1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

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honeybus
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1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by honeybus » Thu Mar 03, 2016 10:55 am

While I was checking out my white 'smoke' issue, I brushed my hand against the #1 ignition wire.

The engine immediately died.

I made two videos. At the first video, I did not get an immediate stall of the engine, but in the second, the engine went dead almost instantly, as it had done when i first touched the #1 ignition wire.

Also, I have been experiencing that the VW would stall when I slowed to a stop, and I have to keep the gas pedal caressed and the trans in neutral while I apply the brake to slow to a stop.

It is a stock 2.0l standard trans 1978: points, condenser, FI, and all that stuff. Recent (10,000 mi) rebuild and resurrection from an engine fire in 2006


Any suggestions?


https://youtu.be/WATfKV0_BHw

https://youtu.be/wwfpV4N7F-U
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Jivermo
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by Jivermo » Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:18 pm

I find this pretty weird. You are not shorting out the wire with your body; otherwise we would be watching you dance around with the Owlsley bears. Is the distributor cap fastened properly? Are you perhaps shifting an unsecured cap when you touch the wire? While the engine is running, can you pull any wires off the plugs to see how much each cylinder is working? By the way, my Westy is also a '78.

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honeybus
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by honeybus » Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:26 pm

Jivermo wrote:While the engine is running, can you pull any wires off the plugs to see how much each cylinder is working? By the way, my Westy is also a '78.

That was my basic intention, to pull and replace each ignition wire at the distributer cap.

I guess I can tie a string to each ignition wire and pull it off that way?!?!?
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by Jivermo » Thu Mar 03, 2016 1:11 pm

That would be a tough chore, especially touching them back to the plug, to hear the difference in the engine sounds. I put a leather palm glove on to keep from getting zapped. Do you have the proper plug set for our type 4 engine, the Bosch type with the reddish brown bakelite ends that push onto the screw tip of the plug? That's the one you need for best results.

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honeybus
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by honeybus » Thu Mar 03, 2016 1:43 pm

Jivermo wrote: I put a leather palm glove on to keep from getting zapped.
Wait! ! ! Should I be getting a ZAP!?!?!

Jivermo wrote:Do you have the proper plug set for our type 4 engine, the Bosch type with the reddish brown bakelite ends that push onto the screw tip of the plug? That's the one you need for best results.
Yes, I have the bakelite (resistor) ends for the German BOSCH 8WCC plugs

I have been experiencing the "things that go bump in the night,,, and then fall off the VW bus' syndrome. First, my right rear CV joint lost 3 of 6 bolts, and the last 3 came free. Next, the front calipers (both!) came loose, and the sliding door came off at the beach in Key West (Truman Annex).

Push-on wires in the engine compartment are, seemingly, always coming off. My more notable event was the condenser wire to the coil kept coming 'loose', whereas I would stall in traffic. I finally solved that issue by removing the loose connector and crimping at a tiny bit, and putting it on the WRONG coil terminal, thereby frying the condenser wire and having to replace with a new condenser/wire.

I have a noise at my front wheels when I make very tight turns, like in the parking lot. Sounds exactly like a wheel nut came off and is rattling round in the hubcap. I know it is not serious, since no wheel has, as yet (knock on wood) come off. Of course, all wheel nuts are torqued to 94 ft/lb.

So, why is the VW bus dieing when I touch the ignition wire?
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honeybus
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by honeybus » Thu Mar 03, 2016 3:57 pm

Don't you just HATE IT when the problem is so S I M P L E to discover and fix ! !

Me too. Well - - -

I tried to start the bus to see if I could drive it enough to stop the smoking (i.e., the water vapor from condensation somewhere).

It would not start, not at all. 10 - 15 times, it would catch, but I could not get it to run. I went back (FIF, engine is in the rear of the air cooled VW bus, at least in model year 1978, stateside version) to the engine compartment and saw . . .


What's wrong with this picture?

This is the wire for my Fuel Injectors that came off the coil. The wire was loose inside the female connector, and when I touched the #1 ignition wire with my hand, I inadvertently moved this FI harness wire just a wee bit so that it lost connection with the metal segment of the female connector on the coil. And when I released the push against the FI harness wire (I pushed the #1 ignition wire against this FI harness wire), it found its way back on to the female connector's metal contact,

This is the answer to my myriad of problems; the BUCKING, the STALLING, and probably my low GMAT test scores. (Hey, I took the GMAT when it was TRUE/FALSE/NONE OF THE ABOVE/ALL OF THE ABOVE. And you used a #2 graphite pencil to fill in the ovals...)

So I thank all who were following my problems of STALLING and SMOKE.

Image
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SlowLane
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by SlowLane » Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:21 pm

honeybus wrote:I have a noise at my front wheels when I make very tight turns, like in the parking lot. Sounds exactly like a wheel nut came off and is rattling round in the hubcap. I know it is not serious, since no wheel has, as yet (knock on wood) come off. Of course, all wheel nuts are torqued to 94 ft/lb.
My van makes the same gravel-in-the-hubcap noise only when going around corners. When I remove the hubcaps and drive it around, no noise (okay, well obvious, no?). Put the hubcaps back on, after scrupulously making sure there is no gravel or bones or whatever in them, noise returns.

I can only conclude that the wheels actually flex enough while cornering that the hubcap-wheel interface is shifting. I have cheapo aftermarket hubcaps which have occasionally thrown themselves into ditches if I don't pay really close attention to mounting them.

Once I determined that the noise was just an annoyance, I decided to ignore it. Might experiment with some sort of dampening putty or mastic if it starts to nag at me.
'81 Canadian Westfalia (2.0L, manual), now Californiated

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asiab3
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by asiab3 » Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:48 pm

Wow, those videos are wild. I'm going to send them to my friends and play dumb. :)

Nice job finding the culprit; don't you love a smoking gun??

Robbie
1969 bus, "Buddy."
145k miles with me.
322k miles on Earth.

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Amskeptic
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Mar 03, 2016 6:09 pm

Good job, honeybus.
Similar to the famous Engine Dies When I Engage Reverse, WTF? mystery of several years back. In that case, it was the reverse switch grounding out the coil #15 because of a short in the reverse wiring.
Colin
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BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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asiab3
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Re: 1978 VW bus dies when ignition wire is touched by hand

Post by asiab3 » Thu Mar 03, 2016 8:14 pm

Amskeptic wrote:Good job, honeybus.
Similar to the famous Engine Dies When I Engage Reverse, WTF? mystery of several years back. In that case, it was the reverse switch grounding out the coil #15 because of a short in the reverse wiring.
Colin
(nice paint job!)
As a kid, I would take the reverse light power spade off #15 and put it on terminal #1 on the coil of my old music teacher's car when he would make us late for our other classes. As a teacher, I would have kicked my ass if I caught myself doing that. As a former teacher, I would be an ex-teacher.

:pirate: Robbie
1969 bus, "Buddy."
145k miles with me.
322k miles on Earth.

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