Hi all, thanks for this awesome site. I have got a real thing for classic vans and love to learn and work on my own 1988 Conversion van 5.2l TBI. I tried to put a picture of the van in my signature and resize it, but that might have gone wrong, I guess I will find out when I post this.
When i bought it, it had been unused for some time. I did a service and replaced plugs, coil, distributor cap. oil, trans fluid, filters. It would surge and stall at idle though from the moment I first started it, very annoying, made it difficult to park for a start. I played with lots of things but what finally did it was when I replaced the throttle body gasket and the O2 sensor. One of those did the job. The gasket was very "welded " on but I couldn't really see how that could cause a bad air leak versus, say a holed vacuum pipe. I checked all the vacuum pipes at the same time, everything seemed fine.
2 yeas later, and this may be unrelated, I am having problems going up hills. No power and overheating. Admittedly I was 5 up, with a lot of load and it was 100 degrees but it got real hot, real quick. I eventually investigated the timing and found it was out, it was about 4 degrees, I changed it to 12. Tried the same hill after and it did get hotter on the gauge, but only by a bit. Generally it feels more peppy and happy.
There was another problem, that occurred during all this and still lingers, is a jerking under load (up hills for example), at freeway speeds. It almost feels like it is changing down. I think it is a misfire under load. After I changed the timing to 12 degrees this went away and it changed through the gears very nicely so I don't think it is anything to do with the transmission. But this problem has come back
However, it is now also doing the unhappy idle thing again, including stalling when I am driving down the road, in drive, but with no gas pedal (downhill). That was pretty worrying. So I am back to trying to figure out what this problem is.
Maybe the gasket/O2 sensor has gone again? Has 2 years of incorrect timing lunched the plugs? Something to do with the choke (i am in socal though, so it never gets below 50 degress!)
I've got a new coil and new plugs on their way to try and address the misfire problem.
Any suggestions? TIA |