So I'm underneath the van tonight looking at the engine with a 250w halogen
light, trying to see if I have a broken motor mount (I'm pretty sure I do).
I hear this thump thump from the rear now and again; I've listened to all
parts of the engine with my "mechanic's stethoscope" and it all sounds as it
should. The thump is intermittent, only happens when the engine is running
and happens in any gear or park. I can actually lift the engine some on the
driver's side and see a gap at the rubber block. (I remember one of the
first things my local VW Jedi told me when he saw I had a Vanagon was that
he's replaced a thousand of those mounts.) I hope it's the mount, because I
can't really think of anything else that would sound like that that isn't
really bad. Nothing is hitting anything else in any obvious way.

Anyway... I'm looking around to see what else is to be seen and I notice
that the inner driver's side CV boot has bright black rings on the edges of
the two outer folds. Most of the bottom of my van is covered in dust, so I'm
going "huh?"; I look over at the other boot and it looks uniformly dirty,
so... one of the hoses (the thermostat bypass hose?) is lying on the CV boot
and has a worn spot about the size of my fingertip. I can't push through the
wall of the hose but I bet 50% of it's gone right there (the boot is all
right). I have to drive to L.A. tomorrow, so I have to deal with both of
these things in the morning. I'm trying figure out if I'm nifty enough to
replace that hose without having to do a major bleed (I'd have to make my
wife help me). Maybe I can pinch it off and put a splice in it, but I'd
rather have a good new piece of hose.

However I'm damn glad I noticed it or sure as I'm sitting here that SOB
woulda let go on some empty stretch of the 14 tomorrow. I'm thinking the was
zip-tied to something else at one point and whatever it was broke and it
dropped. I don't even think it's been a month since I last stuck my head
under there.

The van is so casual to drive that when it's running well it's easy to just
groove on and take it for granted despite the fact that you know that it (or
any 23-yr-old vehicle with 350K+ on the clock) is something of a maintenance
time bomb.

So crawl under your van now and again. Even if nothing's going wrong you can
relax in the shade and still look like you're doing something.

Cya,

Robert