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Date:         Mon, 22 May 2000 19:34:35 -0700
Reply-To:     Stephen Arbaugh <sneakers@OZ.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stephen Arbaugh <sneakers@OZ.NET>
Subject:      Very intermittent hesitation problem (long)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

All:

Well, I had thought my '85 westy had been doing pretty good, and in driving it around town and back and forth to work for a couple weeks, it was indeed running fine. A couple years ago I'd replaced some components in the ignition system while tracing down a failed hall sensor in the distributor. Now, the problem has moved from complete absence of motor functions to mere hesitations, but hesitations that caused some minor roadside repairs and a no-start during one of the stops.

Ok, so what's it do? Cruising and not yet cursing down the hiway, 65-70mph, motor completely warmed up, no problems. About an hour in, hesitation, lack of power, like it dropped a cylinder, for a couple seconds, then fine. Didn't do it again from our drive from Kent, WA to Eugene OR area. On the way back, after about two hours of driving, it did several minutes of stuttering this time. Gas pedal position would sometimes affect it, sometimes not. When it did, more gas made it worse, and lost more power. Flooring it helped somewhat, but still lost speed. Backed off the gas mostly, it started to clear, and by the time I was ready to go to the shoulder, it started picking up, and cleared shortly thereafter, maybe another minute. Total time for all this, maybe 4 minutes. Well, that put us in a great driving mood. We got gas, starteed back up, and it acted up again, about 30 minutes after, it caused me to pull to the shoulder and stutter my way to the next exit. There I pulled the engine cover off and started gazing upon the mixed blessing of my westy. All wires appeared ok, no loose connectors, no melted insulation (obvious), good grounds, still got the missing cylinder syndrome (no, all plugs were firing), down on power, and smelled very rich (exhaust). Disconnect o2 sensor, no change. Just for grins, I swapped out the pre-filter from the tank (square plastic filter), no change. Sat around for a while, thinking, decided to just jump and proceed north.

During the next couple hundred miles, I kept the speeds down, and it acted up again a couple times. Filled up again in Vancouver, and 30 or so miles later in Woodland, we pulled off and it basically died. We could have kept it running, but I needed to get to the motor anyway, so turned it off and couldn't restart. Pulled and yanked a bit more, then for grins pulled the cap off the distr., found a very fouled rotor and cap contacts. Scraped them off, got the thing running, again very rich (Very rich) exhaust. So, now we're cursing down the hiway, and it made it to Olympia with a couple more episodes, but nothing major. Stayed with the in-laws, pulled the plugs, re-checked everything, ran fine, hit the road for home, acted up a couple times up a couple hills, seemed to clear after backing off the gas above hills, but no stoppages.

I can't think of any other anomalies, but I'm sure there are some. We've ruled out bad gas because it has done it from several different stations in two states, and I put in some gas conditioner stuff just to be sure. I'll be searching the archives tomorrow, and I'm woefully behind on my vanagon list mail, but I'll be looking for any advice. I'm sure the digitool would be invaluable for this kind of thing, but I'm without, and will continue to be so for some time.

Looking for pointers (and driving an audi or riding a bike);

steve '85 westy kent, wa


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