Just thought I would relate an incident that occured to me one day tooling
merrily along in my 80 Westy.  I was cruising along I-5 in northern
California one night when the alternator light leered its ugly head.  My
first thought was just a broken fan belt, no problem, I still had cooling
air.  However an exit was near so cruised into an all night gas station in
Colusa for repairs.  Opened the engine hatch and lo and behold the belt was
still intact.  Further investigation revealed the bolts securing the fan to
the hub assembly had all sheared and the fan was sitting in the housing.  Wow
was I surprised and a bit anxious about having overheated the poor thing.
 The garage dude had no mechanic on duty and he didn't work vw's anyway.  The
guy was cool and let me crash in the parking lot till morning. 

 My luck was getting better, though.  Just down the road an auto repair shop
was owned by a guy who has worked vw's for something like 30 years.  Took the
westy over and he let me borrow some tools to remove the fan hub assembly,
then he extracted the remains of the sheared bolts.  Didn't have the correct
bolts in the shop so sent the parts guy downtown for the correct ones.
 Sounds dull enough but the parts truck was a shortened split pickup and I
thought that was kinda cool.  Anyway, got the bolts, put everything back
together, fired it up and has been running well since.  Unfortunetly I forgot
the guy's name but he sure got me out of a jam.  The only vw repair shop
between Sacramento and Red Bluff and I break down just about in front of it.
 I think the guy I bought the van from might have overtorqued or used
inferior bolts. 

 Something to keep in mind when the alternator light starts to glow.

Thanks for listening.

Phil
80 Westy