Azehntel.127 net.vwrabbit utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!fred Thu Nov 5 16:35:03 1981 Overheating I am prompted to send a message on the vwrabbit net to hopefully save someone the difficulties my wife and I have had with our 77 Rabbits. We have two 77 Rabbits with Cool Products after market air. In the last six months they were both attacked by the horrible COOLING SYSTEM MONSTER, and left the family considerably poorer. The symptoms of this dreaded fiend were the following: 1. Overheating - the radiator boiled over and the electric fan didn't go on. Reason? (one blown head later) if the thermostat is only partially stuck, it will let water into the upper 1/3 of the radiator and never cause flow in the lower 2/3s. Guess where the thermostatic switch for the fan is, yep the lower 2/3s. Since our temperature idiot lights have never worked, this caused a BIG problem. The fix for this (of course with 20/20 hindsight) is to replace the thermostat. 2. System leaked fluid, no clear source. Reason? (second blown head) if you put highly mineralized water (like we have here) into your aluminum and iron engine you create a neat elecro-deplating system. What gets deplated? Why, the steel freeze plugs (bet you didn't know you had 'em). After about 40K miles of this process, they develop small leaks and bye bye fluid. With no idiot light, bye bye head gasket. The fix for this is leave off the tap water and use distilled water or anti-freeze. I have also experienced problems with my alternators (yes s!) which I think may be related to the bracket on the air conditioner, but I don't know. If anyone knows why I might have killed four alternators, I sure would like to know. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.