It's not the noisy flat lifter, that's a feature of the WBX engine, though it can cause a miss until it pumps up.  Could be a weak battery combined with a weak alternator, it was in my case anyway. Have them both tested.

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Jared Planter
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 10:53 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Van wants to stall at start..but only sometimes

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