Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 10:35:56 -0500
Reply-To: jake beaulieu <jbeaulie@ND.EDU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: jake beaulieu <jbeaulie@ND.EDU>
Subject: 82 AC Westy running troubles (longish)
In-Reply-To: <B3D9840D3F5A8847A28683EC1D17B84D0D298E@mta1.obpa.usda.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hey listers,
I have a 1982 air cooled vanagon with a new Boston Bob motor that has been
giving me a headache for a while. It starts hard when cold and runs rich
until it warms up, then it runs great.
Yesterday things got worse. It started hard as usual, after warming up in
the driveway I drove it to the gas station and everything was great. After
filling the tank it started VERY hard, and was running super rich. The only
way I could keep it going was to hold the idle pretty high. It ran like
this for a few minutes until I let the idle get too low and it died. It
started hard again, ran like crap, then died. I repeated this cycle five or
six times. Then on like the seventh start it fired up fine and ran great
again.
I have checked pretty much everything in the injection, ignition, and fuel
system and everything checks out. When I wrote in about this back in Oct or
so everybody suggested I double check the aux air regulator, cold start
valve, and thermo time switch. I did this and everything is fine. I
checked all components of the fuel injection system at the component, and
through the wiring harness (connection to the ECU) to check for a break in
the harness, all good. All vacuum lines are replaced and the AFM/throttle
body boot is tight. I have three ideas.
#1. When the motor is cold the fuel pressure is about 2 psi higher than the
Bentley specs, as the motor warms up in comes down perfectly to spec. Could
this be the cause of the hard/rich start? Ken Wilford sent in a post a
couple weeks ago about a van that had much higher fuel pressure than mine
and ran fine most of the time, but ran rough intermittently. I am thinking
that 2psi may not be enough to really matter.
#2. Last weekend I noticed that the crankcase pressure breather tower fits
pretty loosely on the motor. This may be causing a vacuum leak, Dennis
Haynes said there should be a rubber O-ring in there. I will look into
this. Can't find anything in the archives on this topic for air cooled vans
which have a different tower than the water cooled versions.
#3. ECU? It appears that all the proper signals are getting to the ECU,
but the output isn't right. Yesterday it acted like the ECU was stuck in
the wrong setting, then finally "reset" itself and started running right
again.
Thanks for any suggestions,
Jake
82 AC vanagon
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