Hi all,

My wife and I purchased an 87 automatic 2WD westy back in March of this
year and have been having a great time with her. We've done a fair amount
of upgrades in areas we feel are important, especially since we will be
living in her full-time come early 2017.

She runs rock solid and has given us very few issues. Except for this one
strange issue that has occurred 2 times now. Upon the first start of the
day we'll turn over the engine and it'll appear to be normal at first until
suddenly the RPMs drop to about 600-800 and it sounds like she's about to
stall. You can hear what sounds like the bearings on the pulleys rattling
and a squeaking noise because of the low RPMs. I have found that getting in
and holding the gas pedal at 1K RPMs for a couple of minutes resolves the
issue. Stopping and starting again results in the same symptoms. Again,
this has only happened 2 times - in this exact order.

However, on one separate occasion she was running fine after being started
and I switched into drive before she was warm and then the conditions above
started played out. At that point I switched into park and held the RPMs at
1K otherwise she would have stalled.

We have a known issue with the lifter on cylinder 4, apparently it's a
common issue with Vanagons where the oil pressure drops and needs to be
built back up by driving and then the somewhat knocking sound goes away. It
might be related to this but I am unsure.

Any thoughts or anyone with a similar experience?

Thank you!

Jared