This related thread brings up a couple recent road trip fixes that became necessary.

My van's first radiator fan resistor lasted 20 years. This last one lasted 3 years.
I had gotten 2 from Van-Cafe while in MT on a trip where the original finally gave up.
Glad I had the spare stored in the van .... very easy fix.

My point: the quality of the electrical connections, after all these years, likely was the heat-
producing culprit that was the demise of this second resistor. I'm thinking that I ought to
solder the new/last one in, rather than using the original connectors, spade, and replace
the wiring as well. That thing carries so much voltage that any "resistance" is like going
to focus heat build up on the resistor, which, from looking at the last one I just replaced,
finally blew a wire on the coil and a lot of that green coating off.

Also, while replacing the resistor, I had to remove the driver side headlight, and a friend
noticed that light was less bright than the psgr one, the other night. Likely just poor electrical connections
after putting that unit back on. Before leaving on this last trip about a month ago, I had
checked the headlights and they were working normally, so it is likely this has to do with
my recent handling of it. The headlight connector, that seems to paritally melt about every
3-4 years due to resistance/grounding issues in this system, was in good condition when
I took the light assembly off last week.

I have replaced the oritinal grounds with shorter runs to the "firewall" just behind the lights,
but have not replaced the original wiring, and I DO have relays in this system.

Guess I'm not really asking a question here, but the "other" discussion remined me of
my recent experiences with these vanagon systems. I have another resistor on the way
as a spare.