Date:         Sat, 14 Oct 2000 23:24:42 -0400
Reply-To:     Frank Assinck <fcajax@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Frank Assinck <fcajax@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject:      Ignition problem?
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

L.S.

Our Vanagon GL Camper from 86 is giving us some serious troubles lately. I'm not very technical and English is not my motherlanguage so I will try to explain what's happening. When the Van is running, the rpm gauge is flipping up and down while the car starts to shock. So it looks to me that the ignition is cut off randomly. This problem comes and goes but when it acts up its no fun to drive in the car. The problem does not act up when the car is idle-ing, which makes it very hard to track down the problem in a garage. It's not the coil and not the distributor because they were exchanged and the problem still acted up. The mechanics couldn't find anything and only cleaned the whole circuit/connections. Since then the Van ran fine for a 1000 mile but today the problem was back. From two different sides I heard that this problem has to do with the grounding of the electrical circuit and that other electrical device ( like power windows or maybe the fridge) can disturb the ignition circuit.

Is there somebody who recognizes this problem and has an idea about the cause and how to solve it?? We really like our Van and we want to keep it on the road for another 1.5 year to see something of the States, but at the moment we feel like riding a time bomb.

With kind regards,

Frank Assinck
Jacksonville, Florida

[text/html]