This part, (251-971-284-H) fails so often that the list price from the
dealer is now only $32. The resistor usually fails by burning up at the
far end. The Audi 5000's were also notorious for burning up a monster
fan resistor. As for German engineering, these decisions have little to
do with country of origin and the engineers are doing what they are
told. It is mostly about costs. Currently, the best, most reliable cars
available are sold by Toyota, Hyundai, and Nissan. Not VW, Mercedes,
Audi or Porsche.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of David Beierl
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:10 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Radiator fan debacle (86 Vanagon)

At 03:58 PM 7/21/2006 -0400, Kim Brennan wrote:
>Well. You should look at it sometime, and you'd find out why it
>costs what it does. it's about 3 1/2 inchs long and about 7/8th of
>an inch in diameter. It's a BIG resistor. And resistors, by their
>very nature produce heat.

Sure they do.  But the amount they produce is quantifiable and the
amount of cooling they need is also quantifiable and the idea of a
seventy-five dollar (or whatever) resistor being a consumable is
downright offensive.  That's just plain shoddy engineering, if you
can even call it that.  It gives German engineering a bad name and it
makes German arrogance about German engineering a bad joke.  They
wouldn't dare do something so sloppy on an airplane.

I, of German-English stock say this.

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA --
http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"