Here is something strange. I too had the bucking AFM problem. Not bad
around town but murder on my occasional trips to Richmond from Virginia
Beach (200 round trip). About two weeks ago I replaced the old "third party"
muffler I had been using for the last few years with a genuine VW muffler.
Things smoothed out immediately. Today I made another Richmond trip. Not a
hint of the old bucking!
   In all of the bucking/hesitation threads I have read here on the list I
recall none that mentioned anything about the muffler. Is this a coincidence
or did the muffler change actually fix something?

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 5:51 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Bucking Fixed by removing AFM harness

I just spoke to a customer today who had originally called me to buy a ECU.
He was that desperate to get his van to run properly without bucking.
I encouraged him to check a few more things first before buying such an
expensive part.  He called me today to thank me for not selling him the ECU.
He had discovered the problem and shared what he found with me.

He had the AFM capacitor fix harness installed on the van when he bought it
and it had always bucked, etc.  He replaced oxygen sensor and other wear
items trying to find the problem.  Finally he decided to remove the add-on
harness for the AFM fix and it seems to have solved his problem.  So perhaps
this harness had some bad solder joints or a bad capacitor.

Just wanted to share this with the List.  If you are experiencing the
bucking
problem and you have the harness installed, you might want to eliminate it
as
part of your troubleshooting just to be sure that it is not part of the
problem.

Hope this helps,
Ken Wilford
http://www.vanagain.com
John 3:16
Phone: (856)-765-1583
Shop:   (856)-327-0027
Fax:     (856)-327-2242