Vanagon California Smog

I have a 85' Vanagon that refuses to pass california smog. When tested it had "too much fuel" in the exhaust. I replaced the intake air meter (at the VW techs suggestion) and still the same result.

Another symptom is that the smog tech had difficulty getting it to idle at 2500 rpm. He said "air flow meter" but I replaced it. Any suggestions?

Reply to
Mystic
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If your having idel problems (up and down) here's what I found when I owned a 84 vanagon. I removed the cover from the air flow sensor and watched it. When it was ideling smooth and even the arm held steady. Then out of the blue it would start bouncing up and down and the engine speed followed it. What I found was the Vanagon valve lifters have a problem and don't pump up properly when set per the book at zero clearence even after replacing them. On a vanagon news group I used to follow a respected vanagon engine rebuilder said he used .003" till they were totally filled with oil then zero. I found that .003"was good all the time. What caused the air flow sensor to pulsate was one lifter not bleeding down and puting a pluse of air pressure on the intake system randomly. I shared this information on the NG and other as far as New Zealand reported that after resetting the valve clearence their vanagons had never ran so good. It took me almost a year to track this down. Another area is the wire to the o2 sensor. It's not a normal wire it's a coax cable all the way up to the ECM and the inner insulation is hard and cracking and shorting the inner signal to the outer ground part of the coax. After correcting both of these things my vanagon ran smooth and smelled good. The too rich condition is most likely the o2 wire. Uneven idel speed is the lifters. We don't smog in our area but I'm confident it would pass.

JoBo

"Mystic" wrote in message news:d98Wd.1762$ snipped-for-privacy@newshog.newsread.com...

Reply to
Jo Bo

Thanks I'll give that a try. I was going to replace the o2 sensor anyway, so I'll check that cable too.

*MYSTIC*
Reply to
Mystic

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