Date:         15 Sep 1996 20:05:30 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Harvey Chao" <Harvey_Chao@smtp.svl.trw.com>
Subject:      Bunker Burner Bait

Well, I thought I had nothing to do this morning either (ref. item #1 Vanagon
digest #1104, ThatVWGuy@aol) -- until the wife left to take the daughter to
work.  Daughter comes running in says my better half wants me to come look at
the van quick!

Get out there and it is shut down.  Wife's "orders" are to take daughter to
work in my car and come back and see what's wrong with the van - hard
starting, rough running, vibrates greatly.

Thinkin' about it on the way to/from dropping off daughter.

1): Check Glow plug fuse - OK
2)  disconnect power lead to glow plug buss, jump battery hot lead direct to
glow plug buss via 0-50 amp meter.  Only reads 30 amps, expect about 40 (9-10
amps per glow plug is nominal)
3)  Get the trusty Fluke out , and start checking glow plugs -- #4 OK,  #3 OK,
#1 OK, #2 Oh Sh- -!.

You know over the period of 13 years,  170K miles, on two engines in this
vehicle, and over about 10 years with a diesel rabbit, the ONLY glow plugs I
have ever had to replace have been either #s 1 or 2, the ones BEHIND the
injector pump!!! Talk about "Murphy" being alive and well!   Hopefully this is
the problem, but I am a bit worried that it runs so rough with only one glow
plug out yet with  the mild temperatures we are experiencing here in the SF
bay area (high 50s at night, mid to high 70s today).  

 This is a time to be thankful for small hands.  With an 8mm Craftsman
combination wrench, you can get the nut off the glow plug that holds the buss
to it.  With a 12 mm Craftsman combination wrench, you can unscrew the
glowplug from the cylinder head - both cases without removing or disturbing
the injector pump, or high pressure fuel lines.  Of course because of the
limited access a lot of the work is 1/16th of a turn, flip the wrench over,
anothe 1/16 of a turn.  This is not something you do quickly.  Also useful to
have on hand for this job, as required are:  needle nose pliers, one of those
extended reach claw "pick up" tools for dropped small parts, standard flat
bladed screwdriver to nudge and position the 8mm nut as you try to get it
threaded/started onto the glow plug.

Once you tease the nut off the top that holds the buss bar, and get the glow
plug unscrewed from the cylinder head, you can carefull tease it out of the
head.  

The REAL fun is teasing the replacement glow plug INTO the cylinder head hole
and once it is tediously tightened down 1/16th of a turn at a time, trying to
get the 8mm nut back onto the top of the glowplug to hold the buss bar in
place!.

Naturally, I dropped the nut down into the camshaft belt and had to pull the
shield to find it.  That's when I discovered that the rubber grommet and the
mounting hole in the center of the shield had self destructed.  Clead up the
dirt and oil and silicon rubbere'd the remaining pieces back in place.

Decided that the fuel and air filters were due for replacement (it had been
just over 2 yrs) so changed them too.

After all that, went to start the engine and it started terribly, which I
expected and attributed to the big bubble of air in the new fuel filter and
fuel line from the filter to the injector pump.  After it started and smoothed
out, I shut it down.  Small bubble of air in the fuel line (about 1/4" long
and let it cool for about an hour checked to see if the air bubble had grown
(no - whew!) and tried to start it again.  Much better start, but still not
100% "normal".

Well, by now it was mid afternoon, and I'd tried all simple and easy things
and used the corresponding "ready" parts from my shelf stock -  so let it sit
for 2 hrs when the wife took it to go retrieve the daughter from work.  She
said it started with just a bit longer than usual cranking, but ran ok.  After
she got home again, and it had sat an hour, I went to start it again -
temperature gauge was down to "cold" and it started "normally".  Guess
tomorrow morning will be a VERY informative event!!.  Will dump a full bottle
of Redline injector cleaner into the next fill up.

By the way - if you have no problems removing and re-installing /re-timing the
injector pump, the job should be a LOT easier if you remove the pump, but I
don't have the tools to do that, so I just do it the slow way.

Hopefully, another "zero down time" repair.  The way the wife keeps the van in
motion every day, down time is a critical issue in our family.  Getting it
away from her when it has to go to a shop for a day for repairs I can'd do at
home is almost impossible.   

Harvey