Re: cold start and stall: did i get jipped?

[T Berk <tberk@mindspring.com>]

Edward J Lin wrote:
> 
> hey everyone.  i need some advice.  (who doesn't?)  a few weeks ago, i
> posted a message about my roc having trouble cold starting and stalling
> while driving.  because of time constraints i brought it to a vw mechanic
> and asked him to diagnosis the problem and fix it.  after a new set of
> spark plugs, wires, distributor cap, distributor and 500 bucks later, it's
> fixed and runs great.
> 
> no complaint there.
> 
> but my question is:  does the distributor in the car go bad?  if so, what's
> the average life on that part?  not the distributor cap, the actual part
> that runs off of the cam (or crank) shaft and into the cap.  did i get
> jipped?  thanks for any light you guys may shed on this.
> 
> ~ed
> 1987 16v
> ithaca, ny


Gotta tell ya my '81 w/ 100K on it had a Hall Sensor go bad. I replaced
lots of stuff before determining it was the cause for my rapidly
degraded lack of running.

When it went it started like a bad idle, then like it was not running on
all cylinders, but couldn't pinpoint it to any one spark plug. By the
time I got 10 miles down the road it wouldn't idle at all and finally
failed to restart.

Second anecdotal remembrance- For a brief time I had an Audi 100, a
sweet body more like a mercedes than a VW, and more like Merc under the
hood as well. 

Car went through much the same symptoms as the one above but over a much
longer period. Once it stopped running all together it turned out to be
the Distributor. In this case it had too much wobble in the shaft
bearing and wouldn't idle. At higher speeds it would stabilize and
mellow out. ( Ask me one day about running the engine backwards the 1st
time i was getting it running, because the negative cable was red and
the positive was black.)

Distributors go bad, 16v ones seem to blow some kinda seal, all of them
could use a bit of lube from time to time.

TBerk

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