Date:         Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:28:44 -0800
Reply-To:     Craig Oda <craigoda@COMMUNITYBUILDERS.INFO>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Craig Oda <craigoda@COMMUNITYBUILDERS.INFO>
Subject:      power loss, starter problems, but nice trip anyway
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

First, thanks to everyone for giving me advice on my brake replacement.
I really appreciate it.  This is a big reason I love these old vans, the
community of people that helps each other to keep them running.

Now for a short Westy story.
A few months ago, I took my 1983.5 Westy out to Yosemite in the pouring
rain.  On the way there, I experienced power loss at speed.  However,
since the power loss was intermittent, I made it to the campsite okay.
The rain turned to snow the next day.  This was great because I got to
take my family skiiing.  Of course, we camped in the Westy using a
Coleman powercat for interior heating.  I tried a number of things at
the campsite to find the source of the power loss, but I wasn't able
to.  Again, the problem was intermittent, so hard to trace.  Me and my
van in a blizzard.  :-)  Well, after a good day of skiing, the van
wouldn't start in the morning.  I tried the normal of pounding on the
starter/solenoid, moving the shifter of my automatic trans, and running
a jumper cable directly from the battery straight to the starter,
bypassing the ignition switch system.   I even tested the current of the
battery, which was good and tried a jump anyway.

Well, the bottom line is that I managed to get home somehow after some
hefty taps on the starter.  However, it wasn't a particularly relaxing
drive back knowing that there were some electrical gremlins.  Note that
I have the hard-start relay and a 6-month old starter in my westy already.

I checked everything and decided to get another starter from
VolksCafe.   I had bought the previous starter on e-Bay.  When I
compared the two starters, they were different.  I'm thinking that the
starter I bought on ebay was for a different model.  I took the Westy
out to Lake Sonoma for some camping in the rain again and the van was
fine.  So, maybe I solved the problem.

As far as the power loss goes, I traced a fuel line leak on my right
fuel-rail assembly.  I think that this might have been causing low fuel
pressure problems, which caused the power-loss.

So, at this moment, the van is running fairly good.  When I change the
brakes this weekend, I'll hopefully be ready for a big camping trip with
my buddy from Hawaii later this month.  He's flying into CA, I'm not
shipping the van to Hawaii.