I know that VW went to the plastic pipes for one specific reason.
The steel thin wall pipes rusted out pretty fast.
Ron

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Collum" <collum@VERIZON.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: Coolant pipes replacement

> Personally, I can't see that insulating those pipes would be detrimental
> to keeping the engine at the proper operating temperature.
>
> In northern climes, insulating the fore and aft heater hoses has a
> positive effect on the heater output, though.
>
> Mike
>
>
> mark drillock wrote:
> > The first 5 years had metal pipes, the next 20 years or so had plastic,
> > even as the engines became more powerful. Clearly VW did not consider
> > metal pipes to be the way to go.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > Kenneth Lewis wrote:
> >
> >>    I have to agree with Richard on this one.  First, the Digifant
> >> series
> >> has plastic tubes which would be comparable, in heat loss, to rubber
> >> hoses.
> >> Second, even if you lost some cooling effect from the tubes, this
> >> radiator
> >> is used to satisfactorily cool much  larger engine transplants, so it
> >> has
> >> plenty of extra capacity .
> >> Ken Lewis
> >> http://neksiwel.20m.com/
> >>
> >>
> >
>