Date:         Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:54:34 EDT
Reply-To:     Rogerspace2@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Roger Reynolds <Rogerspace2@AOL.COM>
Subject:      short, sudden, recuring loss of power
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Hi all,

For the past week or so, my '89 Westy has been suddenly loosing power (and
then immediately regaining it) repeatedly from once or twice over a ten
minute period to 8 or 10 times a minute or more.  The power loss makes the
whole van shake as if I have hit a large pot hole and I have noticed that
while this is happening, the tach can drop 500-1000 rpm.  Now, I know that
when I'm driving along at 50 mph in 4th gear and have an instantaneous power
loss that the engine can't possibly be dropping 1000 rpm.

I have not noticed a relationship between engine temp, weather conditions,
drive time, etc., and the power loss yet.  It seems to behave differently
every day.  It had been doing it after the engine was warm for a few days so
I did the Harold and Nancy "Vanagon Intermittent Syndrome" fix with the
Tantalum capacitor connected to the AFS and the next time out, it only lost
power once on a 10 min drive, but, this morning, I didn't even get out of my
driveway before it started doing it every few seconds.  This afternoon on my
way home, it didn't start until after 5 or 6 min of driving.

I have recently replaced the Temp II sensor and OXS to try to fix my low idle
at start-up, high idle when warm problems.  (That hasn't helped by the way,
but I can live with that much easier than this latest challenge)

TIA,
Roger