>again cross the Mojave without a functioning A/C. I guess I have a year to
>get that taken care of. Thanks for reading!
>
>--
>Cheers!
>
>David McCallum
>'89 Westy - "Boris"