I have an 82 VW pickup with 1.7 CIS and AC, manual 5 speed. I fueled
up today, putting 5 gallons of fuel in to top of the tank. I started
it up to drive away, and it stalled. I tried again and held it to the
floor. I revved up high then stalled down to near dead and revved
again while it was floored. The tach is also completely dead now for
the first time that I have owned this truck. It does this, revs, goes
nearly dead and revs. I drive away like this with the thing to the
floor. It surges at full throttle for a second and fully decelerates
for a second or two (engine still partially revved) and then surges
again for a second, all while being floored. I slowly work through the
gears getting to about 40MPH in fifth. It seemed to go dead less at
lower engine speeds. Tach is still dead the whole time. I limped back
to my apartment 7 miles away doing this. It must have been hell on the
entire drive train. It acted like the fuel pump was turning on and
off, like running out of gas. But I had a new pump installed less than
a year ago. I am going to straight wire the fuel pump relay tomarrow
and pray to God that he may let the relay be the problem. A neighbor
said that the coil is suspect from the dead tach. Please, please write
any response. Any and every idea is gold to me. I will be watching
this closely. Thanks.

thateb (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

It is hard to figure out what might had dine this suddenly like that.
However one thing does come to mind.

Do you top off your tank? Could the tank venting be failing? Try
removing the gas cap and see if it improves.

Also it is possible that the fuel you got was dirty and is not clogging
the pick up sock in the tank or the in line fuel filter. I would think this
is the most likely issue.

Water could also be part of the problem, but I would have thought it
would have totally shut you down.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

In the light of very strange behavior, I would try connecting a
jumper (starting cable for example) from the negative terminal of
the battery to something metal firmly mounted to the engine block.
This might be a bracket holding the air conditioning compressor, or
even a protrusion on the block or head. Keep the jumper clear of
moving parts.

If the problems don't improve, at least it was simple to have tried.

Found out what it was. The R/BK wire fell off the coil. Bentley seems
to think it goes to the fuel pump relay.