I never had a bug heat exchanger rust (living in California) but I had experienced turning the car into a steamy sauna by driving through large puddles. (The water would splash on the exchangers and the steam would be blown into the passenger compartment.

Todd
'88 Westy

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Kim Brennan <kimbrennan@mac.com>
> You misunderstood. In the air cooled Vanagons, the heated air for
> passenger comforter is passed up to the front of the vehicle by duct
> work. The saddle in the gas tank accomodates that duct work.
>
> Of course my experience in an aircooled beetle was that the heat
> exchangers rusted up so quickly you got into a situation of either
> never having heated air, or permanently having heated air...On buses
> or aircooled vanagons (I've never owned one) I understand that the
> heated air sometimes wasn't by the time it got up to the front. Even
> on working systems.
>
> On Sep 22, 2006, at 12:20 PM, Todd Last wrote:
>
> > GoWesty writes....
> >
> > " Interestingly, the depression down the middle was put there to
> > allow the hot air duct to pass from rear to front on air cooled
> > Vanagons. Even though there is no purpose for it now, and even
> > though 90% of all Vanagons ever produced were water-cooled, the
> > fuel tank design never changed. Go figure
> > ."
> >
> > Is this true?
> >
> > I thought all the cooling air came through the side vents at the
> > rear of the van...
> > and if this is necessary... why did none of the type II vans have it??
> > Seems a rather suspect explanation to me...   If anything, I
> > thought it would be there to help the air exit after the radiator
> > for the water cooled models.
>