[Vwdiesel] '82 Vanagon westy and engine cutting issue

[Bryant Baecht]

Hi all, the saga continues...

     OK, well after having driven the vanagon for ~ 500 miles w/o a problem
since changing out the fuel cutoff solenoid, I worked on glow plug last
night and got them done.  Fired up the bus and burped out the air and
thought life was grand.  Today it was hard to start ( like air leak in the
fuel system again ) and on the way back from getting something to eat, the
famous cutout episode happened again.  I limped her home and started
wondering what could have cause the problem.

     I remember from pulling the fuel lines from the IP last night that the
pump side of the fuel line twisted when I undid the fuel line from it.  So
today, I snugged up the IP side of things as best I could.  I'm talking
about the threaded part that the injector line bolts up to.  Hop in it touch
her off and she fired right up.  So me thinks, good time to take her for a
spin.  I back out and put her in first, let the clutch out and mash the
diesel pedal and voila, she rockets back to very rough idle.  I mash the
pedal a couple more times and absolutely no change on engine RPM.  I idle
her back to the house and utter my favorite cuss words and stumble in the
house to write this.

     This vanagon is new to me, and the previous owner mentioned he had the
IP rebuilt.  I'm wondering what exactly the symptoms of a bad IP are?  I'm
about to the point where I take it down to my VW mechanic and have him put a
new IP on just for giggles as this is frustrating me to no end.  Is there a
way to rule out the IP?  From previous emails, I've ruled out bad fuel
system as I've run the IP direct from a jerry can and it would still cut
out.  The only thing that seemed to help was to change the fuel cutoff
solenoid.  Figure tonight I'll pull the fuel cutoff solenoid and remove the
plunger, thus ruling it out completely, even though it comes from another
vehicle that hadn't let me down.


Bryant



-----Original Message-----
From: vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com [mailto:vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com]On
Behalf Of Bryant Baecht
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 3:16 PM
To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
Subject: [Vwdiesel] '82 Vanagon westy and engine cutting issue


Hi all,
     As a lot of you remember, I posted that my westy was having some sort
of cutout issue ( engine would randomly lose power, falling back to idle and
sometimes dying completely ) and I had changed the fuel filter which didn't
fix the problem as it appeared to be a fuel starvation issue to me.  Well,
tested a lot of things and what appears to have been my problem is a faulty
fuel cutoff soelenoid.  I came to this conclusion after ruling out just
about everything else.  I did all of the following and still had the
problem:

1) ran out of a can of diesel in the rear of the bus to rule out fuel
tank/line problems.
2) ran the fuel cutoff soelenoid direct from the battery to rule out relay
issues

     I changed out the fuel soelenoid with one from my diesel rabbit and I
have not had the problem since.  It was misbehaving less than a block out of
my drive and now I've got ~ 40-50 miles on it w/o issue.  Hoping to finally
put this issue to bed.  Thanks to everyone for all the help and look forward
to more troubleshooting with the group!  You guys have been the best!
Totally makes my VW diesel experience soooo much more fun with such a great
enthusiast group out in cyberspace.

Bryant

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