Hey all,
Got new heat exchangers this morning, courtesy of VWoA.

I met Mr. Ron Lipke at the local dealer, Bill Britt Mazda/VW.

Ron was a very nice guy and we sat and talked for about a half hour
about VWs (he told me about the '58 single cab he used to have with a
Porsche 4-cam engine in it), and we talked about the dealers and how
they aren't too supportive of the old VWs anymore, etc.

As to the work, Ron, who was wearing dress clothes & tie, got right in
with the dealer tech and got dirty doing the work.  They pulled the
under-cylinder tin, and the muffler/cat/u-pipe/crossover pipe as a unit
and then pulled the exchangers.  On the right side, one of the studs
came out with the nut but did not damage the threads in the head so they
just put it back in.  On the left side, one of the studs broke off as
they put the wrench to it.  Ron welded a nut to the stud (in a tie!!)
and then tried to pull it out that way, but it broke off again.  So he
drilled the old one out and put in a stepped 9-8mm stud.

They then put the new exchangers on, and Ron showed me where a PO had
beat a couple of the heat pipes to fit a non-stock muffler on.

Then they pulled the hoses from the flapper valves to the main heat tube
and also the flapper valves.  They put in new flapper valves (amazingly
pretty!) and new hoses.

The flappers were new VW, painted black with the red silicone seals.
The heat exchangers were as John Anderson said, Dansk painted gray
rather than the aluminized stuff that was stock.  One of mine has a
scratch in it so I've got to paint it up before it starts rusting.  The
hoses they put in were exactly what they took out, with the red silicone
seals.

They finally got it all back in, and Ron cleaned up the heat exchangers
(there were greasy fingerprints on them) while the other tech cleaned
the tin.  Ron and I talked about how the appearance matters as well as
the quality of the job, etc.  We also talked about the outrageous prices
VW charges for Vanagon seals, etc and how VW doesn't really support the
air-cooled folks as much as they used to.  He mentioned that the
air-cooled owners tend to be more of the die-hard type and he didn't
think it was a bad thing if VW did a little something for them (a la
heat exchanger replacement).

I asked him what happens to the  old heat exchangers and he said he
sends them to Le Coz and from there, he doesn't really know.

Ron seemed like a really nice guy who actually does care about the
air-cooled VW owners, so I liked him.

He also did really good work :-) .  When they fired it up to check for
leaks, there were absolutely no exhaust leaks :-)

He mentioned that it would stink for a while as the paint burned off,
and he was right!  Shoooowwweeeeee!  Stinky!

VW burned some money on this replacement program, considering parts and
about 4 hours shop time, $$$$.

Anyway, it turned out successfully so I'm happy.  I hope these
exchangers last as well as the old ones.

Sean
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