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Date:         Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:00:49 EDT
Reply-To:     THX0001@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         George Goff <THX0001@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Hard Starting Cold and Hot
Comments: To: tmarciniak@WI.RR.COM
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Several things to consider: 1/ Don't swap out anything until it has been confirmed to be defective.

2/ You can check the Temp II sensor by substituting a fixed resistor for it. This is best done when it is stone cold or fully hot. Pick the resistor value from the resistance vs. temperature graph in the Bentley. Or, if you don't mind pulling it, heat the sensor in some water and plot the resistance against temperature to see if it is kosher.

3/ As Roberto said, it could be a Hall Sender queefing out. Whenever it is hard starting, if the tach needle is pegged to the bottom of the scale it means that the Hall Sender is not pulsing. During a hard start period, connect a spark tester to one of the plug wires to see if it is sparking. A spark tester is cheap enough, but if you don't want to buy one, open up the gap of a spark plug to about 100 thousandths and use it to check for the presence and quality of the spark. From what I have seen, about the only time to catch a failing Hall Sender is whenever it is not pulsing the ignition and it can work one minute and not the next. Without the vibration and heat of the engine a failing Hall Sender might not even show up on a distributor machine.

4/ Check the injectors. In my experience, a failed injector can cause an excessively rich mixture in one of two ways: either by dumping too much fuel to burn into a cylinder or by causing the FI system to enrich the mixture because of air being pumped through a cylinder which is NOT getting any fuel. The air dilutes the exhaust fooling the ECU into thinking that the mixture is running lean and so it trys to correct the mixture by fattening it up.

George


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