Reply to:   RE>FTC, VWOA, Head gasket problem 

steve says
>Hello Kao,

>I had this problem ~50k miles ago. I feed the cooling system BarsLeak
>and have had no problems since. My '85 now has 128k miles. I've
>mentioned this to the list a couple times and have never seen any
>comments.

>Good luck,

>Steve

David and Steve,
    David, I have an '87 that I recently purchased with 175k on it. I was told
that it was the original engine and heads. small leak on the passenger side
head at the time and now has a leak on the other side. With that many miles
this van has actually done quite well, so probably wouldn't be relevant to
your 
claim with VW. I also have an '85 that I also recently purchased. I was told
that this one had had the engine replaced(allegedly the vw rebuilt) at 60k
because of head leaks and the overheating caused by the leak. It developed a
leak again(passenger side) at 80k, and the owner pulled the head, took it to a
shop in sacramento and had it worked on. He put it back on and it leaked again
within a few days. pulled the head again, got frustrated and sold it as is
with the head off. That's where i came in. new head and now it runs fine. I
plan to post my whole experience with this van when i find the time, but for
now you got the short story. 
    didn't someone start putting together a list of all the vanagon leaky head
problems a couple months ago? 

Steve,
    I'm planning to put barsleak in my 87 after reading your earlier post
about your success with it. at 180k what have i got to lose? I'll let you know
about my results. thanks for the tip.

Don Kane
Don_Kane@qmgate.arc.nasa.gov