A quick update:

Approx 5 years of gradually worsening Vanagon Syndrome, followed by
dramatic worsening this past year. Nearly everything suggested by listees
tried and had no effect. Finally swapped my ECU into Mark Keller's good
running van a month back, and caused his to run poorly, although not as
bad as mine. Then, last weekend, borrowed a good ECU from Bjorn,
which immediately made my van run better. Swapped back & forth a few
times to confirm - mine would sputter & stall within 10 seconds, Bjorn's ran
like a champ all the way home.
Tonight I wondered whether the suggestions of re-flowing all the solder
joints could fix my ECU (I had previously done just the connector joints),
so I set about the smaller daughterboard first, then tried it in the van.
Sputtered within 10-15 seconds. Back to the iron, I moved to ugly looking
mainboard (I've seen 70s AM radios with nicer looking boards...), and
decided to concentrate on the most suspect points. Then I noticed an ugly
looking pin on the largest red cap on the corner of the board - it had nearly
*no* solder on it, and some black signs of arc-ing. Fixed it up, dropped in
the van, and it ran without a miss down the street & back.
It could be too early to celebrate, but I'm fairly certain that either my fixed
ECU, or Bjorn's good one may just be the end of VS for a while... fingers
crossed. :-)

So... check those solder joints carefully  - I don't know how I missed this
the first time.

--
Shawn Wright
http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright
'88 Westy 375k
'85 Jetta D 263k
'85 Jetta TD 482k (retired)
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