Hi,

  I am having trouble with the '85 Westy my wife and I have in Europe.
  We came here and picked it up in Munchen, but only got to the border
  of France when trouble started. We are currently in a small village in Alsace.

  While driving the 1.9l wasserboxer first lost power and backfired on
  steep uphills, then shortly started loosing power at any time, until
  we had to creep off the highway on idle until the next exit.

  We luckily ended up at a supermarket with some limited auto supplies.
  During the day today I tried:

  Measured resistances on airflow meter. Both temp sender and airflow
  checks ok. Temp sender is 2kohm. For the air flow the resistance is varying
  when pushed as expected.

  The engine idles well and idle rpm is steady. When rpm is raised to
  about 4000 under no load the engine stumbles, rpm drops and sometimes
  it backfires. With the intent to see if it was a fuel-air mixture problem
  I tried to enrichen and lean the mixture by poking the air flow meter
  flap a little. (At least this is the effect I hoped it would have)
  This did not seem to help.

  We test drove a bit around the village roads.
  During driving the stumbling can come at any time. Sometimes power comes
  back after a backfire, sometimes the engine dies. It will restart without
  problem after dying.

  In case the problem was related to sticky valves I bought and used some
  valve cleaning gas additative, and did an oilchange with an engine flushing
  and cleaning substance (said it could unstick valves on bottle - smelled
  and felt like kerosene).

  Before the trip compression tested ok (10,10,10,9.5bar) I don't have
  a compression tester with me.

  Anyone has ideas for what else to test? I have a basic socket set and
  a multimeter with me. I also recall some posts years ago fixing
  stumbling problems with a capacitor over the" air flow meter output.
  Anyone recalls details. (I somehow failed to find it in
  the archives under capacitor and stumble)

  Failing finding the problem we will try to make it back to Germany.
  Anyone knows how to find a good mechanic in or near Saarbruecken?
  (we're about 20km south of Saarbruecken now)

  Thanks,
  Martin

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