Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:58:43 -0600
Reply-To: John Rodgers <inua@CHARTER.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: John Rodgers <inua@CHARTER.NET>
Subject: Re: noob already in trouble
In-Reply-To: <20071126182730.j5tk4o540k8oscko@webmail.uoguelph.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Howdy James,
Welcome aboard!
You have already gotten some good advice, and my take agrees with many.
The O2 sensor is suspect.
It makes sense to me - before you do anything else - to isolate the O2
sensor, and see how she runs. With the O2 sensor disconnected, if the
engine is warm, and all things are well elsewhere OTHER than the O2
sensor - the engine should perform well - all gears, cruise, start,
stop, whatever mode of operation. This will tell you for sure that the
problem is in fact the O2 sensor system, ie, the connections, the
wiring, the sensor itself. NBow you can trouble shoot. You see, the O2
sensor is simply not required except for fuel efficiency, and if iO2
sensor is out of the circuit, that is the sensor and ECU are not
connected, the ECU will drop into a default mode and the engine will
operate just fine. The fuel economy will be off just a little bit,
however. But it will identify for sure the system that is at fault.
Check connections very carefully, reconnect, and try again. If the
engine acts up, then test the O2 sensor as prescribed in Bentleys.
Good Luck,
John Rodgers
88 GL Driver
James Reed-Jones wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> So I have been meaning to introduce myself (instead of just lurking)
> and since I have had my first official van disaster I thought I would
> kill two birds with one stone.
>
> 3 months ago my wife and I bought an 87 westy and have been in love
> with it ever since. I just recently found out about this list and
> subscribed - let me tell you this place has been so useful already! (I
> cant believe the oil filler extends!)
>
> All that being said - I had my first disaster with the van today. I
> was out picking my wife up and I started loosing power and couldn't
> keep the RPMs up above 1200. It was like I was trying to start in the
> highest gear. The weird thing though is that it would do it even when
> I put it in neutral. I kept having to pull over and restart the
> engine. This would solve the problem for anywhere between a few blocks
> to not at all. The one thing that I did do to limp it home was that
> every time I lost power I would stomp the pedal which seemed to give
> me back a burst of power and doing that I was able to rocket myself
> along with the occasional boosts of speed.
>
> Other info - 1987 vanagon westy
> - Automatic tranny
> - It first started while the engine was warming up but continued after
> it had gotten up to the regular running temp
> - I live in Ontario Canada and today it was blizzarding a nice wet
> slushy snowfall (as an aside I hope Santa brings me winter tires)
> - A similar kind of thing happened once before on a cold damp morning
> but it just happened once then went away.
>
> Any ideas I could check out prior to taking it to a mechanic would be
> great - or if this has been discussed in the list before a keyword to
> do a search for would be great!
>
> Thanks everyone,
>
> James
>
>
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