Vannin' Home Forums General Discussion General Discussion What Did You do To your Van Today?

Went on a nice ride. It was nice.

Double nice.

Bought a combustion leak tester yesterday and...
Verified my van has a blown head gasket.


It runs and drives fine, but it's been going through coolant and spitting it out the reservoir.
I was really hoping it was a bad thermostat or something.

craaaaaaaaaap!

That would suck!

That's what I'm saying.
I'm trying to decide what I want to do about it.
I don't know if I want to fix it myself or find a trustworthy shop (I've never found one yet) that will do it for me.

I've suspected it was a blown head gasket for about a year, but never did enough troubleshooting to verify it.
Well,
At least now I know.

Replacing head gaskets on a van. Fun times.

I'm at the point in my life where all I do on my vehicles is change air/cabin filters, belts, and wiper blades. Everything else goes to the shop....I just don't want to fruck with that crap anymore.

I don't have a garage at my house and I don't have access to one anymore.

Heck I've got a garage, but I'm too busy for playing home mechanic anymore. Luckily I have a shop that has done us right in the past I take things to, sad part is I can't afford the fixes at the moment. Having a windshield put in the Astro today. Hopefully have the money to take it in for head and intake gaskets soon, and the brakes, and the valve adjustment on the Civic. UGH!

I've been trying to trace a parasitic battery drain in my 88 B250. I used a multilmeter on the battery and pulled each fuse- nothing, Then I started unplugging connectors and found one by the battery that stopped the draw. Wiring diagram said it was for the heated rear window, except I don't have one. I left it unplugged and it turned out the radio and the interior lights in the roof above the engine stopped working.

I got fed up driving with either no radio or a flat battery so I pulled the radio to tidy up the wiring; the door speakers also weren't working. I replaced the factory radio a while back. When I did it, the wiring didn't correspond to the wiring diagram in got from ALLDATADIY so I had to figure it out, end result was a bit of a mess, so first up i tidied things up and replaced the wires to the doors because I suspect they are damaged; the speakers would come on when I went over a bump or around a corner. I tried to pull the speedo so I could check the splices in the harness but I couldn't get the speedo cable out the back, even trying was hurting my arm wedged up behind the dash, alot!

While in there this time I noticed this green connector below was unplugged. It was under the dash behind the radio

again the wiring diagram was no help, it clearly isn't for my car. I decided to plug it back in.

The result, so far, is that that the interior lights come on when the doors are opened, which never happened before and no flat battery. I have no idea what that connector is for or why it was unplugged but so far it seems an easy fix.