Date:         Sat, 4 Aug 2001 00:07:59 EDT
Reply-To:     SeabornProduct@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeff Tribble <SeabornProduct@AOL.COM>
Subject:      '84 California water-cooled fuel probs
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Sorry for the long message, but I've got to get all this out now that it's
fresh in my head.  I've searched the archives to no avail:

I've had intermittent fuel delivery problems for 3 years now.  Once I
replaced the fuel pump (which had actually failed) and everything was fine.
Then the pump failed again, so I put a filter between the tank and the pump
(on California water-cooled's, the fuel filter is between the pump and the
engine... seems odd).  I still get intermittent stalls and no-starts.  I've
even had it towed to a mechanic, only to find it starts right up again when
the tow truck dropped me off - then the mechanic really coulnd't find
anything wrong.

Most recently (like an hour ago!) it stalled in rushhour traffic and had it
towed to a thoughtful mechanic.  Luckily, it did NOT start after being
dropped.  This is what we found: good spark, fuel pump fine.  Here's the
wierd part: he pulled a fuel injection connection off (the wires from the
computer to the injector) and put on one of those small bulb testers (which
lit-up fine).  Then he reconnected to the injector and it started up!  Then
we turned it off and waited about 5 minutes and then it failed to start
again!  So he tried the same trick: pulled off one of the injector
connections, tested it and reconnected it: it started fine!  He's baffled,
I'm baffled.  He thinks "maybe" the computer, but he's really pretty baffled.


I took the chance on driving it home and it made it all the way.  I rarely
rev the engine very high, so I thought I'd try that to see if maybe it just
needed a good high voltage charge.  Oddly, at high RPMs the engine sort of
sputtered a bit (like not good, clean acceleration).  After doing this a few
times (about 5-10 good revs in both 2nd and 3rd gear), the acceleration
became clean and fine.  I"d really like to keep this "bus" but it's kind of
frustrating having to be careful about carrying stuff around (like music
instruments) on the off-chance it's just going to die again.

I once heard of a friend's BMW that had a similar problem (wierd intermittent
stalls) for like 5 years, and it just took someone who REALLY knew how to
give it a good tune-up to  solve the problem...

Any ideas?

Jeff T.