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<x-charset Windows-1252>Hi Micah, When I first put my car on the road, nearly a year ago, I replaced all the ignition parts as routine. I have always had troubles with running despite the fact that I think the engine is in pretty good condition overall. I allways suspected the carbs and have been messing around with them a lot. Last weekend, for some reason I decided as a last ditch attempt to change the condenser back to the original one that I had kept. Immediately the car ran like a different beast. The exhaust note changed to a really nice crisp sound and I'm hoping that the mpgs go up. I tested the "new" genuine bosch condenser and sure enough it has no capacitance- its open circuit! The points I replaced had deep pits despite me filing them flat only a couple of months ago, and the dist cap was severely burned/eroded. I think that I have discovered the importance of the condenser and my advice to you is to replace it with a known good one. You can check the basic functionality of the condenser with a basic multimeter set to read ohms. First short out the lead coming out of the condenser to the body of it, then connect the leads of the meter. The needle/digital display should start to read lowish ohms and then the resistance should increase as the capacitance charges up. If the needle continues to read low ohms you have a short. If the needle doesn't move at all you have an open circuit (like I had). Throw the defective device away and replace with a good one. Don't beleive that a new one is necessarily a good one- I don't think mine ever worked since new and I wish I hadn't replaced it. I'm still waiting to find out but I suspect that that crappy little capacitor has cost me seriously large amounts of petrol money!! Good luck Mark '73 TA London ----- Original Message ----- From: "Micah" <micahra@adelphia.net> To: <type3@vwtype3.org> Sent: Friday, June 28, 2002 7:12 PM Subject: [T3] a good old-fashioned mystery problem. > Here's a good one for ya... > > My 68 Square, FI, started doing something wierd.. during a drive from LAX > to my house (25 miles) 4 weeks ago, as I was driving up the hill into the > valley, (fairly good grade) Betty (my car) started to miss a little. As we > got closer to home, it got a bit worse, but not too bad, we got home, I was > thinking it may have had to do with the car being unused that week, in the > lot, as we were in Canada. My boyfriend drove it to work and back (8 miles > each way) without further incident for the next week and a half. THan, I > took Betty for a longer drive to pick up a friend, about 14 miles away from > home. She started missing again, got worse, and ran like crap the whole way > home, missing on accel and maintainance speed, but fine at idle. THe next > day, I picked up new rotor, cap, and points, as I hadn't replaced them in a > year 1/2 and figured it was likely the problem. The old points were so burnt > that a hole had been burned strait through the larger contact! eek! So, I > put in the new points and all was well, performance much better. end of > story, right? NO! > > Yesterday I drove the 60 miles south to visit my mom, and Betty started > lightly hesitating about 35 miles in. Now, traffic was typically crap on the > way down the 5 , a normally 50 minute drive took almost 2 hours, so Betty > was likely pretty warmm.. however, I am pretty annoyed at this point. > > On the way back home, at 11pm, traffic was light, the weather was cool, and > Betty started fine, drove 25 miles until she started to miss, and by the > time I hit mile 45, she was downright obstinate. I hit traffic, stop and go, > she didn't want to accelerate for anything. finally made it home with a > bucking bronco for a car. > > I just took out the 1 1/2 week points out of the car, and they are already > scored on both contacts.... > > Condenser? the condenser is only 1 1/2 years old... > > any thoughts????? > > > ------------------------------------------------ > To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <type3-off@vwtype3.org> > For more help, see http://vwtype3.org/list/ ------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <type3-off@vwtype3.org> For more help, see http://vwtype3.org/list/ </x-charset>