The real issue is that no matter the vehicle, we Americans drive / ride /
pedal it until it breaks then we whine about the collateral damage.

And in that light the Olds is far superior because with a mechanic, $500 and
a few days you can be back on the road with new head gaskets!

Not so with a Vanagon.....

I just picked up a 1975 BMW R75/6 motorcycle for $750. The owner quit riding
it in 1990 because the clutch started slipping and refused to have it fixed
because the dealership wanted to charge him $400!!!

Tom
www.towercooler.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On Behalf Of
Andrew Martin
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 6:38 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Was Can you run without coolant...Now How Badly Can You Abuse a
WBX? (Very long)

John,

Could you work up a THAR SHE BLOWS! upgrade kit to replace the Vanagon
coolant light?

If it's not too much trouble, I'd like mine to have Patrick Stewart's/Capt.
Ahab's voice.  And when the coolant tank is bone dry he should repeat "DRINK
AND SWEAR" over and over but only until the police arrive.

That would be so cool, so to speak...

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
John Bange
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 3:52 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Was Can you run without coolant...Now How Badly Can You Abuse a
WBX? (Very long)

>
> "Rubber Headgaskets"?   What were they thinking when they built that?
>

I think it's a fundamental difference in philosophy of Automobile Ownership
between we North Americans and Germans, a sort of "diligent maintenance" vs
"fix it when it breaks" mindset. It seems to me that an automotive engineer
here would look at the waterboxer design and say "What happens when they use
hose water instead of 50:50 coolant and you get corrosion, or worse, when
there's a coolant leak and they drive it a little after that?" I imagine the
German engineer would look at him with bug-eyed astonishment and say, "WHY
would anyone DO that?!?" Even the base model Vanagon is heavily instrumented
compared to (say) an 82 Oldsmobile with nothing but a TEMP idiot light that
really ought to read THAR SHE BLOWS. A coolant level sensor is essentially
UNHEARD OF for  domestic cars of that vintage, but VW engineers clearly felt
it was necessary for catching problems BEFORE they cripple the vehicle.

>  Does anyone know why they never brought the South African inline motor to
> world wide production for the vanagon?

I believe the SA inline powered Transporter was developed BECAUSE there was
no longer world-wide production of the Transporter and the wasserboxer was
NLA. VWSA probably looked at the T4 and said "Nah... I think we'll just
update the T3" and gave it a new engine, bigger side windows, and a new
dashboard.

--
John Bange