Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:21:05 -0700
Reply-To: coyote <coyote@LIKEMINDS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: coyote <coyote@LIKEMINDS.COM>
Subject: FW: desperate 1990 vanagon owner needs help! (A LONG SAD SAGA)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Can someone help this lady? Kyle? Please reply to Laura Davis
(canfish2@CRUZIO.COM). Thanks!
P.S. Happy Fourth to our U.S. readers!
-----Original Message-----
From: laura davis [mailto:canfish2@CRUZIO.COM]
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 1998 2:47 PM
To: vanagon-request@vanagon.com
Subject: desperate 1990 vanagon owner needs help! (A LONG SAD SAGA)
x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
July 4, 1998
Dear Chris and Coyote,
I am a non-mechanically minded owner of a 1990 Vanagon Carat. I've been
searching the archives of the mailing list for the last few hours,
looking for answers to our particular problem, and the archives are too
overwhelming to look all the way through. I don't want to subscribe to
the list because I'm only interested in a solution to my own problem
with my van. I love the car, but don't care about Vanagons in general!
Besides, I have two little kids and I don't have the time to wade
through all that e-mail. So the bottom line is that I'm hoping you can
help me via e-mail or lead me to some other resources where I might find
an answer. (I've been so desperate, I've considered calling Car Talk!)
Our van only has 34,000 miles on it, but we've had so much grief over
this car that we're thinking about selling it. It's had a dangerous
history of intermittent problems (like refusing to start, dying on the
freeway or on the road, getting stuck up in the mountains) and I'm
worried that my kids are going to get killed in this car one day when it
dies suddenly out of the blue on the highway. It works fine for awhile,
but then boom, the problems start happening again and it feels like
we're driving a death trap. But on the other hand, we love the car,
it's all paid for and it's a great camper (when it runs!). If we could
just get a handle on what's wrong with it and fix it, it'd be a great
car with many years of life in it. What I'm really looking for is some
info so I can get my local VW mechanics (we're in Santa Cruz, CA.) to
fix it once and for all.
I bought the van in 1992, but it was brand new (I'm the first owner) and
I had it converted by Country Homes Campers in California. We've had no
problems with the conversion, but rather with the van itself. Here's
the miserable history of this bright red devil:
Soonafter we brought it home, we had two incidents of running out of gas
when the gas gauge still registered that there was a quarter of a tank
of gas left. We took it into our local Volkswagon dealer because the
car was still under warranty. They repaired the gas gauge. Immediately
afterwards, every time we tried to fill the gas tank with gas, the gas
would overflow all over the ground, creating a hazardous situation. So
we only started filling it up half full. Finally, we realized how
dangerous it was and we took it back to the dealer. They were alarmed
also. They said it would cost $200 to repair it because they said
they'd have to remove the gas tank. We never related this problem to
the problem of the gas gauge, but we probably should have. We paid the
$200 and they fixed it.
Shortly thereafter, we went into the mountains and once we were at high
alititude, the car started to stall when we came to a stop (but not
every time). Then it wouldn't turn on. We got it towed over 50 miles
to a mountain mechanic who checked all the ground wires to see if that
was the problem. They were okay. Then on its own, the car mysteriously
started up. When we got it home, it kept having problems, stalling when
we were slowing down, stopping on the freeway, not starting. Again,
these were intermittent problems. It would run fine for awhile and then
we'd have a rash of troubles.
We brought it to Hennings, another Volkswagon shop in Santa Cruz. They
were perplexed by the problem. They looked up the advisories on the car
that had been issued by Volkswagon. They installed a boot clamp P/N 191
129 647 to correct what VW said might be an air intake boot clamp leak.
They checked the ignition coil for bitumen leakage. They looked at
installing a wire harness Part No. 025 906 302 to help "driveability
complaints." None of this helped the problem.
They then hooked up a relay system to monitor injection system and pump
-- where we were supposed to pay attention to various lights and how
they went off when the car died. They replaced fi and pump relays after
two weeks.
We continued to have these same kind of problems, always intermittent.
Typically, we'd complain to the mechanic that the car was stalling and
that it wouldn't fire/crank. Then when we'd bring it in, it'd crank and
fire numerous times and work on various road tests. This has happened
again and again.
Another time we took it to another garage, Volks Cafe. They said the
timing was completely off and they fixed it. It seemed to help for
awhile.
We've always had all scheduled maintenance.
Our problems seem to intensify when we go to high altitude.
Mechanics always say they can't help us because the intermittent
problems never seem to happen when they have the car. (for instance, we
just had it towed to the shop because it died and wouldn't
start.....once it was towed in, it fired up.)
Theories we've had:
• it's because of something wrong the dealer did when they fixed our
gas tank in 1992
• it's because of "bad" or "old" gas we've put in when we've been up in
the mountains (we successfully "fixed" it once by adding gas cleaner).
This could have been luck or just a coincidence.
• it feels like the car just isn't getting gas -- sometimes if we crank
it for twenty seconds it struggles to fire and eventually fires.
sometimes it won't.
Other things we've been told:
• We've been told it's a vacuum problem and we should put a stick in
the gas tank every few miles when gaining altitude to prevent vapor
lock. This has seemed to help.
• only use premium gas
• only use regular gas
• it's the distributor cap (we've replaced this too)
• that that year had a bad computer that can't adjust to altitude
changes and that replacing the computer won't help because the
replacement would be designed just as poorly as the original.
We are perplexed and at the end of our rope. Right now the car seems
totally unsafe to drive. We just had it towed back to Volks Cafe where
they're going to look at it again tomorrow.
Thank you so much for hanging in for this long, sad tale. We will
deeply appreciate any help or advice you can give us (or our mechanics
who basically say they can't do much if the car doesn't fail in front of
them...)
Sincerely,
Laura Davis and Karyn Bristol
canfish2@cruzio.com
(408) 425-3831
P.S. We've met a half dozen vanagon owners with similar complaints, and
similar trouble resolving them.
P.P.S. Please remember that you are responding to people who don't
really know the first thing about cars!
