Jeff Tribble wrote:

> Sorry for the long message, but I've got to get all this out now that it's
> fresh in my head.  I've searched the archives to no avail:
>
> I've had intermittent fuel delivery problems for 3 years now.  Once I
> replaced the fuel pump (which had actually failed) and everything was fine.
> Then the pump failed again, so I put a filter between the tank and the pump
> (on California water-cooled's, the fuel filter is between the pump and the
> engine... seems odd).  I still get intermittent stalls and no-starts.  I've
> even had it towed to a mechanic, only to find it starts right up again when
> the tow truck dropped me off - then the mechanic really coulnd't find
> anything wrong.
>
> Most recently (like an hour ago!) it stalled in rushhour traffic and had it
> towed to a thoughtful mechanic.  Luckily, it did NOT start after being
> dropped.  This is what we found: good spark, fuel pump fine.  Here's the
> wierd part: he pulled a fuel injection connection off (the wires from the
> computer to the injector) and put on one of those small bulb testers (which
> lit-up fine).  Then he reconnected to the injector and it started up!  Then
> we turned it off and waited about 5 minutes and then it failed to start
> again!  So he tried the same trick: pulled off one of the injector
> connections, tested it and reconnected it: it started fine!  He's baffled,
> I'm baffled.  He thinks "maybe" the computer, but he's really pretty baffled.
>
> I took the chance on driving it home and it made it all the way.  I rarely
> rev the engine very high, so I thought I'd try that to see if maybe it just
> needed a good high voltage charge.  Oddly, at high RPMs the engine sort of
> sputtered a bit (like not good, clean acceleration).  After doing this a few
> times (about 5-10 good revs in both 2nd and 3rd gear), the acceleration
> became clean and fine.  I"d really like to keep this "bus" but it's kind of
> frustrating having to be careful about carrying stuff around (like music
> instruments) on the off-chance it's just going to die again.
>
> I once heard of a friend's BMW that had a similar problem (wierd intermittent
> stalls) for like 5 years, and it just took someone who REALLY knew how to
> give it a good tune-up to  solve the problem...
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Jeff T.

Maybe the filter between the tank and the fuel pump is mostly blocked.