With 185,000 miles on my 85, and some "bogging" problems similar to Squirrel, I'm thinking of doing this as a preventative measure.� Would you recommend sliding the PCB "towards" or "away" from the center of arc of the wiper?� And, I've never removed the top cover from the AFM; can this be done with the AFM sitting in the engine compartment or is it advised to remove AFM and do it on the benchtop?

Rich 
San Diego

--- On Wed, 8/11/10, Tom Young <tomyoung1@COMCAST.NET> wrote:

From: Tom Young <tomyoung1@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Re: AFM track cleaning wisdom
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 2:54 PM

As I recall, and I may be wrong, the issue here with the AFM track isn't
that it's dirty, it's that hours and hours of wear and tear at a particular
spot actually result in the surface material being etched away, causing the
ECU to think "Oh, the AFM's vane is closed!" and reacting accordingly.� So
I'm not sure that cleaning has much to offer here.

I've had good results by opening up the AFM (air-cooled, and I'm assuming
the water-cooled engine's AFMs are the same), removing the 4 screws that
hold the wiper circuit board, removing the circuit board itself and then
ovalizing the 4 holes in the board that the screws pass through.� You can
then re-install the circuit board in just a slightly different position,
giving the wiper a new track to pass over.

Tom Young

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"" <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:30 PM
Subject: AFM track cleaning wisdom

> My mechanic dude suggested the the cause of the engine's periodic but
> brief loss of power during grade climbs last week might be a dirty spot
> on the AFM track and suggested gently cleaning it with a pencil eraser.
>
> I opened it once before, a few years ago, to move the wiper to a fresh
> bit of track. I'll open it again to clean the track.
>
> Is the pencil eraser trick good enough, or would it benefit to use some
> kinda cleaner?
>
> --
> Rocky J Squirrel
> 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> 74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
> Bend, OR
> KG6RCR
>