Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 21:48:24 -0700
Reply-To: Ari Ollikainen <Ari@OLTECO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Ari Ollikainen <Ari@OLTECO.COM>
Subject: Rough idle, then stalling and now the solution
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
My wife's Carat developed a rough idle over the last couple of weeks
which I thought would be cured by some fuel system cleaner when I got
my hands on the vehicle long enough to do it...as it turns out, today
the Carat stalled pulling out of our driveway and again at the corner
stop sign as my wife drove off on a kid dropoff/pickup mission. It
would hesitate and stall under light throttle. More determined
application of throttle would get it running somewhat smoothly.
As she was about to pull out again later in the afternoon, I, for the
first time, heard the van stutter and stall...and my wife cranking
it over a number of times before it would run, sputtering. This time
I used the camper to do the kid fetch and then began trying to
isolate the cause of the suddenly poor running. The Carat would idle
but not take light throttle without sputtering and almost stalling.
A quick check around the engine compartment showed nothing out of
place and everything connected to where it should be connected.
Having experienced a similar problem with rough running several
years ago with this Vanagon, I checked that each each plug wire was
properly seated on the plug end and in distributor cap. While doing
this I felt a shock from the coil wire on top of the distributor!
Turning the ignition off, I touched the coil wire to pull it off and
found the boot and casing hot to the touch... When I pulled on the
boot, the coil wire almost fell apart in my fingers!! Source of
problem found.
But that's not the end of this story. Unfortunately, when the plug
and coil wires were replaced two years ago, I didn't keep the three
seemingly good plug wires and coil wire. So I spent a couple of
hours this afternoon hunting for the *correct* coil wire. None of the
franchise FLAPS carried anything close to the proper part. The three
closest VW dealers parts departments only had COMPLETE ignition
wiring kits for $80+. I finally got a pointer from another FLAPS
to a place called Peninsula Auto Parts who had an EXACT matching
coil wire which he pulled off a display behind the counter!
After much aggravation, the bill came to $ 4.37 including sales tax...
The Carat runs smoothly...now.
OLTECO Ari Ollikainen
P.O. BOX 3688 Networking Technology and Architecture
Stanford, CA Ari@OLTECO.com
94309-3688 415.517.3519
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