Same thing happened to my 87- the crack caused a beautiful "spyhunter style" smoke
screen behind me as the leaking coolant vaporized on the cat conv.

Curiously though every tenth start or so, my red temp gauge idiot light won't stop
blinking however if i shut off the enginr and restart  it  the light goes out like
normal.  this has happened since i bot the van 2 years ago but continues after a
replaced (new) exp. tank and sensor  go figure!
any one else having this experience?

Mike
87 Wolf W/E

SyncroHead@AOL.COM wrote:

> In a message dated 98-08-16 20:45:21 EDT, BDOSS24046@AOL.COM writes:
>
> > When at home, doing a little clean up, and found
> >  some orange crystaline crap in the little divet where the sensor wires plug
> >  into the top of the tank. Now I'm wondereing what made the tank crack?
> Could
> > I have done something wrong when I did flush and fill? Can the cap be the
> >  culprit? I should think that the cap should allow the pressure to be
> > relieved ie to bleed into the overflow resevoir. I have considered that
> perhaps the
> >  crack existed before, and I didn't notice it because it doesn't leak, and
> >  perhaps the cap wasn't on tight enough (the crack looks old, and is right
> at
> >  the top where the cap spout is). Of course, I'm going to replace the tank,
> > and the cap, but I hope that if I did something to cause the crack I can
> prevent
> >  the problem from occuring again.
>
> I think that age, heat, and pressure all team up to cause these cracks.  I've
> replaced the tanks on both my Vanagons and on a friend's.  I have a spare now,
> cause I know that sooner or later these too will fail.  I don't thisk there's
> anything that can be done to prevent their failure.
>
> Regards,
> Jim Davis