I hear it's 'somewhat common'.

I have never had the problem myself, or in any vans I work on with automatic
transmissions.

I have sold two good used trans coolers in the last 2 1/2 yrs roughly.

I would think a factor would be corrosion ..
as in 'coolant-not-changed-often-enough' corrosion, which I see too commonly
in these 20+ year old beauties.

Actually ....besides lack of lubrication on a hundred spots or more, in
these fine vans..
I see Corrosion a THE thing that eats at them, that is for-too-often never
addressed.
 I was even thinking ....'regular shops'  have no corrosion treatment and
prevention strategies ..
and personally ..
I can't install say new spark plugs and a cap and rotor and an air filter
without at least giving the whole engine a WD-40 spray down ...or lubing all
the little 'never-lubed' points that pivot here and there.
Or putting some anti-seize on the spark plug threads. Spark plugs should
never be installed with dry threads  in my world.  It ALL needs lubrication,
and corrosion treatment.  Otherwise ...things just deteriorate ...and it's
not even hard to give things a one second shot of spray lube here and there.
Such a huge difference for so little effort.

'just installing the new parts' ..
which is what most regular shops do ....is incidental, actually, the real
job of *caring* for these fine vans.

A huge portion of it is about corrosion ..treating it, stopping it, and so
on.

One area that corrodes 'just wonderfully'  if left alone for a long time,
.. is everything about the cooling system ...and all metal parts that
coolant touches.
It's all trying to dissolve and go back into the earth or the oceans ..but
it's very easy to treat and prevent !

Scott
www.turbovans.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Beierl" <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2011 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: Transmission Oil Cooler Leaking - Again!

> At 05:36 AM 4/16/2011, Tobias Gogolin wrote:
>>Is it a common issue?
>
> I notice that so far nobody has addressed this question directly...
>
> Yrs,
> d