I thought I would share an interesting situation that a fellow Vanagon
owner/friend of mine got himself into recently while traveling through
Northern Wisconsin this summer.  It goes like this--he was merging onto the
interstate from an entrance ramp into some pretty heavy traffic and needed
to stay pretty focused on driving. He gets the 87 up to cruising speed
65-70mph and after about 10 minutes as the traffic kind of spreads out he
glances down at his tach and sees that the tach needle is WAY BEYOND RED
LINE!!!--its like the tip of the tach needle is about even with the red
fuel gauge needle--in other words its off the scale.  He just realized he
was running this vanagon for about 10 minutes WAY BEYOND RED LINE!!!  As
his heart sinks into his stomach, he realizes that he never shifted out of
third gear!!!  Van runs fine for the rest of the trip.  My friend calls me
up after his trip to tell me about this incident and asks if he could of
damaged anything.  I tell him I dont know if there is any way to really
tell at this point, especially if its running ok, but sure is a helluva way
to blow the carbon out of a boxer.

Tim Marciniak                         tmarcini@mail.execpc.com
90 Westy Multivan