Blake-
 your valves may be over-adjusted and not closing all the way as a result, losing compression. LAter style heads have only one-half turn valve adjustment screw increments. If you turned the adjuster screws two turns or more, this could be the problem.
This happened to me after replacing head gaskets on a friend WBX-couldn't get it right for three days until a tech friend told me about this.  

Robert
1982 Westfalia
1987 Wolfsburg

----- Original Message -----
Wrom: VRESKPNKMBIPBA
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 4:09 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Help Vanagon stuck in Chico, CA

To all vanagon techies!

I'm Stuck in Chico, CA and need to get back to Sacramento by tomorrow
morning for work.  Here is my situation.

Yestday, I took it on myself to retorque my heads per the torqure rating in
the Bently manual.  I removed the rocker arms and retorqued the 8 nuts on
each head and then reinstalled the rocker arms.  Everything went as planned.
  However now when I turned the starter on the van the engine acts like it
has no compression and will not start.  I have plenty of fuel and spark.  It
ran just fine before I removed the rocker arms.

I was told that the hydraulic lifters have re-adjusted themselves.  One
solution was disable the fuel and spark and crank the engine until the
lifters settled back in and the valves would close fully again, creating
full compression.  So I canked the engine a long time (5 min total) and
still it sounds like it doesn't have compression.  I reattached the spark
and fuel and I'll get one ignition puff on the first two cranks and that it.

How can I get my compression back?  Do I have to re-adjust all of the
valves?

Please respond as soon as possible.  I need to get home tonight!

Much thanks to this wonderful list.

-Blake Heinlein
blakeheinlein@hotmail.com

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