I was driving home from work yesterday and had a problem.  I stopped at a
stop sign and the tach was sitting at 3k without any pressure on the gas
pedal.  I turned off the stereo and got audible confirmation that it was in
fact at 3k rpm's (well, sounded close to me anyway).   I pulled over and
opened the engine cover.  It seemed as though the throttle was sticking.  I
was only a couple blocks from home so I drove it into the garage and related
the problem to my wife (I noted a complete lack of surprise on her part :).

I decided to pull out the throttle body and take a look.  Sure enough there
was some gunk built up inside it.  I cleaned it out and reinstalled it,
proud of myself that I found and corrected this problem so easily.  I went
to reattach the accelerator cable and came up short.

At this point I decided that it would be a good idea to check the pedal (no
that wasn't it), and the cable.  Recently we had some heavy snow (the wet
sticky kind) and apparantly a large lump of it had frozen to the accelerator
cable.  It must have come loose from the bottom of the van and gotten itself
wedged between the driveline and one of the rails (I have a syncro gl).
Naturally after breaking this off everything was fine.  My wife pointed out
that had I left it alone the ice would have melted with our warmer
temperatures and taken care of the problem. (She really is supportive, she
just enjoys my love/hate relationship with the vanagon).

The moral of this story?  I have worked on computer systems (networks
mostly) for the last 20 years.  I have conditioned myself to always look for
the easy fix first as it is more pleasant finding first than it is last.

Geez, I let my guard down for one minute.

(I really am smiling about this now!)

Dave Williams

'87 Syncro GL