running problems with my '80 rabbit diesel

I recently picked up an '80 rabbit diesel. it has the 1.5l diesel with a 4 speed manual. the car starts pretty good, thou it does smoke when it first fires up. once it warms up it idles really smooth and no smoke. but my problem is when i'm driving it. i'll get it up to about 40mph and then it'l lose power and when i step on the clutch it;ll just die. but acceration is good runs really smooth until i get it up to speed. then it dies. I'll have to let it sit for a couple minutes and then it'll fire right back up with no problem. My thought was that it was a fuel delivery problem. there is no air bubbles in the fuel line so i don't think i have a leak. I even tryed to put an inline electric fuel pump right behind the fuel filter. but no luck, it does the same thing. could it be the injector pump even thou it idles fine and acceration is good? can anyone help me? Thanks, Ernie.

It is a fuel delivery problem. Thats a diesel right? So what makes it go- the pump. The easiest would be swap a used pump in it.


Besides this, there are several other things that can make it not go, again fuel related:

Somehow it suck air into the system.
There is dirt somewhere in the system. I once had a problem like that, when a little piece of crap check ball and a spring were accumulating dirt in one of the by-pass fuel lines, so the peice of crap would surge from time to time like u said, and then would not rev to high at all and had no power. (it was a ford diesel thoug)

So I would replace the fuel filter first and add some quality product to it to clean the system and the injectors.


Dont add any E-pumps, cause it may damage the pump. I recomend showing it to a diesel guy- they will give advice, usualy they know what the are talking about.