Hey all,

So I have been meaning to introduce myself (instead of just lurking)  
and since I have had my first official van disaster I thought I would  
kill two birds with one stone.

3 months ago my wife and I bought an 87 westy and have been in love  
with it ever since. I just recently found out about this list and  
subscribed - let me tell you this place has been so useful already! (I  
cant believe the oil filler extends!)

All that being said - I had my first disaster with the van today. I  
was out picking my wife up and I started loosing power and couldn't  
keep the RPMs up above 1200. It was like I was trying to start in the  
highest gear. The weird thing though is that it would do it even when  
I put it in neutral. I kept having to pull over and restart the  
engine. This would solve the problem for anywhere between a few blocks  
to not at all. The one thing that I did do to limp it home was that  
every time I lost power I would stomp the pedal which seemed to give  
me back a burst of power and doing that I was able to rocket myself  
along with the occasional boosts of speed.

Other info - 1987 vanagon westy
- Automatic tranny
- It first started while the engine was warming up but continued after  
it had gotten up to the regular running temp
- I live in Ontario Canada and today it was blizzarding a nice wet  
slushy snowfall (as an aside I hope Santa brings me winter tires)
- A similar kind of thing happened once before on a cold damp morning  
but it just happened once then went away.

Any ideas I could check out prior to taking it to a mechanic would be  
great - or if this has been discussed in the list before a keyword to  
do a search for would be great!

Thanks everyone,

James