Date:         Thu, 7 Mar 96 15:23:50 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Dave Mancuso <dlm202@psu.edu>
Subject:      Re: Intermittent Stuttter refined

Mike said:
>
>Hi all again. The Westy went to get moved, so I can snow blow the driveway
>again. This time I noticed on the fresh fallen snow lots of black soot
>coming from the tailpipe. Lots. Joel W. thought it might be a bad injector.
>Any other thoughts? My mileage has also gone down greatly the last few
>days, since this this problem. if it is an injector should this faint
>hearted science teacher attempt it? Thanks all.
>        Mike E.

On Hal, my '76 Westy, I had put dual Weber carbs (little guys--they 
worked great, I got 23 mpg, but they had no chokes--I backfired for the 
first 15 minutes of operation on every cold day). I routed the crankcase 
breather tube into the air filter for one of the carbs, since that seemed 
to be the logical place.
Flash forward to a cold day in 1990, a trip to Philly (2 hr. trip). I'm 
driving down the road and black smoke starts coming out my exhaust. I 
start losing power bigtime. I can't even get up a mild hill (no, _worse_ 
than usual).
So, I pull over. The engine is clean, but there's oil all inside--you 
guessed it--the carb connected to the breather tube. The engine had 
apparently decided to suck all the oil out of the engine through the 
crankcase breather as the oil pressure rose high enough.
So I disconnected the tube and drove for 20-30 minutes as my engine 
coughed itself clean. I later put a cotton filter over the end of the 
breather tube as it went into the carb (OK, it was part of an old T-shirt 
really) and I never had the problem again.
Soooooo, this is possibly related to your problem?
Good luck,
Dave  (who's starting on that engine fire story tonight)

'87 Westy (Kalypso)