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Hi All,
About a month and a half ago my Festy stumbled to a stop, and left me stranded on the way to work. The issue was the VAF, replacing it with another brought Festy back to life. I was questioning what was really failing in the VAF, since it really is a simple device. My son also had some issues with VAF's in his festy, so I examined the "bad" ones carefully and did not find any significant wear on the sweep contact. I sprayed them down with contact cleaner and took a small wire brush to the contact pins in the connector and coated them with dielectric grease. Both VAF's worked just fine when reinstalled. Another VAF that was known to be good, that my son had in his car as a spare ended up being "bad" just sitting. So far it appears the issue is corosion on the connector pins, after cleaning the connector pins with the wire brush the known good but suddenly "bad" VAF became good again. Seems a pretty simple fix, but what the heck, they are pretty simple cars. There is a noticable voltage difference in the charging system if the VAF has a poor connection, with the engine running the system will only read 12.4 volts if the VAF is "bad". When everything is good the voltage will read 14+ volts.
Just what I have found so far. The VAF that left me on the side of the road is back in my Festy and running fine, after a quick brushing.
Bill
About a month and a half ago my Festy stumbled to a stop, and left me stranded on the way to work. The issue was the VAF, replacing it with another brought Festy back to life. I was questioning what was really failing in the VAF, since it really is a simple device. My son also had some issues with VAF's in his festy, so I examined the "bad" ones carefully and did not find any significant wear on the sweep contact. I sprayed them down with contact cleaner and took a small wire brush to the contact pins in the connector and coated them with dielectric grease. Both VAF's worked just fine when reinstalled. Another VAF that was known to be good, that my son had in his car as a spare ended up being "bad" just sitting. So far it appears the issue is corosion on the connector pins, after cleaning the connector pins with the wire brush the known good but suddenly "bad" VAF became good again. Seems a pretty simple fix, but what the heck, they are pretty simple cars. There is a noticable voltage difference in the charging system if the VAF has a poor connection, with the engine running the system will only read 12.4 volts if the VAF is "bad". When everything is good the voltage will read 14+ volts.
Just what I have found so far. The VAF that left me on the side of the road is back in my Festy and running fine, after a quick brushing.
Bill
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