Date:         Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:11:19 -0700
Reply-To:     Phil Walker <pwalker@NEXTDIMENGINEERING.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Phil Walker <pwalker@NEXTDIMENGINEERING.COM>
Organization: Next Dimension Engineering
Subject:      Electrical Gremlin and more!

On a recent trip back from the ocean, I had an interesting occurrence. We
had been driving all day on our way back to Utah without any incident, and
all of a sudden I felt a slight hiccup in the motor. I had the cruise
control on, and the hiccup kind of felt like it could have been a bump or
just a figment of my imagination considering I had been driving all day, so
ignored it and just paid closer attention to the van. Less than 5 minutes
later, an identical hiccup occurred, only this time the van died completely.
I pulled to the side on the road and figured we might have a cold night in
the van, however when I turned the key, the van started right up. I thought
maybe it had something to do with the cruise control so I left it off. To
test my theory, I turned the cruise back on when I got to highway speed, and
it hiccuped again. I shut the cruise off and it continued to hiccup and died
a couple more times. We limped into the next exit where I opened the engine
compartment in hopes that a plug wire or something was bouncing around back
there. Desperately hoping for a solution in the frigid air I unplugged and
replugged all of the connections I could see/get to (spark plug wires, any
wiring harness connections) in hopes that maybe they had jiggled loose or
possibly (I know this sounds crazy) the salt air had encouraged some
corrosion in the connections. With 200 miles left to go to home I kept the
speed at 60 and never turned the cruise back on...I had no hiccups. Has
anyone seen a problems like this before. It sounds a bit trivial as I write
this out, but when you are in the middle of nowhere on a cold night, it is
no fun to have the van quit. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do fix
this before the next trip. Thanks

By the way, I have the window sticker from my 89 with all of the options
(except Syncro) if anyone is interested in some history.

Phil
89 Westy - 18,000 original miles
Bountiful, UT