> If you encounter a hill that you have to go in 2nd gear, I slow it 
> right down to no more than 3000 rpm as there is less air entering the 
> radiator to keep things cool.  I find that the cooling fan doesn't 
> run that much if you do this.
> 
> Hope this info helps.
> 
> Harry.
> 
Thanks Harry for the info. Something occured to me while thinking 
this over - A few weeks back we took a trip on a *very* steep road up 
Mt. Blenhem - because it was also quite rough, it meant 30-40 minutes 
of uphill driving in 1st gear! Several times I was unable to keep 
revs up in 1st gear without slipping the clutch a bit to get the 
speed up.  I was trying to baby the engine as much as I could under 
the circumstances, and found the rad fan was on most of the time.
I wanted to stop, but had to keep going since the road was too narrow 
to turn around.

Anyway, the van did great, but upon returning, the next day the 
lifters starting making lots of noise when cold which they have not 
done since I switched to Mobil 1. I was due for an oil change anyway 
(about 5500 km), and the lifter noise went away immediately with 
fresh oil. Could hard driving like this have 'fried' the oil enough 
to make the lifters noisy?

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Shawn Wright, sw@smus.bc.ca
'85 Jetta TD, 348k (Jenni)
'88 Westy, 331k (Kyra)
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