I showered and I still smell like glycol
Decided to change the oil cooler seal on the '88 Cabriolet. This was purely preventative, but I had one fail catastrophically on my '89, and it was extremely unpleasant. All the oil dumped out onto the road in, I'd estimate, less than two miles. Ruined my whole morning.
Anyway, it occurs to me that I should probably explain this job to people who have never wrenched on VWs. Many water-cooled VWs have an oil-to-water cooler sandwiched between the engine block and the oil filter. It's one of those things that was obviously a last minute addition; I envision some German going, "Verdammit, this engine is hard on oil. We'd better do something about that." And the oil-to-water cooler was born.
Anyway, this was a simple job in concept but a real pain to do. I had also elected to replace the old coolant hoses (one of them was soft), and the old ones put up a fight until I finally slit them with a razor blade. Naturally the car was dripping coolant and oil on me the entire time.
I'm glad I did it, though; it turned out someone had substituted the O-ring from an old oil filter for the O-ring seal that was supposed to be there. I'm surprised it held this long. Also, one of the old hoses turned out to be coming apart inside, so it probably wouldn't have lasted much longer.
Anyway, it occurs to me that I should probably explain this job to people who have never wrenched on VWs. Many water-cooled VWs have an oil-to-water cooler sandwiched between the engine block and the oil filter. It's one of those things that was obviously a last minute addition; I envision some German going, "Verdammit, this engine is hard on oil. We'd better do something about that." And the oil-to-water cooler was born.
Anyway, this was a simple job in concept but a real pain to do. I had also elected to replace the old coolant hoses (one of them was soft), and the old ones put up a fight until I finally slit them with a razor blade. Naturally the car was dripping coolant and oil on me the entire time.
I'm glad I did it, though; it turned out someone had substituted the O-ring from an old oil filter for the O-ring seal that was supposed to be there. I'm surprised it held this long. Also, one of the old hoses turned out to be coming apart inside, so it probably wouldn't have lasted much longer.