I'm having trouble with the idle - and, I believe, the idle control system - on my 88 Westfalia. It's been going on for a long time, and I could use some help resolving it. The primary symptom is that, at idle, the engine will die if the air conditioner is on. If I keep the air conditioner's fan speed low (1 or maybe 2), the engine will come close to dying, but will usually (not always) stay running. Here are the details. A year or two ago I took the van into a shop for this problem and others. The shop - a rather expensive one - claimed great familiarity with Vanagons, and in fact had another one in the shop when I first came. I have since come to the conclusion that they are utterly incompetent. I frequently ended up finding problems with their work, and having to bring the van in over and over again for the same problems. After wasting a great deal of money on their repeated failures to fix the idle problem - oddly, their attempts rarely involved the idle control system - I have given up on them. I have been studying the idle control system myself, reading just about everything I could find, and pouring over multiple wiring and system diagrams. I fear that I may now have become a useless expert on the idle system: I know almost everything about it except how to make it work. Here's the current situation: (1) The incompetent shop replaced the idle control valve. The new one is marked "VDO 4908-202-008-003Z". The usual part number for the valve (from Bus Depot, Go Westy, etc.) is 025-906-457A, but this web site: http://www.partsbase.net/part/vw-025906457a says that the two are the same. (I suspect the original one the shop replaced may have actually worked, and the problem was elsewhere, but I was not smart enough to ask them for the old one.) |
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