Hello everyone!  New Vanagon owner here!  My wife and I are the proud owner
of a 1985 Vanagon GL, 184,330 miles, slight surface rust, interior in fair
to good condition, and it runs - just not real well.  And we got one heck of
a good deal for it, at least we think so.  Also, the heads do not leak!!!!
Basically a perfect 1st time project vehicle for me.

I have a couple of questions, the most important to me right now being the
engine.  I haven't received my Bentley's manual, but it is on its way and
should be here in a few days.  Also, I did do a search on the newsgroup but
didn't see anything pertaining to this problem.  I must admit I didn't read
every hit that the search found.

The engine.  It starts up billowing huge, HUGE amounts of white smoke and
does not idle until driven around the block a couple of three time.  Once it
does warm up and will idle, the smoke pretty much disappears, from what I
can tell.  The compression tests for the cylinders are as follows:

#1 120 psi, #2 140, #3 140 and #4 180.  The Chilton manual I referenced gave
the specs for compression at 116 - 189 psi.

I'm thinking that even though I have good compression, or fairly good except
for #1, but billowing all the smoke is that the rings are worn.  Any
thoughts?  Do I need to do just a top end or full blown overhaul.

As far as idling rough, I saw a picture of an engine from a van being sold
on eBay and noticed that the way my fuel lines are run, particullarly from
the fuel filter, to various places are not exactly the way it was shown in
the picture.  I'm pretty sure that mine is jerry-rigged all to hell.  But
that is for another discussion and can wait until the Bentley manual comes
in.  I don't want to try and describe the routings since I don't know the
name of all the pieces parts yet.  Kind of hard to visualize when all the
parts are described as the thing-a-ma-bob is connected to the do-hickey.
And I'm sure there are other considerations to what is causing rough idle.

Sorry for the long email.  I will try to keep future ones down to the bare
minimum.

Thanks -- Curt