Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 11:50:25 -0700
Reply-To: Steven P Smith <kewsps@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Steven P Smith <kewsps@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Trouble with '85 1.9l wasserboxer in Europe
In-Reply-To: <52888.84654.qm@web45311.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
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Martin,
Could be a distributor problem. The primary wires (not spark plug wires)
going into the distributor crack and short to the distributor body,
randomly. Will run fine and then very badly. Took me a couple of years to
find this problem on my '84 1.9. Take the dist cap off and maybe you will be
able to see bare wires where they go through the distributor body.
Perhaps a little tape can get you going for a while, I don't know. I
replaced the electronics (hall sender?) in my distributor and have not had
that type of problem since.
Good luck,
Steven
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Poppie Jagersand" <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 11:08 AM
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Subject: Trouble with '85 1.9l wasserboxer in Europe
> Hi,
>
> I am having trouble with the '85 Westy my wife and I have in Europe.
> We came here and picked it up in Munchen, but only got to the border
> of France when trouble started. We are currently in a small village in
> Alsace.
>
> While driving the 1.9l wasserboxer first lost power and backfired on
> steep uphills, then shortly started loosing power at any time, until
> we had to creep off the highway on idle until the next exit.
>
> We luckily ended up at a supermarket with some limited auto supplies.
> During the day today I tried:
>
> Measured resistances on airflow meter. Both temp sender and airflow
> checks ok. Temp sender is 2kohm. For the air flow the resistance is
> varying
> when pushed as expected.
>
> The engine idles well and idle rpm is steady. When rpm is raised to
> about 4000 under no load the engine stumbles, rpm drops and sometimes
> it backfires. With the intent to see if it was a fuel-air mixture problem
> I tried to enrichen and lean the mixture by poking the air flow meter
> flap a little. (At least this is the effect I hoped it would have)
> This did not seem to help.
>
> We test drove a bit around the village roads.
> During driving the stumbling can come at any time. Sometimes power comes
> back after a backfire, sometimes the engine dies. It will restart without
> problem after dying.
>
> In case the problem was related to sticky valves I bought and used some
> valve cleaning gas additative, and did an oilchange with an engine
> flushing
> and cleaning substance (said it could unstick valves on bottle - smelled
> and felt like kerosene).
>
> Before the trip compression tested ok (10,10,10,9.5bar) I don't have
> a compression tester with me.
>
> Anyone has ideas for what else to test? I have a basic socket set and
> a multimeter with me. I also recall some posts years ago fixing
> stumbling problems with a capacitor over the" air flow meter output.
> Anyone recalls details. (I somehow failed to find it in
> the archives under capacitor and stumble)
>
> Failing finding the problem we will try to make it back to Germany.
> Anyone knows how to find a good mechanic in or near Saarbruecken?
> (we're about 20km south of Saarbruecken now)
>
> Thanks,
> Martin
>
>
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