

| Subject: | Odd Intermittent Source |
| From: | The Gunnings |
| Date: | Thu, 20 Jul 2000 06:33:17 -0400 |
While trying to trace the source of an intermittent cutting-off of my 85 1.9 waterboxer, I have come across an unusual source for this problem. I think of this as the Nearly-Empty-Bottle-Of-Ketchup source of an intermittent running problem. In my rig, the coil is nestled on the left firewall, squarely facing the front of the vehicle, and under the "High Voltage" double relay black box. The primary coil wire is forward facing on a level plane perpendicular to normal gravitational force. Have had a recent problem where when I sometimes hit a small bump, my engine would cut-off. I would then open up the engine compartment, jiggle a few wires and be on my way, again. I naturally wondered, hey, what's the skinny! Yesterday, my jiggling finally paid off. I was able to narrow my pursuit down to the primary coil wire from the coil to the centre of the distributor. It turned-out that the problem was related to the natural slamming of the rear hatch, whereas the primary coil wire was being jolted out of contact by the slamming action of the hatch, and it's forward facing position. Kinda like what you do when trying to get that last slug of ketchup from the bottom ot the bottle, whacking the bottom of the ketchup bottle with the palm of your hand. Because of the horizontal forward facing position of the coil, every time I slammed the rear hatch (bottom of the ketchup bottle, so to speak) the coil wire was being slowly nudged forward with co-operation from the silent action of Newton's Third Law. Should I blame Newton for this? David
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