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supdave66
Samba Member
Joined: March 11, 2004
Posts: 126
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 Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 6:17 am Post subject: |
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Sorry computer problem, or user
The rad starts to get warm before it gets to hot. I would say if it takes 20 minutes at idle to get to operating temp, rad starts to get warm about 7 to 8 minutes. Fully hot when engine is hot.
Back to my test drive= It was very cold out when I did it.( 50f) I think that is why the rad was cold when I first got home. It did start to get warm within 2 minutes.
I will look under van tonight.
Do you think it might be timing?
How about the afm? |
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supdave66
Samba Member
Joined: March 11, 2004
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 6:25 am Post subject: |
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| I can pull the pump off, to take a look. I think that is a good idea but a pain in the ass. |
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ftp2leta
Samba Member
Joined: October 11, 2004
Posts: 3271
Location: Montreal
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JeffRobenolt
Samba Member
Joined: February 25, 2007
Posts: 1513
Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 8:08 am Post subject: |
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I have a Suby in mine so it's a little different.
Here is a problem I had with mine when I first got it going.
It would run hot after driving when it was cold out.
The radiator would cool to good and the cold coolant would keep the thermostat closed.
The solution is the coolant bypass that throws hot coolant on the thermostat to keep it open.
I'm not to up on the VW coolant system to know if it is similar.
Have you messed with the heater hoses at all?
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| jfats808 wrote: |
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supdave66
Samba Member
Joined: March 11, 2004
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 8:25 am Post subject: |
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I have put 3 t-stats in now. two 87c and one 80c they all worked, I checked them. The 87c is in there now.
Is it possible that I have clog some where. That is why maybe that I am getting 15 pounds of pressure after 20 minutes of idle? |
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JeffRobenolt
Samba Member
Joined: February 25, 2007
Posts: 1513
Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 8:57 am Post subject: |
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Are the heaters in the van hooked up?
What psi should a van run?
It seems like radiator caps being bad and head gasket problems cause coolant pressures to be high.
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| jfats808 wrote: |
| Most, some, few is not all. You can always learn something from everyone , even the fool. |
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crazyvwvanman
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Joined: January 28, 2008
Posts: 9923
Location: Orbiting San Diego
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 9:12 am Post subject: |
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Your problem seems more and more like blockage. I would pull the hoses from the front end of the long pipes and flush forward with a garden hose through the radiator in both directions.
Did you somehow kink the front hoses during the radiator swap or while putting the spare tire back? Do things improve with the spare tire removed?
The pressure is probably nothing more than the expansion of hot coolant. That is why there is an expansion tank and overflow tank. The tank cap has a pressure relief valve built in, set to about 15 psi. When that pressure is exceeded, it opens and lets some coolant out into the overflow tank. When the engine is shutoff and cools down the coolant shrinks and this vacuums the coolant back from the overflow tank.
Mark
| supdave66 wrote: |
I have put 3 t-stats in now. two 87c and one 80c they all worked, I checked them. The 87c is in there now.
Is it possible that I have clog some where. That is why maybe that I am getting 15 pounds of pressure after 20 minutes of idle? |
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ftp2leta
Samba Member
Joined: October 11, 2004
Posts: 3271
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 9:16 am Post subject: |
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| jrobewesty wrote: |
I have a Suby in mine so it's a little different.
Here is a problem I had with mine when I first got it going.
It would run hot after driving when it was cold out.
The radiator would cool to good and the cold coolant would keep the thermostat closed.
The solution is the coolant bypass that throws hot coolant on the thermostat to keep it open.
I'm not to up on the VW coolant system to know if it is similar.
Have you messed with the heater hoses at all? |
It's very different...
Ben
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supdave66
Samba Member
Joined: March 11, 2004
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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I have not put back the spare tire yet. I also have not put on the grill. I will try to flush every thing tonight.
I feel like a loser this bus has got the best of me!!!!!!
I was going to Granny Grose's Buses IV this weekend, but it does not look so good. Like a dumb ass I even bought my t-shirts! I hope to still make it to Bus Fusion! |
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Baxta
Samba Member
Joined: November 09, 2008
Posts: 356
Location: Abbotsford, BC
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Dave -
Any updates? I'm having cooling problems of my own (see the end of my thread http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=327980) and I'm just wondering if you've found any relief...
jrobewesty said it right - cooling problems suck!!
Cheers!
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Greg
'87 Syncro Westy 'Bastian'
2.2l |
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supdave66
Samba Member
Joined: March 11, 2004
Posts: 126
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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| no updates!!!!! Still running hot. I am just driving her. I have 130000 miles on the bus with no major engine work, not even the heads. Maybe it is just time. I am going to stop throwing money at this motor and just drive it and when it stops I will get a new motor. When the wife and I bought this bus we new that one day it would need a motor. So we will limp along until this one goes. |
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WHITEWESTY
Samba Member
Joined: April 17, 2009
Posts: 90
Location: SPOKANE, WA
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Not an expert here but could it be the pump? What is the PSI? On my other rigs, a faulty rad cap will cause it to overheat. Again, I dont know much about vanagon cooling but thought id through it out there. Good luck. Sounds frustrating. |
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djs94124
Samba Member
Joined: June 02, 2007
Posts: 79
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:16 pm Post subject: I think I can confirm the wrong-sized disc issue..... |
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| tencentlife wrote: |
Affirmative; it can't be installed upside down.
There are some tstats that fit and have the right temp setting but the disc on the bottom of it is too big. The diference is fairly obvious when you have the right one in your hand. I had a wrong one and didn't know it until I compared it with another new one. The disc has to be the right size to seat right down into the bottom of the tstat chamber, to block off the hole in the bottom of the tapered well, which forces all the hot coolant coming right out of the frontside of both heads to flow to the radiator (flow in the crossover hose over the bellhousing reverses to left-to-right). If the disc is too big, the tstat opens OK but the disc doesn't block the bottom of the well as it should a good deal of hot coolant comes back into the cool side and the whole shebang runs hotter.
The correct disc diameter is about 33mm. The wrong one was 10mm larger. |
My cooling system was working perfectly. However, I recently attempted to replace my 80C thermostat with an 87C, hoping this would lead to faster warm-up and a little better MPG. I purchased the new T-Stat at NAPA, but this was before I read about the different-sized bypass discs on some brands, per 10C's comment above. The NAPA disk was about 10mm larger in diamater than the Wahler disc that I pulled out.
After installing the new stat and pressure-bleeding thoroughly, I noticed that although the engine would eventually reach operating temp, the radiator would remain barely warm. Even after successive bleeding, the radiator remained tepid at best. On my first test drive, the temp needle eventually climbed into the high quarter of the gauge, the LED began blinking, but the radiator fan never came on and the radiator itself was only warm, not hot. (NOTE, this is a relatively new radiator and I've only put about 12K miles on my camper since it was installed a few years ago.)
So, not having another 87C T-stat handy, I replaced the original 80C unit, bled everything, and now the needle stays right on the LED all the time, the fan comes on like it should, and everything seems fine again.
All this to say that I agree with 10C's premise that the wrong-sized disc on the T-stat can partially block the hot coolant from circulating forward to the radiator, instead forcing it to recirculate through the engine, thus raising the temp at the sender. The radiator fan switch doesn't see hot-enough coolant and thus never engages.
I'll probably attempt to put another 87C T-stat in if I can find one with the correct disc size. My '87 camper, although running very well, doesn't get very good mileage (16-19 depending), so I'm hoping the correct-spec T-Stat can help a little.
Thanks to 10C for this valuable observation! Hopefully others won't have to repeat my mistake.
-Dan
_________________
1987 2WD Westfalia
Modifications: GoWesty 2300 engine & rebuilt transaxle, 16x7.5 tire/wheel kit, South African "Big Brake" kit, Bilstein HD shocks, Whiteline front sway bar, 2WD Lift Springs, 2nd deep-cycle battery. |
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peasant
Samba Member
Joined: April 25, 2009
Posts: 321
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:53 am Post subject: |
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Hi all,
I just read trough this thread and there is a ton of good info in it. So... rather than start a new thread, I decided to pull this one up from 2009.
I am some similar symptoms as the OP, but I am still troubleshooting. I see written all the time that new thermostats can be bad out of the box so they should be tested in boiling water before installing.
Well, In addition to the meyle 87 vanagon thermostat, I am also having overheating problems in my volvo 240dl as well so I got a volvo thermostat and threw them both in a pot on the stove with a thermometer. At 87C I could see no visible movement in either of them, however, once it was close to 95C+ they were opening quite a bit.
So, my question is, How does one assess whether or not a new thermostat is good out of the box? I find it hard to believe that both my volvo thermostat from napa and meyle vanagon thermostat are both bad, it just seems like they should have opened closer to 87C and not 10C above that. BTW both are 87C thermostats.
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89 wolfsberg weekender carat
89 Westfalia |
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[email protected]
Samba Member
Joined: August 03, 2002
Posts: 12785
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:57 am Post subject: |
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it's best to assume the Meyle part is bad when new.
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peasant
Samba Member
Joined: April 25, 2009
Posts: 321
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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I took the thermostat housing apart and found one of the thermostats with the larger bottom disks that were referenced earlier in this thread(the wrong kind)
I took pictures and you can see how the larger disk gets stuck in the bottom of the the housing
Lower disk is bottomed out and cannot move down more once thermostat opens. The hole is then always half open and half closed.
Another hole that is permanently half open closed.
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89 wolfsberg weekender carat
89 Westfalia |
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morymob
Samba Member
Joined: November 09, 2007
Posts: 4683
Location: east-tn
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 6:11 am Post subject: |
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| Do u have orig thst ,tried putting it back in?? Some diff in later ones but i ran into this on my 1st WBX. Replacement one had a disk slightly larger blocking thst about 1/2 way open, found out was for an Audi eng, replaced orig , o.k. Ground the disk down to an orig diameter one and used later-o.k. |
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peasant
Samba Member
Joined: April 25, 2009
Posts: 321
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 6:26 am Post subject: |
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The one with the larger disk the PO must have put in. I put a replacement in and there seems to be an improvement however I have not ran it, filled/bleed enough to see how much of an improvement.
PO also had used dex-cool and I found gold flakes when I removed the cap and the hydrometer needle didn't even move when I tested the coolant. So, I flushed it out twice and refilled with green non phosphate coolant.
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89 wolfsberg weekender carat
89 Westfalia |
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