Date:         Sun, 9 May 2010 17:06:46 -0700
Reply-To:     E&M <coupe6em@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         E&M <coupe6em@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      91 Carat has the highway hick ups
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My most recent Vanagon is a 91, all stock. 2.1 WBX, 155k miles, auto trans. Last fall when driving at highway speeds, 65-70 mph I could feel a slight miss every so often. Nothing terrible, just enough to make me sit up and pay attention. I parked the van for the winter as I do every year to try to ward off the salt worm here in the Mount Washington Valley, thinking I might have to address this if the Vanagon fairy didn't magically fix it while resting for 4 months. Come spring she wouldn't start. cranked but wouldn't catch, but enough cranking and it finally ran. It did this several times and I thought maybe the ethanol gas was bad so ran it with fresh gas and it has seemed fine since. Although at one point I tried getting it to fire with ether and no go. Checked for spark and it seemed to have none. Next morning it ran?!?! I've been storing it this way for the last 5 years with no problems.

Since having it on the road this year my driving has been a combination of around town and highway. Around town it runs fine, gas mileage is as expected (18-20 ish), nothing out of the ordinary. On the highway, around 4000 rpm and above it starts to miss, buck and lose power, gas mileage drops dramatically. Cruise control seems to smooth things out and I can keep up with traffic but the gas mileage is still bad and driving it without the cruise results in poor running again. Being an automatic, I don't get above 4000 rpm around town so I assume it's rpm related and the bad gas mileage indicates it's running rich. I'm hoping for some suggestions or advice, where to begin? I searched the archives and found rich running issues but nothing seems to fit my specific set of circumstances...and there are a lot hits!


Thanks!
Eric in Fryeburg, Maine