Larry,

according to the Bentley (and my own 85 Vanagon), it does indeed have
a hall sensor and generator.

Cheers,

-Kyle

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:02:44 -0500, Larry Alofs <lalofs@rcn.com> wrote:
> I have not had Hall sensor problems with a Vanagon, but I just went thru
> it with a '94 Golf.  This one would fail intermittently, which made it
> so much more interesting to track down.  On the Golf it doesn't kill the
> engine, it just puts it into a default mode which was rich enough to
> make it fail emissions testing.  I finally caught it in the act using an
> oscilloscope (not convenient on the road).  You may be able to monitor
> it with an LED.  In the Golf, the ECU supplies +5 V and the Hall
> circuitry in the distributor makes and breaks a connection to ground.  I
> don't know if the Vanagon approach is the same.
>    I don't even know if an '85 has a Hall sensor.
>
> good luck,
> Larry A.