Hello,

It is easy enough to rig a temporary fuel pressure gauge to diagnose engine
problems, but this doesn't help you when your driving down the road and it
starts acting up.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to monitor the fuel
pressure in real-time?  What about installing a VDO pressure sender in the
fuel rail and then running it up to the oil pressure gauge?  My oil pressure
gauge goes up to about 5 bar, which is about 70 psi.  This would work great
for the fuel system which runs around 32 psi.  The only other addition would
be a switch to toggle between the fuel pressure and oil pressure senders.
For those of us who already have an oil pressure gauge installed this would
be a pretty painless addition since the senders are pretty cheap.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Jake 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On Behalf Of
Roger Van Till
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 5:14 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: intermittent stumbling, stalling etc

Have you checked fuel pressure AND flow?
Is your CHT sensor good? You can check that with a meter at different
temps (ambient air vs. after a hot water bath).

Roger

On Mar 5, 2006, at 2:50 PM, jake beaulieu wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> Alright, I have an 82 air cooled Vanagon, Federal model, so no O2
> sensor to
> worry about.  When running the van will unexpectedly begin to totally
> bog
> down, total loss of power, barely able to keep it running.  If I let
> up on
> the accelerator it will die.  When restarted it will continue to do
> this for
> 1-10 minutes, then all of a sudden it will run fine again.  5 minutes
> down
> the road it will do it again.  Sometimes it only last about 30
> seconds, then
> runs excellent again.  So it is an intermittent problem, a very
> frustrating
> type of gremlin to chase.  I have spliced new terminals to all of the
> fuel
> injection grounds (including the tranny to chassis ground).  I am not
> sure
> where to look next.  If it is some sort of intermittent short in the
> wiring
> it could be anywhere!  Any ideas out there?
>
> PS. The AFM checks out according to Bentley
>
> Thanks,
> Jake
>