Date:         Mon, 16 May 2005 01:21:57 -0400
Reply-To:     Joy Hecht <jhecht@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joy Hecht <jhecht@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      problem(s) on the road, plus major good samaritan
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Hi all,

I'm outside Indianapolis, having a problem.  My engine seems to occasionally
miss a beat or two (or twenty), slows down, tach drops - then it catches
again and has a little spurt of power and is fine for a while.  Mostly this
is only just noticeable, but I definitely do notice it.

And it's running rich, putting out lots of soot and a trace of smoke, and
gas mileage has just plummeted to 11 mpg.

There's a mechanic listed on Larry's site in Indianapolis, so I figure I'll
head there tomorrow.  But I'm interested in ideas about the cause of the
problem.  This once happened before, much worse, and there were gazillions
of theories as to what was wrong (it turned out to be a mix of a couple of
them).

Also, if it's something that one could fix (e.g. cleaning out filter on fuel
pump, which once caused similar problems, or something else easy), and if
there's anyone near Indianapolis who might be willing to help, I'd be
delighted to hear from you!  I'm en route to Buses by the Beach, but I don't
think I want to wait on this till I get there to deal with this, even though
the idea of dozens of vanagonauts in one place makes it tempting.

My O2 sensor is not connected.  Ken just installed new exhaust pipes around
500 miles ago and said I should wait 500 miles before reconnecting it.  I
tried to do that this evening, but can't figure out what the two dangling
wires should connect to!  There doesn't seem to be anything unconnected
aside from the two dangling wires.  Where is it?


And now for the good Samaritan story!  (Skip to the end if you're bored.)  I
pulled into a rest stop thirty miles east of here, and on walking back to my
van I realized I was leaking coolant, rather rapidly.  A bit of crawling
under the van showed exactly where it was coming from, a steady skinny
stream coming from where the narrow hose bringing coolant back from the heat
exchanger is clamped on (if I'm reading the Bentley diagram correctly).
Looked like a little chunk of rubber had come off the end of the hose,
making a pinhole where the coolant was flowing out.

So I mulled this over and went into the rest stop to ask the guy working
there whether anyone would have a fit if I stayed the night, despite the
signs saying it wasn't allowed.  He said no, they wouldn't, and offered to
look at my coolant leak.

Well, to make a long story short - three hours later, after getting stuck
under my van (he wasn't small), getting showered with quite warm coolant,
and one trip down the road to buy a new hose clamp, he had fixed my coolant
leak.  He parried my thanks, and refused my offer of money, but did accept
my offer to write a letter for his supervisors about how nice and helpful
and generous he was.  Then when I went to drive out of the rest stop at long
last, it turned out we'd disconnected a wire and the oil pressure buzzer
kept coming on.  So back out he came, found a tool in his truck to strip the
end of the wire and reconnect it, and - whew! - the buzzer went off.

After that we sat down and talked about all sorts of things (well, okay,
mostly he tried to convert me), till his replacement came on at 11:00.  At
which point I came down the road to the Flying J outside Indianapolis where
I'm spending the night.  (And where I filled my tank and realized how bad my
gas mileage now is!)

When I ask myself why I'm still driving a van that breaks down constantly,
even when it's just had nine weeks of TLC in Millville with Ken and was
purring like a well-fed cat when I left there, well, it's 'cause I meet
people like John in the rest stop who don't know me from a hole in the
ground, but happily fix my coolant leak!


So, if you've gotten through all this, I'd like to hear thoughts about why I
might be running rich, missing, and wasting so much gas.



Joy


*******************************************************************
Joy Hecht
and Matilda, 1989 Burgundy Vanagon

email:  jhecht@alum.mit.edu
telephone:  1-202-494-1162
for musings about life and the vanadventures:
http://users.rcn.com/jhecht/gypsy

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