My wife's Carat developed a rough idle  over the last couple of weeks
        which I thought would be cured by some fuel system cleaner when I got
        my hands on the vehicle long enough to do it...as it turns out, today
        the Carat stalled pulling out of our driveway and again at the corner
        stop sign as my wife drove off on a kid dropoff/pickup mission. It
        would hesitate and stall under light throttle. More determined
        application of throttle would get it running somewhat smoothly.

        As she was about to pull out again later in the afternoon, I, for the
        first time, heard the van stutter and stall...and my wife cranking
        it over a number of times before it would run, sputtering. This time
        I used the camper to do the kid fetch and then began trying to
        isolate the cause of the suddenly poor running. The Carat would idle
        but not take light throttle without sputtering and almost stalling.
        A quick check around the engine compartment showed nothing out of
        place and everything connected to where it should be connected.
        Having experienced a similar problem with rough running several
        years ago with this Vanagon, I checked that each each plug wire was
        properly seated on the plug end and in distributor cap. While doing
        this I felt a shock from the coil wire on top of the distributor!
        Turning the ignition off, I touched the coil wire to pull it off and
        found the boot and casing hot to the touch... When I pulled on the
        boot, the coil wire almost fell apart in my fingers!!  Source of
        problem found.

        But that's not the end of this story. Unfortunately, when the plug
        and coil wires were replaced two years ago, I didn't keep the three
        seemingly good plug wires and coil wire. So I spent a couple of
        hours this afternoon hunting for the *correct* coil wire. None of the
        franchise FLAPS carried anything close to the proper part. The three
        closest VW dealers parts departments only had COMPLETE ignition
        wiring kits for $80+. I finally got a pointer from another FLAPS
        to a place called Peninsula Auto Parts who had an EXACT matching
        coil wire which he pulled off a display behind the counter!

        After much aggravation, the bill came to $ 4.37 including sales tax...

        The Carat runs smoothly...now.

      OLTECO                         Ari Ollikainen
      P.O. BOX 3688                  Networking Technology and Architecture
      Stanford, CA                   Ari@OLTECO.com
      94309-3688                     415.517.3519