Over the past year I have had a lot of troubles with the fuel injection
system on my 82 air cooled Westy.  The symptoms included a very weird idle,
hard starting when cold, and finally progressed to an intermittent extreme
rich running condition that totally shut down the van (see below for more
info).  I have sent in several messages to the list asking for help and I
received the standard responses: check the temp sensors, check your grounds,
test the FI per the Bentley, etc.  Well I did all that, and everything
checked out fine.  By the process of elimination I began to suspect the ECU.
This suggestion was met with a good bit of skepticism by several list
members.  I finally managed to track down a reasonably priced used ECU and
presto, problem solved.  It is nice to have a running van again!

On the road again,
Jake
82 air cooled Westy

On Mar 5, 2006, at 2:50 PM, jake beaulieu wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> Alright, I have an 82 air cooled Vanagon, Federal model, so no O2 
> sensor to
> worry about.  When running the van will unexpectedly begin to totally 
> bog
> down, total loss of power, barely able to keep it running.  If I let 
> up on
> the accelerator it will die.  When restarted it will continue to do 
> this for
> 1-10 minutes, then all of a sudden it will run fine again.  5 minutes 
> down
> the road it will do it again.  Sometimes it only last about 30 
> seconds, then
> runs excellent again.  So it is an intermittent problem, a very 
> frustrating
> type of gremlin to chase.  I have spliced new terminals to all of the 
> fuel
> injection grounds (including the tranny to chassis ground).  I am not 
> sure
> where to look next.  If it is some sort of intermittent short in the 
> wiring
> it could be anywhere!  Any ideas out there?
>
> PS. The AFM checks out according to Bentley
>
> Thanks,
> Jake
>