Date:         Sun, 5 Jul 2009 20:13:44 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve Young <sja_young@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Young <sja_young@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      84 Vanagon Intermittent Smoking
In-Reply-To:  <006901c9fde1$3b261430$6401a8c0@PROSPERITY>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi List,

I'm having a weird problem with my westie. It has 1.9 wb engine that until January was running well. It was parked up for about 6 weeks until a bad ecu was diagnosed and replaced. Since then under a bit of load it will suddenly throw out a plume of smoke out of the exhaust, a very large and embarassing plume of smoke. It's done this twice in the past six months that I've noticed. Today when it happened I noticed a slight loss of power and glanced in the rearview mirror. I parked the van and started it up again after a few hours it smoked and power was uneven under throttle for a few minutes then righted itself. The engine sounds fine. I took it to a mechanic after the first time it happened and he suspected a stuck valve. That said the engine sounds fine even when disgorging lots of burnt oil. No rattles, or backfires.

One potentially common factor is that the first time it happened was shortly after an oil change. Yesterday I noticed it was near low and threw in a litre of oil. Could too much oil cause these symptoms? Other factors I'm considering are valves, rings and ECU.

Any ideas and advice appreciated.

Steve

P.S. engine is a VW rebuild of unknown age, van has 360,000 Km