Howdy folks, I'm trouble shooting for my brother long distance (he's in
Moab, Utah, I'm in San Diego). Driving from Denver to Moab in a snow
storm, he developed an engine problem (87 Syncro with a little less than
100k, he is the original owner). When the problem first started, they
noticed that the catalytic converter was red hot, thinking it was
partially blocked, they removed it, but found it to be ok. The VW dealer
in Glennwood Springs looked at the van, but they had discarded any
equipment they had for working on Vanagons and could only use a exhaust
analyzer to try to diagnose the problem, this indicated that the van was
running very lean. Adjusting fuel mixture didn't seem to help. They
limped into Moab on three cylinders. They pulled the injectors and found
that number three wasn't working. When he tried to switch number three
and four injector to see if it was the wire or the injector that was bad,
he found that the male spade connector that is attached to the injector
had fused with the female wire connector and was burned off the injector.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why or how this would happen?  He
doesn't want to replace the injector only to have it happen again. We are
thinking the spade cracked and the arcing burned it off. This seems to be
the most logical, but want to know if anyone else has run into this
problem and found another cause.

Thanks for your help.

Steve and Jo Ann Wacker
San Marcos, Ca
90 Carat
86 Syncro x 2
86 Audi 5000 Quattro