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Date:         Mon, 3 Apr 2000 19:36:36 -0400
Reply-To:     John Anderson <jander14@WVU.EDU>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         John Anderson <jander14@WVU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: poor running 84 1.9 vanagon
Comments: To: MGBrickell@AOL.COM
In-Reply-To:  <70.21cb34a.261a5109@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>speeds. Still very driveable and not a huge power loss, but annoying. It >was running like crap with horrible mileage, I replaced the o2 sensor and >fuel pressure regulator and it ran perfectly for a few weeks. Now, this >jerky deal. I notice no difference whether cold or hot. It is most apparent

I'll say it once I'll say it a thousand times, it's in the archives scores of times. 1.9 Vanagon Digijet jerking, most probable cause, (well aside for normal stuff like vacuum leaks etc. you check) GROUNDS ON THE DRIVERS SIDE HEAD.

I've bought 3 Vanagons so afflicted, I correctly long distance diagnosed Gerry's problems as such as well as many others.

As the ground strap from body below the coil to that head gets old, cranking current begins to be carried by all those sensor and other FI returns over there. Things get weird, initially if in a bucking fit, you can often switch off the ignitions for a second (if you got a stick, and if you remember the steering locks, and if you don't buy cat damage BS) then restart it by popping the clutch back out, and the problem will often be gone. (you can stop the car and do it as well, but that's a pain)

Anyway regardless, look at all those grounds, there are tons of them over there. Take them all off, if corroded at all, cut the wire back as far as needed to get into clean shiny copper wire, trying to not go more than an inch or two so that you can still make the head without splicing. Crimp and SOLDER on a new connector for each (some are in groups) wire, this is a bit obnoxious as it's hard to find crimp connectors with a big enough hole in the red or blue sizes, I use yellow sized ones, cut the plastic off the crimp connector (I always do that) slide on 2 pieces of heat shrink up the wire, then modify the yellow one with a pair of vice grips folding the 2 crimp tabs over flat on top of each other around the wire(s). This ends up a nice size, not too big, wont hold though without SOLDER, then I slide each piece of heat shrink down individually and shrink in a stepwise fashion. Do em all, lube them all with petroleum jelly, pay particular attention to the one to the coolant sensor which is right there on the thermostat manifold (look at it's other end as well, and check it's value, another source of 1.9 bucking). Clean the head where they bolt on with 220 wet dry and a little WD-40, clean it off, lube it with petroleum jelly, buy a new ground strap (go ahead and buy enough to daisy chain head to case to head if you think it might protect you from corrosion, right... 8-) clean the connection to the body with the wet/dry and lube that end up as well, put it all back together, see if the you got a problem.

If it didn't solve your woes, it only took maybe 2 hours and $20 or so for the new ground strap, solder, connectors, whatever, you aren't out much.

But 5 out of 10 times on a 1.9 this solves it all.

One other thought that might and I don't get why, my '85 temp sensor read correctly at all temps but it came with a resistor soldered in series, I don't recall probably 250-500 ohm or so, I took it out, bucked like a SOB. I bought a new sensor (even though it made the manual specs at 32, 70, 212F) put that in sure I could take out that annoying resistor, still bucked like a SOB. Never did get that, another solution though.

John jander14@wvu.edu


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