Date:         Mon, 22 Apr 1996 16:04:36 +0200 (MET DST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Darie Duclos <darie@tell.ascom.ch>
Subject:      losing power


Sorry to post this again, but rather unusually, I didn't get
a single response the first time around, so I wondered if perhaps
it didn't get through.

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Hi again!

Since I got my brakes fixed, I did drive to Paris (France) to 
pick up my friends. Strange thing happened when we were almost
there, after driving some 500 kms that day already. The van
started losing power. On flat road it wouldn't go past 60 km/h,
on an uphill, barely 40 km/h. The rpm's weren't going up either
so it's not the clutch slipping.

We stopped to sleep and give the Westy a chance to rest. The
next morning the problem was still there. We drove the last 15 
minutes to the airport anyway and after we picked up our 
friends and drove off looking for a garage, things slowly 
got better. We could do 90 km/h, then 100, then eventually,
after we let it sit all day and went to visit Paris, we were
able to drive 120 km/h again.

There was a bit of a noise in the motor, but I couldn't tell
from where. The worst noise was when I downshifted into 3rd
at one point after the van had slowed down so much that the
rpm's were falling below 2000. It was much louder than a 
normal downshifting noise.

Has anyone experienced this, have any ideas?
Thanks!

Darie
'86 Westfalia