From: "Max & Adriane Kirk" <adrianeb@fast.net>
To: <coyote@vanagon.com>
Subject: HELP ME!!!!!
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 17:05:55 -0500
X-Priority: 3

What's up, 

    I am an owner of a 1985 vanagon and am very new to the whole vanagon "scene". I have a question that I am hoping you can shed some light on, but first I would like to tell you how much vanagon.com has helped me so far. It has been an invaluable resource without which I would completly lost. Thank You very much! But getting back to my question, I bought my van in Nov of 99, at that time it had about 116K miles on it. At first everything was fine and the van ran great,however then it began to slowly lose power as I drove it. I changed the feul filter but that did not help. The power loss continued until finally the van stalled all together and would not run at all. My father suggested that the problem may lie in the catalytic converter, together we took it off and sure enough it was sufficiently clogged, apparently exhaust was being forced back into the engine causing it to "choke" and consequently lose power andeventually stall. We fixed that and the van ran very well, for a while. How however it seems to be inflicted with a whole new problem, and I am at my wits end trying to figure it out. It has lost a lot of it's former "pep" and many times will buck upon startoff  for what seems to be no good reason at all. Other times it will simply lurch forward a few times before it gets going, or it will simply not do anything even though I've got the clutch all the way up and the gas all the way down. I am completly baffled at what could be causing this. Please email me back with any insights you may have. HELP ME OBI WAN, YOUR MY ONLY HOPE!!!!

                                                                                                     Thank you and Keep on Truckin' 

                                                                                                                    -Matt Kirk