VW safety check after fires
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• VAG, the UK importer of Volkswagens and Audis, has asked all concerned operators of petrol-engined Volkswagen LTs to contact their local dealers for a series of safety checks following Peter Bottomley's call for the company "to take immediate remedial action" on the vans.
The roads and traffic minister's announcement follows a series of engine fires on petrolengined examples of the Hanover-built van. Most notable of these involved the death of a pensioner following an engine fire in a recentlybuilt Volkswagen LT31 sittingcase ambulance that was carrying ten senior citizens home from the Sudbury Neighbourhood Centre on 18 September 1986.
Volkswagen recalled a number of LT vans earlier this year for modifications to the upper part of the carburettor where fuel leaks were suspected. The company claimed that this action had solved the potential problem, although BBC1's Watchdog programme on Sunday 15 November claims that the fault could be the plastic and rubber petrol pipe joint in the return fuel line from the carburettor on the opposite side of the engine.
The two pipes of different materials are joined together with a small metal pressure clip. Any failure in this clip might lead to the pipe joint splitting and petrol pouring over the distributor and spark plug leads. In such circumstances the engine would continue to run, and the risk of a fire would be high.
The Department of Transport says it is "in touch with Volkswagen to see what it will do" about the potential fault. Volkswagen's commercial vehicle press manager Wolfgang Peschke, in Hanover, says that an emergency committee of engineers is meeting to discuss the company's action. "There will be some technical changes," he says, "to do with the fuel pipes, especially the clips. . . they are not friendly for servicing." It seems likely that Jubilee hose clips will probably replace the metal pressure clips.
Although the German company has not taken responsibility for the pensioner's death, Peschke says it will "have to look at the different cases," although it is "difficult to see the origin of the fire."
VW sells about 7,500 LTs a year in Britain, and most of these are petrol-engined because of the small tax difference between petrol and diesel fuels. Around 500 LT vans have been converted to the Help the Aged sitting-case ambulance specification. Apart from the bodywork changes in the specification, the bodybuilders have to include a carburettor drip tray to prevent leaking fuel from dripping onto the hot exhaust pipe.
A spokesman for Robin Hood Bodybuilders, which converts some of the Help the Aged VW, vehicles says it is concerned by the fires, and worried because "it could have been any make of commercial vehicle. . . as many CVs use similar pipe joints" to those found on the VW LT.