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sanchius 
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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 Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:13 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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| sanchius wrote: |
| ...a frustratingly intermittent no-spark/no-start... |
I've been really spoiled with this van, it has run like a champ ever since it was reawoken from its 8-year hibernation.
With manual steering and no AC, it has been the most powerful and most reliable 2.1L I've ever driven.
But recently, though it cranks strongly, I'm not getting any spark.
I spent the day yesterday chasing this down.
Step 0. Get set up.Van in neutral with the parking brake engaged HARD.
Put the battery on the charger to ensure full voltage and to keep it topped up in case I end up doing a lot of cranking.
Set up the timing light so I can see it from the front to confirm whether or not there is spark when I turn the key.
Consider installing a remote starting switch in the back, but decided not to get side tracked from the task at hand.
When cranked, I hear the fuel pump come on, then sometimes get a single brief flash from the timing light at the beginning and end of the crank, sometimes not. Step 1. Check the ignition switch because it's so simple.This is more to rule the ignition switch out as I don't expect this to be the problem.
After melting the ignition switch on my old Syncro, I relayed the headlights and the heater fan to remove these killer loads from the switch.
All this was transferred to the 2WD from the Syncro wreck.
The plastic connector shows no sign of the thermal overload that I've seen before in overstressed ignition switches.
I swap in two of the spare ignition switches I keep under the seat.
Nope, still no spark, no start. Step 2. Check the Hall sensor in the distributor.This intermittent no spark feels like a hall-sensor wiring failure I once had on my old Syncro.
I have a rather vivid memory of cruising happily along at full power when suddenly the engine quit and would not restart....
at full speed...
in dense traffic...
on the I-80 interstate...
on a busy holiday weekend...
INSIDE the ~2mile long Eisenhower Tunnel under the Loveland Pass summit.
Fortunately, it was near the end of the tunnel on the downhill side, traffic was moving and I was able to coast the rest of the way out of the tunnel and off to the side, at which point it immediately restarted.
This hall sensor is suspect because the plastic connector mount is loose & floppy, it's held on with a zip-tie and it fails this test.
With the ignition on, I have power at the two outer hall sensor connector contacts and, when the center contact is grounded, I get spark and hear the injectors pulse. Here's a nice video walk through of this test. Step 3. Replace the suspect Hall sensor.It turns out the Hall sensor connector on my spare distributor isn't in good shape, so I look around for a replacement Hall sensor.
I'm impatient and want to get this solved today.
The Hall sensor for my '86 cross references to 1985-92 Golf, Jetta, Passat, Scirocco.
There's a '91 Golf at the nearby Pick-n-Pull, so I go there and pull the distributor with a solid Hall sensor.
I transfer the Golf's Hall sensor into the Vanagon distributor as per this video.
I did this before to fix the Syncro, but this time I was surprised how hard I had to whack the set pin at the bottom of the distributor shaft to extract it.
I reinstalled the fixed distributor in the Vanagon.
Congratulating myself on my cleverness and resourcefulness and, while mentally pouring myself the pint of the microbrew Mrs S. kindly brought home with her, I go to the front and crank it up.
No spark... No start... WTH... Step 4. Research TheSamba for no spark/no start some more.I'm running out of ideas, so I start reading up on what other folks here have encountered.
Could it be the dreaded D15 fuse panel power pin overload? Step 5. Check for D15 pin overload at the fuse panel.I had noticed that the fuel pump (installed 2017) had been getting louder, maybe it was pulling more power.
I pulled down the fuse panel (easy! Just remove the single medium sized Phillips screw on the bottom-center-right of the fuse panel, not the two big Phillips bolts on the panel support frame) and pull out the white D wiring connector block from the back of the panel.
That was it! The infamous D15 connector was clearly scorched.
The collective knowledge of TheSamba is so awesome, I would have never found this myself.
The fix is to relocate this power draw to the much stouter unused pin D23.
I find a compatible connector in one of my old Audi Cabriolet wiring harnesses that I had harvested years ago. Fortunately, I also have a spare Vanagon fuse panel (black rectangular box in lower right below) with which I can check and double-check the fit to the D23 connection.
I extract the Audi connector, but not before I violate my own rule to never operate a razor knife without gloves and slice my thumb open.
After taking a break to bandage myself up, I wire the new connector into pin 23 in the van, confident that this is the problem.
I give the key a turn and it roars to life! Congratulating myself on my cleverness and resourcefulness and, while mentally pouring myself the pint of the microbrew Mrs S. kindly brought home with her, I shut it down and prepare to clean up.
But, out of years of experience and overall general paranoia, I make the mistake of trying to restart it.
No spark... No start... WTH...
The sun has set, I'm tired, so I close up the van and call it a day.
I thought this was going to be relatively straight forward to resolve, but I'm clearly missing something here.
I think the next step is to construct this simple Hall sensor diagnostic tool and crazyvwvanman's dead van wiring bypass tool
--
Luna is really tired of sitting in the driveway and getting grouchy about my general ineptitude in getting this issue sorted.
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dobryan
Samba Member
Joined: March 24, 2006
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Location: Brookeville, MD
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Abscate
Samba Member
Joined: October 05, 2014
Posts: 22668
Location: NYC/Upstate/ROW
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:46 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Fresh set of hands and senses tomorrow
Never forget they even when you don’t fault find successfully, you are still fixing things that need to be put right. That D23 terminal wasn’t far from killing You
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Jeffrey Lee
Samba Member
Joined: February 04, 2014
Posts: 1488
Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 2:42 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Tuna displays the typical emotional spectrum of Vanagon ownership.
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Jake de Villiers
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Joined: October 24, 2007
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Location: Tsawwassen, BC
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:39 am Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Mrs S wanted to get out of Reno for a bit and, frankly, I could use a break as well, so we headed west to spend a few relaxed days with family in the Bay area. Unfortunately, because Luna is so Alpha and delights in rolling my brother's gentle small Labradoodles up into terrified screaming little balls (though never hurting them), she is no longer a welcome guest there and had to remain back at the Reno house with the dog sitter.
We spent the first day leisurely visiting the coast's many beautiful beaches on an exhilarating high wave-energy day and scouting some places around Half Moon Bay for one of the kid's upcoming honeymoon next fall.
The next day I accompanied Mrs S as she carried out some acoustical sampling of some of the city's large cathedrals and basilicas, as well as took in an early-music concert to enjoy some of the greatest hits of 1575.
After she was finished working with the sound engineer at Grace Cathedral, we walked around Nob Hill and saw someone living it right. I just wish I had a bottle of penetrol to leave with them to revive that faded pop-top.
Finally, we spent a little bit of time prepping another brother's new rare Volvo 123GT Amazon that we'll run, alongside his well-sorted P1800, in the upcoming SF->Tahoe->SF Cal-Neva twisty back-road classic car Snowball Rally at the end of April.
Team Pegamoose. Fortunately, the Snowball Rally is quite a bit tamer than this Volvo-rich Swedish demolition-derby..
Back in cold, snowy, Reno, my non-starting van continues to sit sadly in the driveway, stubbornly resisting my efforts to get it going again.
But, all the diodes, resistors and LEDs to construct the test gear arrived while we were away, so I can get stated constructing the simple Hall sensor diagnostic tool and crazyvwvanman's dead van wiring bypass tool. Everything was so cheap relative to the shipping that I bought 5x the parts to share with other local van owners. I'm not an electonics expert, so I guessed at specs of the bits below based on thesamba descriptions. Let me know if I got anything wrong. And if you are in the Reno area and want to get together next weekend to construct & test these tools, send me a PM.
www.westfloridacomponents.com
Item # Description Qty
DI801AHK02 T6A05L 6A05L 6A 6 Amp 50V Axial Diode Rectifiers 10
R054 3W 10K ohm Metal Oxide Resistor 5
LED066 Yellow 5mm 12V Round LEDS BSD-1524-OUY 5
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:30 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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I took a couple more runs at my persistent no-spark/no-start problem this week. To test for spark I have my timing light hooked to plug wire #1, with the timing light trigger zip-tied permanently on, and pointing forward where I can see the light when turning the ignition switch.
Even though grounding the center Hall sensor plug with the ignition on gave me strong spark and an injectors pulse, indicating the coil was OK, I ordered a new coil, spark plug wires and distributor cap and rotor, all which were elderly and needed to be renewed anyway. While waiting for them to arrive, I built the the simple Hall sensor diagnostic tool and crazyvwvanman's dead van wiring bypass tool. I also found a good spare distributor to test with while going though my parts boxes.
First I tested both distributors with the Hall sensor diagnostic tool and they both checked out OK.
When I applied the dead van wiring bypass tool, the engine turned over strongly, but I still didn't get spark.
I wasn't sure to do with that result.
I closed it up and went in to think about it some more.
Two days ago, the new parts arrived and I installed them one-by-one.
First the cap & rotor, no spark; then the wires, no spark; I finally got strong steady spark and a good start after replacing the coil.
All right, it was the coil, it must have been able to deliver single jolts in the Hall ground test, but wasn't up to sustained operation.
I swapped in my spare distributor to make sure it ran OK and it did.
Great, it's finally fixed!
I reinstalled the original distributor and.... no spark/no start.
I was completely baffled.... It was working just a minute ago.... WTF???
I closed it up and went in to think about it some more.
Maybe the ECU was bad as well? Maybe be an internal wire break in the Hall sensor plug lead?
Tonight I put out a call on the Reno Van facebook page to see if anyone had a spare ECU to test with and went out to start checking the ECU pins via the Digifant ProTraining guide.
But out of habit I first tried a test start and got the expected no spark/no start.
Just to double-check, I moved the timing light inductive pickup to the center distributor wire going to the coil and test started again. Steady spark/no start.
That's really, really strange, it's gotta be something with the distributor, which was working fine before.
I went back and started laughing when I looked down and saw the new distributor rotor sitting out with the tools, next to the engine bay.
I hadn't put it back in when I reinstalled the original distributor two days earlier.
Once the rotor was in, with the engine covers off the engine started with a roar, waking a startled Tuna up from a sound sleep up in the front seat. It's sure nice to have this finally fixed.
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proofpudding
Samba Member
Joined: March 02, 2012
Posts: 83
Location: Nanoose Bay, BC
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| Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:56 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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What a roller coaster. Was the distributor the final fix — hard to keep track there at the end.
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Abscate
Samba Member
Joined: October 05, 2014
Posts: 22668
Location: NYC/Upstate/ROW
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| Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:55 am Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Tuna: woof woof woof woof coil woof. Big puff of Husky Glitter.
Translation: it was the coil.
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 7:03 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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We got one good drive in and the no-spark returned.
The good news is that it's not the ECU, as it continued no-spark with a known good ECU.
The bad news is that it's not the ECU as that would be a very quick and easy fix.
It cranks strongly, the injectors are firing, I get a strong spark when I ground the center connector of the Hall sender plug, the Hall sender tests OK.
Now I'm looking at the wiring. I've got 0 volts at the red stud in the black engine junction box and the source wire from the alternator is in very bad shape.
At least the weather is nice and the flowering trees are beautiful for sitting in the driveway.... some more.
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shagginwagon83
Samba Member
Joined: February 07, 2016
Posts: 3800
Location: VA/TN
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| Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 8:16 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Man I want a wolf companion to travel with me.
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:09 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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I finally solved the intermittent spark issue I was having.
As I was going through the digifant protraining steps, the problem seemed more and more to be a voltage supply problem rather than a Hall or coil problem. And it was.
The question I was asking also changed from "What's going on here?" to "How was this thing ever running in the first place?"
The power line between the starter to the alternator came apart in my hand at the starter (first pic below), the other end of that line had an intermittent connection at the alternator and the power line from the alternator to the stud in the junction box in the front/right corner of the engine bay was toast (second pic below).
I replaced both wires and I had a van again.
It was so nice to finally be able to get out on the mountain bike and do a couple laps of the park with Tuna, then hit some dirt again in one of the nearby canyons this evening.
Sanchius and Tuna ride again!
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Abscate
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| Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:43 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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That top one shows classic vibration failure. Cycling weakened the wire inside the crimp connector until it parted.
Solution , new connector plus vibration relief on the connector; a zip tie to secure that wire would prevent That.
Woof , said the Husky...
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crazyvwvanman
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danfromsyr
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| Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 7:55 am Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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I've found as many melted Alternator harnesses as seeping fuel lines..
it's the 2nd thing I replace after fuel lines on new to me vans.
glad you finally got it worked out.
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Abscate
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| Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:16 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Sanchius...bring a new wire all the way around that existing loom and either put in inside or zip tie it to the existing
A small loop will take the shake off the electrical connector and stop fatigue failure.
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:52 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Thanks for the wiring pointers. Since I have a couple other power wire projects in mind, I picked up the wire, lugs and hydraulic crimper to make those wires myself.
It's so nice to have the van on the road again.
Mrs S and I used it to go for a long bike ride in the morning along the middle Truckee River in Reno. In the afternoon, I took it for a 90 mile loop following the lower Truckee out to Fernley to pick up some gear for the rally this weekend, then to the river's desert terminus up at Pyramid Lake on the Northern Paiute reservation, and then back to Reno.
Along the way there were some nice old iron bridges spanning the river
miles and miles of empty road leading up to the lake,
and strange carbonaceous rock formations along the lake.
Further up the lake, I found a beautiful quiet spot to stop, pull out a camp chair and a book to sit and read in the shade of the van, while having my curry chicken lunch, watching the pelicans and listening to waves lap on the shore.
The entire time the van ran like a champ and started strongly every time.
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Last edited by sanchius on Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dobryan
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Paulbeard
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| Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:36 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Sanchius and this thread are a reason to keep a tab open to this site.
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sanchius
Samba Member
Joined: May 03, 2007
Posts: 1452
Location: IN
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| Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:17 pm Post subject: Re: Sanchius and Tuna ride again... |
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Thanks for the kind words, it's always nice to get that sort of feedback.
Logistics yesterday meant that Tunes needed to stay home, so we made sure we took her on our outing today.
First, we spent some time at the Reno Bike Project coop fitting some new pedals and retaping the handlebars on Mrs S's road bike.
Since Lead Dog Brewing was just a block or so down the street, we stopped in to see what they had, but there wasn't anything there to my liking.
Then we went on a slow ride with Tuna along the Truckee River in far west Reno on the Tahoe-Pyramid bike path.
We hadn't been on this section before and really enjoyed it.
Tunes is good for 3-4 miles, then starts to flag, but never gives up.
It was starting to warm up, so we kept the pace down and Luna well watered.
We planned the ride so it terminated at the Brewer's Cabinet's new tap room at their production facility in West Reno.
There we sipped on a yummy beer while chatting with a wide spectrum of fine folks from all over the world. We'll definitely be going back there.
Luna was so tuckered out that she just sprawled out on the cool concrete floor and swooped on any stray pretzels that came near.
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