It doesn�t take hours to properly bleed the cooling system. In fact if it
is taking more than 5 minutes it was done wrong. And once the cooling
system is able to establish flow, if all is well it will finish bleeding
on it's own, even the 1.9 set up which is not as resilient as the 2.1.

The real trick to proper bleeding is that it has to be done while the
engine is cold so that the coolant isn't trying to vaporize.

That is my story and I'm sticking to it!

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
BJ Feddish
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 8:22 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Coolant recommendations

I feel like I'm at an AA meeting but I will confess I still have the green
stuff in my van that was put there in 1996. I am a 100% believer that the
problem with the Vanagons is air in the system. To make an extremely long
story short that's what killed my ol' '84 GL in '95.  I bled every ounce
of
air out of my 83 back in '96 and that temp gauge rarely passes over that
led
in the center, even when really hot. OK, sure, I could have catastrophic
failure soon but I got more years out of that motor than many people that
bought these vans new.  Why haven't I changed the fluid? It's one of those
"if it ain't broke don't fix it things".  Sure, I'm ruffling a few
feathers
with that but I've gotten many good years out of my van.  I'm convinced 1%
of the mechanics out there, and that includes VW dealers, know how to
bleed
the air out.  VW could have saved themselves allot of new heads and
rebuilds
if they only taught their shops how to bleed a Vanagon. It takes hours,
not
many people want to do that.

Fire away.

Bryan