New symptom

[Jay Kempf]

After a long battle I got my avant through state inspection yesterday. 
Legal after all these years. Drove nice most of the boost is there. 
Didn't push it real hard as it has snowed here a lot and I was on tires 
I shouldn't be driving this time of year.

Just before I drove it down it started to intermittently dump it's idle 
and recover. So if I leave it sitting running it runs fine for a while, 
then the idle tanks and it almost quits and then it recovers with a 
slightly high rpm recovery before settling again. I checked the function 
of the idle stabilizer and it seems to be functioning. You can even hear 
it whistling like it does as it adjusts the flow from high to low. If I 
leave it sitting for say 10 minutes it doesn't want to start. But it 
will start and run normally, and it starts normally if you start it 
right after you shut it down and runs pretty normally. When it doesn't 
start it will just crank and then it will catch and run if I feed it 
some throttle. It smells like raw gas after it starts so I assume it is 
flooding itself somehow. I checked the vacuum lines from the freq valve 
all the way to the fuel damper and I had replaced them and they are all 
new and solid. No fuel smell this morning in the vacuum line at the fuel 
damper. So I am a bit stumped what would all of a sudden make this 
happen. I have two sets of injectors and have changed them out recently 
with no change in running. Until this started happening for the last 
year moving the car around while in storage to work on it it has run 
perfect as a 20V should like a sewing machine, quiet, perfectly smooth, 
starts normally even after sitting for a while. So something just 
changed. No codes are coming up either.

Any ideas where to start looking?

Also, I am looking to get a good clean rack, steering damper, tie rods, 
tie rod ends, and any hoses and hardware at the rack end. Mine is in and 
still working at 206k miles but it is looking really rough in there. It 
looks like a terrible job to get in there and do that job so I want to 
have all the parts here to do the job before I go in.

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Regards,

jfk

802 272 5868
jkempf at madriver.com