Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 17:02:43 -0400
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Craig Rogers <carogers@idt.net>
Subject: RE: '86 still plagued! (was rich running)
Take heart, and be cool. I know it can be a bitch and I have had this
problem. The thing is, I can't remember exactly what I did to fix it. I
even put a new motor in and it still did it ( it had the head problem and a
bad main bearing, so it needed one anyway). I didn't have a fuel pressure
gauge that went high enough, so I replaced the pressure regulator. That
didn't fix it right away, but after a lot of tweaking on the mixture
adjustment, timing, etc., I was able to get it OK sort of. Since then, I
discovered a bunch of other things wrong and since everything effects
everything else, as you change bad parts, the synergy becomes different and
everything changes. I had a bad ECU at the time. It was new from VW. I
went through 3 of them before I bought a rebuilt from Bosch, and it's been
going strong for 5 months. I also replaced the air box since then. It
had a couple of small dead spots, but the temp sensor was more than 10
degrees off and I didn't think anything of it but, I discovered that I was
getting much better mileage on my Florida vacation. It shows that
everything has to be perfect or it won't work right. When I put that in,
it worked much better overall and I was able to define the exact problems
of each of the 3 bad ECUs (each had different problems). It was then that
I decided to go with the rebuilt ( I didn't want to buy another ECU if that
wasn't the problem after all. I SPENT MONTHS DIAGNOSING THIS ECU PROBLEM.
I HAD SEVERAL METERS HANGING OUT OF THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT FOR THE ENTIRE
TRIP TO FLORIDA!!!!!).
Just keep this in mind, I haven't cursed mine in months. I'm getting
around 18 mpg (I even got 21 toodling in the hills), I'm not saying that
it runs perfectly...yet, but it runs pretty good. I think that once I get
around to replacing the aux. air regulator ( again) that doesn't open or
close all the way, it may run very close to the unutterable P word.
By the way, I'm running my timing advanced about 5 degrees with
premium fuel and it has a lot more pep than at the stock setting. Good
luck.
Craig Rogers
Ineffable Audio Unity Inc.
P.O. Box 512
Riverdale, NY 10471
(914) 378-1606
mailto: carogers@idt.net
'85 Wolfsburg weekender.
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