Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 17:27:57 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         bayer@sybase.com (David Bayer)
Subject:      Re: 1985 Vanagon stumbling-Again!

>| I thought the new fuel pump and fuel filters replaced in Reno NV solved the
>| missing/bucking problem in my 1985 Westy(112K).(Ran great 3000miles return)
>| But on a recent trip in TN  while plowing down I-59. I felt a short stumble
>| which cleared for about 1/4mile followed by a more survire stumbling. I
>| put the accelerator to the floor and it seemed to clear up and has not
>| acted-up again in the last 300 miles. 

	This sounds like the problem I had. Did you check the plastic elbow
coming out of the distributor? If it wiggles, it could be grounding out just
inside the distributor. Take the cap off, the rotor, and the dust cover. Then
check if the elbow is in one piece or has snapped and the base has flipped on
its side, allowing intermitent grounding of the sender wires. This is a real
pain in the neck to find because it looks ok from the outside, tests ok with
the tests and will only act up when you are driving and go over the right
bump, or the engine wiggles in just the right way, or a drop of water with a
little salt gets kicked up to just the right place... The sender plate can
be obtained from Bosch I imagine, or Kyle from volks-motorsports can get you
the right part (he showed me one when I went down there). Or a piece of
electrical tape can keep you moving in a jam (my jam has lasted 1500+ miles),
one just needs to insulate those three wires from the each other and from the
metal body of the distributor...

dave