Re: [A/S] water in fuel/bad fuel?

["Jim Dunmyer" <jdunmyer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan,
 I have a favorite garage that I use for things I don't care to work on or
are beyond my abilities. He has a couple of gadgets that diagnose problems,
one is an equivilant of an airliner's Black Box. He plugs this one into the
car's computer, and it records everything that's going on. This gets
connected to his big diagnostic computer so he can read out what happened.
You need to find someone with similar equipment.

It would REALLY help if you can reproduce the problem, IE: "go for a tow"
with such a data recorder connected and hope for this failure. You'll almost
certainly NOT find the problem by guessing, poking & prodding, and changing
components willy-nilly.

Been there, done that, cost me a bunch of time and money. One example was my
Dodge truck, which had a pulsation in the brake pedal. After replacing the
master cylinder, the proportioning valve, and the rear drums, I finally got
the ABS computer to dump its brains. It told me "bad rear axle speed
sensor". The speed sensor was actually OK, it was a dirty connector,
cleaning it fixed everything. After several weeks and several hundred $$$ of
fooling around. In my defense, the "Brake" light wasn't illuminating when
the problem first appeared, so the computer wouldn't have told me anything.
But, it WAS illuminating before I got all that stuff replaced.

Another example was also with my Dodge truck. The torque converter clutch
would unlock for no good reason, just like you removed your foot from the
accelerator pedal, then re-lock within a few seconds. This was obviously (to
me) a bad throttle position sensor, so I replaced it for $150.00. When the
problem persisted, I took it to my guy up the road, he connected his gadget,
and we went for a ride. Well, it seems as though the transmission
temperature probe was reporting wildly varying temperatures, jumping all
over the place. Having already cleaned the connections, I just installed a
resistor in the wiring harness so the computer thinks the transmission is
always 140 degrees. Problem solved, shoulda gone to my guy first.

If your dealer can't help you, find a garage that can. They do exist.

One other resource is brand-specific mailing lists. Just as you'll find a
lot of Airstream expertise here, you'll find a lot of GM expertise on
GM-specific Lists. Look on http://groups.yahoo.com and you'll find 'em.

                                                               <<Jim>>