Date:         Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:40:00 -0500
Reply-To:     BJ Feddish <bfeddish@NETREACH.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         BJ Feddish <bfeddish@NETREACH.NET>
Subject:      Still running like crap, the saga continues
In-Reply-To:  <HHEAJIOMDPBGGCKHACGJKEIDDAAA.al_knoll@pacbell.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

OK, awhile back I posted about my van hesitating. If you remember I took it
to my mechanic who cranked the AFM screw to get it to run rich. The
hesitating went away, the van ran pretty good but I was down to 11 MPG.  I
took it back, he cranked it back the other way, still ran OK but now we had
more hesitation. This type of hesitation was where there was a power loss
for a few seconds then the engine went back to normal. I thought I could
deal with this until spring but then it started stalling at lights and my
mileage was still crap. I decided to take it to a well known shop about 45
NE of me. They fixed my ground wires, replaced the O2 wire and set my
timing, idle and C02 to factory specs. After a vacuum check everything
looked fine except a slight leak at the throttle body.  I thought I was
going to be getting a great running van back but that was not the case.  Low
speed is worse than it's ever been. It's almost as if there was a tennis
ball under the gas pedal. If I'm trying to accelerate in 2nd gear there just
seems to be no power. There are no "big" hesitations but now I have allot of
little ones like someone was tapping on a switch.  The low power at low
speeds is frightening.  The van idles fine now and traveling at high speeds
seems to be slightly better than before this latest change.  I'd like to
call them back and see what else we can do but I'm kind of upset they let me
drive the van out of the shop in that condition.  Anyway, can this small
vacuum leak in the throttle body be the cause or is there something else I
should be looking at? Is it time to just start replacing parts?

BTW, I just check the timing and it was dead on the V mark.

Also, nobody has been able to find the "thump-thump-thump" noise emanating
from the rear. 2 places think it "could" be the axel. I can't wait for the
tow truck ride to discover what that is....

Thanks,
Bryan