At 06:34 PM 2/7/2009, David Marshall wrote:
>The issue here is the pigtail isn't a cure for the problem rather a mask.

Not always -- the hideously over-engineered pigtail and the $2
capacitor fix will each mitigate the effects of a worn AFM track, as
you say -- but the pigtail was originally designed to compensate for
an occasional problem of resonance of the AFM vane leading to a
similar confounding of the ECU logic.

The ability to temporarily cure the difficulty by shutting off the
key even for an instant is more-or-less diagnostic for one or the
other of these problems.

I incidentally first experienced this on a lonely road in Scotland in
Dutiful Passage before I owned her, and long before I'd heard of the
syndrome, this list or of the dreaded 3-4 slider crackage which the
following week cost my sister about three thousand pun' at Norrie's
of Forfar, the local dealer (who simply swapped in a rebuilt 091/1
from VWAG, they knew nought of the innards of the thing).  That would
have been in November '90, I believe.

Also incidentally, I drove it for a year with the British plates
after the Navy delivered it to the docks at Bayonne NJ where I took
ownership.  No further signs of Vanagon Syndrome until the AFM track
started wearing out quite some time later.  And the three policemen
who showed curiosity during that year looked through the inch of
paperwork that came with the beast and went away happy...

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"