attn: Reno members. Help needed possibly. ShawnW.

[mcbrat]

Shawn is headed back towards DEnver, and is having some cooling issues with his Vanagon w/EJ22....

 

He may need a place to park while looking into it....

 

His number is three-0-three six-4-one seven-9-four-7 if you can lend a hand. he's almost to Reno now.....

[Jerry DeMoss]

Dang thats too bad! I thought for sure he had it all figured out.Is it his cooling fan?I know he just put in a new radiator.

[Jibs]

OK Just talked to Shawn, he's doing all right. Still having heating issues, but ha cooled down a tad. I'm trying to find him a parts place close by. Thanks for the heads up.

[ShawnW]

Well I made it home but it was certainly interesting.

 

Left here last Wednesday after work. The vanaru was running FLAWLESS until I got within 2 miles of the I-15/I-70 interchange and BAM the temp gauge is at 280. Shut it down and coasted the rest of the way down the hill and then towed it with the Toyota to the gas station where we slept in the vanagon till morning (was about 2AM when it got hot). We were tired anyway so I wasn't overly frustrated.

 

The next day we found a clamp on the throttle body preheat line to be slid down and figured that it let a little air in thru the gap and just needs bleeding.

Seemed like we were right on this...It made it from there to L.A. without much trouble...temp gauge a few degrees hotter in places than I would like but never past 215....considering this is thru Vegas and skirting past the Mojave Desert in 126 degree temps and the sun blazing I couldn't complain.

 

After we got to LA we parked it at a family members house. We came back to the van to take it to a motel room for the night and it overheated again. Got it burped and it made it to the motel.

 

Next morning we leave for Big Bear Lake. This is about 125 miles. It never went past 192 even when a family member flagged us down to stop because boiling coolant was coming out of the overflow bottle. Refill and burp and it limped into Big Bear lake for the weekend.

I Decided that removal of the heater system was necessary. It has a lot of little joints in it and if the heater core has a pinhole leak in it somewhere I might not be able to tell. I was getting heat in the van even with the heater shut off (valve closes) so removing and routing the heater in/out to each other seemed like a luxary improvement too as I wouldnt be in 1xx degree temps with the heater blowing hot on me.

This seemed to help ALOT but again the van got hot in Movave, CA in a traffic jam. (thanks to whomever it was that decided to run a red light and plow their car into the traffic light controller box!!!).

Re-Burp in Autozone parking lot at what might be the worst Autozone in the country and proceeded north to Sacramento....or at least tried.

 

Spent the night in a truck stop parking lot after yet another traffic jam caused yet another overheat.

 

Got my new to me Moped in Sacramento and left toward Reno and got hot again about 25 miles from Reno. Probably the nicest place we have had a breakdown thusfar on the trip so I couldnt complain. Now the van has changed its mind on how its going to overheat. Now it will complain about the coolant fill bottle being low BEFORE the van overheats blinking the red warning light in the dash and giving me time to stop where its more convenient. Now for some reason if I pull over I can stop, relax, open the engine compartment lid, open the radiator cap, let the air escape from the coolant bottle and thus sucking fluid out of the overflow tank to its proper level again, and then take off again. Also finding that the van only overheats at this point in the game if I rev the engine HARD to climb a big pass or something...if I stay out of it just to a 95 percent level, it will maintain well enough.

Funny thing is, it did need air bled about 8-10 times between Reno and Denver but it made it.

 

Overall: Mission accomplished. Toyota delivered to LA, moped picked up in Sacramento, family visit accomplished, and we get home in one piece on the day we planned on returning.

 

The failures did cause the van to get examined more closely and improved upon in a few ways during the trip and also gave us some stop and smell the roses time....although not always in a place that I would ever stop again or at least not at that time of the day. I bought an aftermarket thermostat for a spare in Reno and 2 extra gallons of antifreeze in Utah but I still got home with a gallon and a half of those 2 and the thermostat unused.

 

Im pretty sunburned in the left arm (couldnt use the A/C that I worked for the last 2 weeks to get lines for and hooked up), tired, and now I have a van with its heater core lines removed and a pretty banged up cooling system. Im starting to re-evaluate what I want to have for my "ultimate road trip vehicle" and wonder if the Vanaru is really the ultimate. Thinking Landcruiser or if I had the $ a Sportsmobile. But all things considered it got me home, it certainly got higher mileage than either of the two other options, its a Subaru engine so I can actually work on it when something does happen and its a heck of a lot cheaper to own than either of those would be...$50K for a sportsmobile and at least 10K to have a cruiser that has the power and quality body that I would want. Two stretches I got 24MPG with it and every stretch I got at least 20 which is amazing considering how much stuff I had in the van and how hard I pushed it most of the time....most of the time High RPM made it run cooler (water pump turns more often?)

 

Thank you to everyone along that way that called, offered help, directions, etc.

[Jibs]

Glad you made it back all right.

[Turbone]

Ditto that. Should be proud of the work you did on the conversion. I remember all the years I lived up by BB Lake and getting stuck behind a VW bus trying to make it up the Mtn:rolleyes: There hasnt been to many times I've seen one on the road keeping up with the flow of traffic.

[ShawnW]

Ditto that. Should be proud of the work you did on the conversion. I remember all the years I lived up by BB Lake and getting stuck behind a VW bus trying to make it up the Mtn:rolleyes: There hasnt been to many times I've seen one on the road keeping up with the flow of traffic.

 

Ya know, you are right I should be but for now I am just disapponted but I am sure that will pass.

Speaking of passing, the beast sure does it well and it turns heads. Coming back thru Utah I passed a slightly newer vanagon with a VW engine in it still and I looked in the mirror to see what headlights it has (mine is the older round light kind) and that ends in 85 I think, and I couldnt hardly tell which headlights he had. The thing I did notice as I honked and went past the guy was the doubletake he did seeing me go up a 5 percent grade at more than 20 MPH faster than he could do.

Oh and mine is louder than his.

 

But In a good way. The next one (if there is another) will get KEP's cat and muffler package. Right now I am running the stock VW cat and muffler. In fact I will probably build the next one with a full california emission setup so that it can be sold to someone in California and they can smog it with the paperwork that Kennedy Engineered products worked hard to get. Theirs keeps the noise down, power up and smog controlled all in 1.

[Sweet82]

What?

 

You went through Utah and didn't stop and bum some antifreeze?

 

You better stop next time.

 

Did you loose my number?

 

Good Luck next time,

Sorry I didn't read this sooner.

 

Glenn,

82 SubaruHummer

84 GL Mad Max

01 Forester