Hi,

Yesterday I did some work on a friend's '91 westy syncro (rear wheel bearing) and the gods laughed. The bearing swap went well, but when we replaced a faulty thermoswitch on the radiator we found that the threads had completely disappeared from the hole in the radiator. Not a trace of them in the hole, just a smooth walled hole as if there was an insert that had popped out. It was a quick action swap, to reduce amount of spilled fluid, so the old one came out and the one quickly inserted. When we felt the new switch not engaging any threads we drained coolant enough to have a look and found the clean hole. My friend with slimmer fingers than mine thought he could feel an incomplete ring sown inside the rad.

New radiator time, but one has to wonder about the threaded insert. It was puzzling, made us think that we were overlooking something.

alistair