At 900 miles you probably have done a good test. Most likely you are good to go for some time. One of the cool parts of the water boxer is the ability to replace a damaged head or piston/cylinder set just like in real truck or industrial diesel engines. Over the years this type of repair has become common and often less troublesome than some so called rebuilt engines I have dealt with . Glad this all worked out for and enjoy your travels. 

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Mark Drillock
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2016 1:46 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: new head, etc all ok so far

So with the new head and 2 new pistons/cyls we are doing fine so far. About
900 miles since the repair in Amsterdam, crossing Germany into Poland. We visited the Auschwitz site yesterday. Today we cross south into Czech and hopefully meet up with another Vanagon owner who lives there just inside the border.

So why did our head and cylinder crack in the first place? When it was just the head crack I assumed it was from coolant freezing during the winter it was stored. But the split in the cylinder wall doesn't seem like it could have been from that. The freezing pressure would have been on the outside of the cylinder wall, compressing the cylinder rather than trying to split it open. In any case it was with fresh 50/50 mix before the van left the USA. We put about 10,000 miles on the van in the 3 months before storing it. No known issues at that time.

I have big travel plans for the next 2 months so with any luck my van engine work is all behind me. I hope to install a new poptop canvas in the next week or two. Last year we suffered in a lot of heat and the single window canvas made it worse. The screen is in tatters and bugs meant we had to leave the flap mostly closed. I should have put in a new canvas at home but ran out of time last year before shipping the van

Mark.