never hurts to listen around the engine with a 'listening tube' .......
a rubber tube about 18 niches long, about 3/8 inside diameter ......
hold one end to your ear ......move the other end around a running engine
.....
when you find the source of the noise ........like get the hose about 2
inches from the noise source.....it's often quite obvious.

for listening to internal things.........I use a long hardwood stick.  One
end against yer ear, the other end you rest on the thing you want to listen
too.
Lots of bearing noises going on here and there, injectors clicking, etc.
Lots of fun.

It does seem to me that often there is an assumption, or a 'jump' to a
diagnosis, which sometimes results in doing what we thought was 'the
indicated repair' .......only to find out it's something else. Professional
shops do this about half the time - lol !
but really ..........'spending time inspecting and diagnosising carefully'
........and often it's not hard to do either.  Just look, inspect, listen,
etc.
Half the time ........just like Ken's thing here.......
it's not 'a part' like most people apparently go to immediately .......'it
must be a part.'
*At least* half the time .......it's not a part.........it's something that
needs to be tightened, cleaned, serviced, or adjusted.   A huge majority of
vanagon repair and restoration I do just involves cleaning, adjusting,
tweaking, some rust repair etc......rather than 'a part.'

if we broke vanagon fuel injection problems into 3 general areas.........'a
part' ........the wiring harness, or just cleaning/adjusting.........
half the time it's the last one, maybe 40 % of the time it is 'a part'
......or parts, and only a small percentage of the time it's the wiring
harness itself ......
and even when it is.......it's usually poor connections, which falls under
cleaning/adjusting/tweaking usually.
  a huge portion of functional issues , getting them working right again, is
a matter of UNdoing the neglect the poor thing has suffered over the years
since the last time something was touched.  At least on most of the vanaogns
I see........that's what it usually is .......just a matter of reversing the
affect of neglect, which means, lube, adjust, clean, etc. etc.   Besides,
some new parts aren't as good as the older original style ones.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenneth Lewis" <kdlewis@NORTHSTATE.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:25 AM
Subject: Re: Alternator hum or whine

> Joe,
> This reminds me of an alternator whine I put up with for a couple of
> weeks. Turned out to be a vacuum whistle from the intake manifold behind
> the alternator. A quarter of a turn on the big bolt fixed it. Boy, did I
> feel stupid.
>
>
> Ken Lewis
> http://neksiwel.20m.com/