This may or may not be relevant:  On my '91 Vanagon, the light will blink
with the temperature guage in the normal range if the coolant level in the
MAIN tank (versus expansion tank) is low.

This is in the owner's manual and has proven true on many occasions.

Tony
'91 Syncro Westy ('teepee')
Pacific Grove, CA

>From: David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
>Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@IBM.NET>
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: Re: Blinking coolant light
>Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 23:06:53 -0400
>
>At 21:45 10/4/99 , you wrote:
>>I haven't figured out how that circuit works yet, but it's on the list
>>of things to do.
>
>Tom, according to the 83-4 schematic, the low-coolant alarm circuit, when
>activated by too high a resistance across the coolant sensor pins, simply
>pulls the gauge input to ground, simulating a very high temp.  At least on
>these, any legitimate flashing of the light will be accompanied by an
>overtemp indication on the gauge, whether caused by the temp sensor or the
>low-coolant sensor. *Any* flashing of the LED with normal temp indication
>is an internal gauge failure.  The gauge itself has three inputs: +10v,
>ground, and the connection to the variable sender resistance, so the
>decision to flash the light has to be internal to the gauge.  And I just
>now took the gauge originally from the '84, which flashes long and hard in
>damp weather, and hooked it up to power (no sender).  It flashed perfectly
>normally on multiple tries -- until I breathed into the gauge, at which
>point it started flashing and continued indefinitely.  Case closed, I would
>say.
>
>Now I've had a report that on at least one later-model van, disconnecting
>the level-sender plug resulted in flashing light but no overtemp
>indication.  Looking at the schematic I don't see how this could be, but
>there it is.
>
>david
>
>
>David Beierl - Providence, RI
>'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
>'85 GL "Poor Relation"

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