Pictures would help.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Andrew Martin
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 2:19 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: resealing heads - found missing metal on top of valves

I'm working on a 1985 Vanagon with a stock 1.9L gas engine. It was
"remanufactured" by VW about 50K miles ago. It began leaking a bit of
coolant over the last couple of years and a few months ago it began leaving
4 to 5" puddles on the shop floor. I decided to remove the engine to R&R the
heads because I was going to replace the exhaust system as well and I know
it's much easier to access the head and bolts for both projects.

I've got the engine on my bench, the heads removed and cleaned but I'm
stumped regarding the condition of a couple of the intake valve tops. There
are small areas of missing metal that looks like a coating of some sort. One
valve (#4) has just a few 1/8" pieces missing and the other (#1) has perhaps
20% of the coating missing in various sizes but none larger than 1/8". The
missing metal is on the outer, flat part of the valve.

Can anyone shed some light on this condition? Is it fatal? I'd like to get
at least another 50K out of this engine without pulling the heads again!

An hour of searching the Vanagon archives didn't reveal any insight to my
situation.  Perhaps I'm not using the correct search words. I scoured Benny
Boy's site but didn't see what I was looking for.  Perhaps it's in French!
(Thanks for the help your site did give me, Ben)  I've also posted this on
the samba forum.

Thanks,

Andrew

Ps.  Is "found missing" an oxymoron or is it just my Maine accent creeping
back?