I love it when it's easy.... Poor running fixed

[sanchius]

My Vanagon had been running poorly lately, down on power, weak acceleration at speed, classic plugged catalytic converter, feels-like-its-running-on-3-cylinders, symptoms.

I had reset the valve clearances a couple weeks ago, then had some travel and now that I was back, it still just didn't feel right.

I wasn't rushing to fix it, I'm bike commuting to work 15miles each way both to work off all those ribeyes from last winter and because it's such a nice ride (nothing beats riding past Udi's Bread Co bake facility early in the morning when they've got a batch of raisin cinnamon bread in the ovens), so I'm too tired in the evenings to debug it and not really in need of a vehicle anyway.

So it sat while I thought about it... But it was still bugging me... Summer is going by too quickly and our camping escape vehicle was not running right.

Last weekend I pulled the cat & muffler expecting to find a broken or plugged cat matrix, but it looked fine and flowed well. Nope. ???WTF is it???

Spent the week thinking about it...

Timing? Nope, dead on.

Distributor cap or wires? Nope, everything checked out fine and is firing as it should.

Think think think...

OK, maybe my air intake hose in the rear pillar is collapsing, that's easy to check, disconnect the rotary dust trap upstream of the AFM and take it for a test spin. no joy.

This is weird, what else could it be???

Alright, maybe a vacuum leak or a dropped/damaged valve (ugh, $$$$). I picked up a 2" plastic pipe cap to attach an air hose quick-disconnect so I could push some air into the intake with my leak-down tester in a controlled manner and listen for the hiss of escaping air via the hose-to-ear trick. I was pulling the AFM off to attach the air cap when I notice that the one fuel injector lead that was missing it's retaining wire wasn't attached right. Ah Ha! I must have dislodged it when I was resetting the valve clearances.

Plug it in, take it for a test drive, problem solved!

The day in pics here: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7272633#7272633

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[dhaavers]

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Your story: Simple things first! Congrats on a successful result.

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86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
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