Date:         Mon, 12 Mar 2001 13:45:37 -0800
Reply-To:     Marty Kulmus <ghiaman65@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Marty Kulmus <ghiaman65@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      trip report /on the road repair.. long
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi all.

This weekend my wife and I went out for a getaway in
the Westy. It was International Womens Day and my wife
got the day off. Its a Berkeley thing. We went up to
the town of Dillon Beach at the mouth of Tomales Bay.
It was a beautiful drive, sunny skies, narrow twisting
roads, green hills with Mustard and California poppies
for color, and hardly any traffic. We camped at
Lawsons Landing, a family owned camping, fishing,
vacation place. We went walking on the beach, watched
people out in the flats digging Horse Clams, saw tons
of birds (one of my favorite pastimes), over on Point
Reyes we could see the herd of Tule Elk that has come
back from just a few remaining animals to a fairly
good sized herd. The Elk were running across a meadow
of green grass, it looked like they were playing out
in the sunshine, truly a beautiful sight to behold.
The time spent was very restful. Too soon it was time
to go home. The Westy ran fine heading out to Highway
1. I turned right onto 1 and instantly the vanagon had
no power. It was bucking and jerking and just refusing
to run right. While I was hoping the problem would
just go away I started thinking about the symptoms it
was displaying and if I had ever read about anything
like this on the list. I had just come down a hill for
a few miles before the turn onto highway 1, and I
rembered a thread that featured that as a precursor to
a problem like I was experiencing. I had driven about
2 miles and it wasn't getting any better and my wife
was worried.(me too) I figured that if I pulled over
the van woud die, and not restart, however, when I did
pull over it was idling fine, the engine would rev
with no hesitation. I pulled back out onto the road
and once again, no power. Back to the shoulder. Now
this I did remember from the list, I thought the AFM
had stopped working and the the engine was just
getting an idle mixture. I popped the engine cover off
and went to the air filter to look for the AFM and
just moved stuff a little and lo and behold, the
connection from the air filter to the engine had come
loose. With a simple tightening of the clamp the
connection was restored and we were on our way! The
rest of the ride was even more fun because of the
relief I felt. I must say now that this list is the
reason I found the problem so quickly. By just reading
the different threads, and remembering some of them
made my day easier. Yes, I may have found the problem
anyway, but the knowledge I have aquired by belonging
to this list allowed me to go to the exact spot, first
time. Thank you Vanagon list. Thank you all.

Marty

87 Westy
65 Karmann Ghia Cabriolet

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/