Water hose burst

Couple days ago, in the middle of our camping holiday, one of water hoses in my vanagon burst and forced us to change our plans. To be more exact, it didn't happen in the middle of our trip, but at the beginning, on the third day of total 8 days we planned to spend in my RV/camper Vanagon.

I had trouble with engine cooling for a long time. I destroyed one engine because of that, when one hose burst and left me with no coolant at all and overheating engine. How was it possible? Well, the temperature gauge shows the temperature of coolant and not the engine. It doesn't indicate that the entire coolant is gone and engine is overheating...


Last year I boiled the water in the engine once or twice during our holiday. I expected the same thing to happen this year. So when we were climbing a steep road I watched the temperature gauge so that I would know when the coolant was too hot. Unfortunatelly, there is something really wrong with the entire cooling system so the temperature on the gauge rises slowly and the pointer didn't reach the right end of the indicator untill the engine started to whistle. That sound was caused by steam leaving the pressure valve on the tank. We stopped for a while so that the steam would stop blowing and drove again. Not more than one minute later we heard a loud explosion below the engine and saw a great cloud of steam behind.

When we took all the stuff out from the camper and lifted the engine cover, we saw that the first water hose that carries the hot water from the engine to the radiator bursted.



We had to call the assistance and get the Vanagon towed to the nearest town where we were going to stay on a campsite. I paid over $80 for the tow truck. On that afternoon Tomek sent me a spare hose (that he removed from his Syncro) and I installed it the next day.

One day later we had similar trouble, but this time the increased pressure did not burst any of the hoses but caused the new one to slip from the pipe it was connected to. I didn't tight the bolt enough and because of that I saved the water hose from being broken again.

No more trips on hill roads for my Vanagon, and maybe even no more trips at all. I must think about the future of this van as there seems to be a lot more expences to be made in near future...