Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:19:39 -0700
Reply-To: AD Felder <dieseldoofus@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: AD Felder <dieseldoofus@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Fw: Re: dead cat kills van
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Mark your subject lines are some of the best. I immediately envisioned a furry four-legger stuffed in the air intake.
--- On Thu, 3/19/09, mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET> wrote:
From: mark drillock <mdrillock@COX.NET>
Subject: dead cat kills van
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 9:37 PM
I made a new friend this week on the Samba. He posted about a vexing
problem with his son's recently acquired 87 Wolfsburg. It had just died
as he was driving and then would not start. He had it towed home and was
trying to get it going. A former VW mechanic friend came over with tools
and parts and they tried to fix it to no avail. It would fire a few
times on the first attempt and then nothing but a mild pop now and then
while cranking. The smell of gas was very strong and the plugs were very
wet. Compression check was good and fuel pressure read fine. Injectors
sprayed in pulses as expected.
I saw his cry for help on the Samba and let him know I lived near enough
to come over and give him a hand. I spoke to him by phone and quickly
understood that this might be a challenge. I brought my Digitool and
some spare parts and went over a few days ago about 4 miles to the next
town where he lived. The readings of everything on the Digitool were
fine but no go on running. My timing light showed no problem and a
pulled plug wire sparked strongly on the block as he cranked.
Nonetheless I pulled my dizzy from the van I drove over in since
everything else had been pretty much tried. It made no difference so I
went home, as perplexed as he was.
Between me and the other guy who had been there, almost every major part
was swapped, plugs, dizzy, ECU, AFM, Temp II, fuel pressure regulator,
coil. He even hooked up a gas can to remove bad fuel as a possible
cause. He called again last night and said he was thinking of getting 4
new injectors since he did not know what else it could be. I did not
think that was a likely cause so I offered him the loan of a set of
known good ones I had for a test. Late this afternoon I went over and we
plugged in my whole fuel line loop with injectors but it made no
difference. With the AFM off he cranked some more and I happened to put
my hand over the intake boot. I was surprised how little suction there
was, even when I opened the throttle. Then I put my hand over the
tailpipe as he cranked some more. Again there was little air flow. Ah Ha!
In spite of his skepticism, he agreed to unbolt the cat and have a look
since there was nothing much else to try. Of course the bolts were too
rusted and a sawsall was needed to cut them. Once we had a little gap
between the J-pipe and cat, he gave the starter a crank. The engine
roared to life.
We then loosened the muffler/cat enough to get a look and a pile of
busted up remains of the cat innards could be seen inside. He thanked me
and I made it home in plenty of time for dinner.
Mark
now more suspicious of cats