Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 13:49:34 -0800
Reply-To: Tobin Copley <tcopley@POP.UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tobin Copley <tcopley@POP.UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: oil stick [diesel?]
In-Reply-To: <2E8A3D246B7@msvu1.msvu.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>hugo wrote:
>> listees;
>> im having trouble reading my oil stick accurately.
I have a slightly different question: on my newly acquired 82 diesel westy,
I'm having a heck of a time gaining confidence in reading the dipstick.
And it's kinda important I get good readings since the motor's got <3K on a
rebuild and I don't want to blow the motor due to low oil level.
Now, normally the oil level on a diesel motor is completely unambiguous,
since the oil blacks up really quickly (unlike my last bus (air-cooled)
which kept the oil so clean right up to 4500 mi changes that it was
difficult to see where the oil line was).
The problem is it has this oranginsh plastic dip stick, and there's some
sort of wierd surface tension or hydrophobic (petrophobic?) thing
happening--when I insert the dipstick then pull it out, a little more than
half the circumference of the dipstick shatf is covered with oil (up to the
full mark), but the remainder (usually, say, 1/3 of the circumference) is
TOTALLY CLEAN AND DEVOID OF OIL!) WTF? It doesn't always affect the same
area on the dipstick: I've tried rotating the dirstick 180 degree and a
similar thing happens on a different part of the dipstick. I've never seen
or heard of anything like this before.
So the $2200 (rebuild) question is: can I have confidence in the 2/3 of the
dipstick that tells me the level is correct? What if the clean part is
real and what I think is oil marks showing me it's "full" is really just
goop smearing the dipstick as I pull it in and out of the filler tube?
Diesel owners: seen this before? Can I get a metal dipstick for this, or a
replacement stick in any material that won't have this problem? I had a
dipstick oil temp sender in my old air-cooled bus, and it worked really
well, but I'm concerned about the length of slack wire I'd need in a
vanagon and that that wiring might get sucked into a belt or something.
T.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin Copley Bowen Island, BC, Canada tobin.copley@ubc.ca
'82 westy 1.6L NA diesel ("Stinky")
'97 son Russell =============
'99 daughter Margaret /_| |__| |__|:| clatter
1995: 'Round US, Mexico, Canada 15,000 mi O|. .| clatter!
1996: Vancouver to Inuvik, NWT 7,400 km ~-()-==----()-~
Previous buses: '76 westy deluxe (Daisy), '76 westy standard (Mango)
http://www.sfu.ca/~tcopley/vw/
