Hello,
I'm a mechanic & business owner, 13 years, Mackellar Service Centre, in Dee Why, Sydney Australia. We (1 Mechanic & myself) work on all makes & models of vehicle. We specialise in VW & are the last ones in this fairly big area working on air cooled all the time. I would estimate 70-80% of our work, lots of Kombi's. We are not far from the famous Manly Beach. So this area is big on coastal surf culture. These Kombi's are now worth a lot of money & people are spending a lot restoring them. We don't do restorations or body work.
The previous owner (16 years here) of the business was an older German fellow who did his time in the the VW Factory in Germany. I have a lot of his training material, manuals etc. His son took over the business & was here for 4 years (ran it down a bit) before I bought it from him.
So the business with its name has been here 30 years now. We have bought it back to having a very good reputation.
I myself am a surfer & camping type person. I have a T3 Syncro, full camper, daily driver (weekend escape vehicle), a 76 T2 panel van, 2L carb for fun, a T3 syncro Caravelle (pretty rare I think) not registered (stored at the moment) the owner insisted I buy it off him & made the price so I could not refuse.
I also have a 75 T2 with Leyland P76 V8, but it's in pieces & a long way from seeing the road (if it ever does).
I am 58, a bit of a perfectionist ( it kills me sometimes ) but I like to know, 1. how something works 2. see how it's not working 3. get it back to original & working again. Which is how I ended up finding your site.
I ended up at your site chasing information for a Type 3, TLE injection system.
The vehicle was newly purchase by a gentleman about 2 months prior, was running ok. Its a great looking, very original fastback. He wanted us to do an inspection on it, check a few things out. One of which was it had a problem of rough idle, almost stalling had developed since owning it.
A quick look over & run on scope found ignition leads not pushed into cap properly, not connected on one or 2 spark plugs firmly. We rectified these things, compression test (ok - not great) & fitted new plugs, replace the ignition points because the spring in them was very heavy. It ran great. We went through the other items he listed & drove it a number of times & it was good", so we didn't look any deeper at the run fault. The owner took the vehicle & said it ran great for about 2-3 days, before it started doing the same thing again.
I got more involved with it this time around. The problem seemed more like an ignition cut out or injection cut out problem, than a misfire.
An exhaust check found it running at 20;1 A/F ratio. We check fuel pressure & flow good. 29-30 psi.
I figure at this point that the new spark plugs had covered up the fault & were firing the very lean mixture until they settled in.
With the air cleaner out of the way, the vehicle hot, idling & having the rough idle, I sprayed small bursts of carby clean at the throttle body intake & she smoothed out perfectly. I traced air leaks to the plenum/intake manifold runner connector hoses. Removing one side hoses I found them in relatively good (not perished) condition, just hard & leaking at the ends. Fit clamps & improved the A/F ratio to 18:1. No leaks to the MAP sensor & it appeared to be OK.
I inspected & set the Throttle Position Switch to hunt with the air bypass hose disconnected.
Another VW guy comment about the injection points in the bottom of the distributor. I removed & checked them, clean the old grease of the internal cam, the rubbing blocks etc. Contact cleaner on the face of the points, reinstalled to find it would not start at all. I figured the cleaning off or old grease had caused an issue.
There is a massive amount of secondhand parts here built up from all who have run the place. I couldn't believe my luck to find another distributor in the pile.
I swapped out the fuel injection points & it started & ran beautiful, that was all I did. I drove the vehicle a number of times & was quite happy with it.
After work, I took it for a cruise for nearly 45 mins with no problems, then on coming back to the shop I noted it starting to have it's issue back again. It got gradually worse & i wondered if maybe that's why this distributor was removed originally. Perhaps it's points were worn as well.
I refitted the original points, confirmed no start. I removed the points, set the gap between the rubbing blocks at about 23mm as I saw on your site, reinstalled & it was now a runner again. Success at a small level. When it got hot, the problem of rough idle came back.
I have a scope, computer based but it has decided to give up on me. I have to get another lap top.
I decided to watch the problem & check each injector with a noid light individually. I found that when the engine glitches, No.1 & No.4 injector miss a beat or 2.
I pulled the distributor this morning, removed externals & ignition points breaker plate so that I could look inside & visually confirm points opening & closing. Pretty basic, but that's where I am at at this point in time. I am figuring that inj 1 & 4 are on their own bank. The distributor bushes are OK.
I will look for the correct gap when open & set this while the points are in situ. That is where I am at at this time.
I have had the ECU out of it's hiding spot & taken a look inside for solder joint problems, it appears ok for what I can see. I have not done the thorough pin out diagnosis that is listed.
To whom ever takes the time to read this, thank you very much for input you may have.
Cheers
Steve
Also know as
Rusty Kombi in some places.
