I finished just a small mod to make life with the Bus Depot Ezy Awning a bit easier: the poles are marked. I used white and dark blue to denote the support and awning poles respectively. This should make setting things up a bit easier, especially when the light is low.
Tag: vanagon
Deep in the Heart of Texas
This year we returned to Big Bend National Park for a few days of camping in Olly. On the way out we stopped over in Del Rio to visit Melina’s parents. The trip was uneventful with the exception of picking up a speeding ticket in Bracketville. Yes, a speeding ticket in a VW Vanagon.
We arrived in the park the next day to find it full because, for whatever reason, the entire state of Texas has Spring Break all in the same week. Since both Plan A (campground campsite) and Plan B (backcountry roadside campsite) fell through, we were forced to look outside the park. I wasn’t terribly worried since there’s a number of RV parks in neighboring areas, plus there’s the State Park nearby as well.
Ultimately we settled in a bare bones RV park just east of Study Butte. That’s the nice thing about camping in the Vanagon: close the curtains and you can grab a night’s sleep just about anywhere. At any rate, staying outside the park turned out to be a good thing. Since we were so close to Terlingua, we decided to hop over to the Starlight Theatre for dinner. Performing on the night we were there were Markley and Balmer, a singer-songwriter duo with a flair for jazzy chordings. The food was delicious, and the music was a treat. When we were done, we went back to our campsite, popped the top, and settled in for the night.
We had decided to try our luck at getting a campsite in Big Bend, so the next morning we got up early and headed to the Cottonwood campground. As luck had it, a couple spots had opened up as we arrived, so we pulled in and staked our claim for the next few days. The campground was quiet (generators not allowed!) and spacious. It also has limited water resources, but fortunately we had filled Olly’s freshwater tank up at the Chisos Basin campground the previous day. After setting up our new Bus Depot Ezy Awning we dug in and did absolutely nothing. Well, Melina turned a few pages in a book, but for me even closing my eyes was too much work, so I did it once and then kept them shut.
That night the stars were proverbially big and bright. I tried to do a bit of astronomical photography on a dying camera battery. Sadly, the 40D isn’t cut out for night time photography, but it was fun nonetheless. The moon sank early and the sky was clear. It is always wonderful to see the Milky Way be the dominant feature of the sky.
The next day we were much more ambitious. After a brief bike ride to the nearby concessions store for a bag of ice, we took a longer ride from the campground down to the Santa Elena Canyon River Access where we had a picnic lunch. The Rio Grande was very low, and neither grand nor much of a river, to be honest. On the way back to the campground, Melina decided to try out not one, but two flat tires on her bike. I had one spare tube, and switched out her rear wheel for my good one so that she could ride home with relative ease. Never let it be said that chivalry is dead. Although after pedaling about four hilly miles on a flat tire I nearly was.
In the morning we tore down the campsite and took Olly up the Old Maverick Road to the ruins of Terlingua Abajo. The town was a small agricultural village inhabited in the first decades of the twentieth century. Now it is nothing more than the tumbled piles of stones and bricks where walls once stood, and a few graves to mark the lives that were spent there. We ate lunch at Cantina Abajo (wonderful views) and then climbed up the ridge that stands behind the town. Along the way we found lizards, butterflies, and blue bonnets. Later Olly took us back to the campsite. Melina made some tasty burritos (as always) and we lazed about through the afternoon.
On Friday we packed up our gear and headed back to civilization via a brief layover in Del Rio. Barring the flat tires on the bikes, the trip was without incident, which is pretty cool considering it was done in a vehicle that’s nearly a quarter century old. The Bostig engine plays no small part in that, and I can’t praise it highly enough. Our food was good and we received many waves and praises for our “cool van.” My only disappointment was that I didn’t see even one other Vanagon or Microbus on the road.
There’s more pictures. And video, too.
Big Bend 2013
We went to Big Bend again, this time in our Vanagon. Here’s a video recap of the trip, set to the song “And So They Shall Remain” by Markley and Balmer. We saw them at the Starlight theater on this adventure. Their music is available on Soona Songs.
Gas Can Carrier Mount Improvised
I’ve got a Gary Lee rear hatch rack with bike load bars for Olly. Mainly I use it for carrying bikes, but I wanted to see about mounting a jerry can carrier on the rack. Gary’s got a removable gas can carrier for the multipurpose rack, and it looks like a quality piece of work. Unfortunately, it’s pricey, especially when shipping is added. I was able to find a bracket through Summit Racing, and with the help of a modified mailbox mounting plate from Home Depot, I achieved a similar result.
On Community
One of the more interesting threads on the Vanagon List this past week had very little to do with Vanagons. Ostensibly about beverage holders and Canadians (are they one in the same?), I say “interesting,” not because any reasonable person should care in the slightest about either of these phenomenon. Although a well designed cup-holder is cause for celebration, the discussion is worthy of note because it was in a larger sense about community.
A successful community is an amazing thing because it is a whole greater than its parts. Unfortunately, the calculus which permits such emergence is unclear. It’s not simply about having a mass of qualified members; there is not really a community of toaster owners any more than there is one of brown-haired folks. The success of a community may once have been about location, but the Internet broke that boundary.
Obviously, for acommunity to work, something needs to be shared. Interest in Vanagons, a degree of fluency with English, and a tolerance of email from people we’ve never met are all qualities we have in common. And questions, answers, stories, and rants–in short, information–is the glue that keeps us together. We follow rules (mostly) about things like content and message trimming. But again, those parts don’t equal up to the whole
Kind of like the vans we drive.
I’ll admit my bias here: I grew up with VW campers, and so I own one now. Because I own one, I like hanging out with folks share that lunacy. I know there are other car groups out there, but this one seems more successful than most. I can’t help but wonder if some of that success is due as much to our differences as to our homogeneity. We are composed of folks who can rebuild engines blindfolded and those who believe both ends of a
wrench are dangerous. Daily drivers and weekend(er) warriors, Syncronauts and Westy pilots. Amateurs, vendors, mechanics, engineers, artists, and the odd philosopher swell our ranks. My, but we are diverse.
Kind of like the vans we drive.
On Documentation
I am fortunate to have a workshop attached to my garage. That being said, the space is more conducive to clutter than doing actual work, so this past week I’ve begun remodeling it. As such, building codes have been on my mind, and specifications in general.
Keeping things to spec goes a long way towards making my life easier. If my Vanagon breaks and is then repaired according to the principles in Sir Bentley, when it breaks in the future I won’t have to remember the oddities of the first repair to perform the second one. It’s all written down in the big green book, so if I really need to remind myself of what went on, I just turn to the appropriate chapter and refresh my memory.
If, on the other hand, a repair deviates from scripture, then there’s a good chance that future repairs will have to take into account the previous repair. And the more non-standard repairs I make, the further the van deviates from its original state, the more variables are introduced into the system. This is to say nothing of the outright modifications, and is why troubleshooting through the list can be frustratingly difficult at times. Ultimately, all repairs require peculiar knowledge of the particular vehicle which must be rediscovered or remembered.
I actually have a pretty good memory, but it’s reserved for far more important things like my phone number from 30 years ago or what “TARDIS” stands for. I can’t remember, for example, how I wired my headlight relays into the fuse box, so for efficiency’s sake, I write things down. Well, I try to, anyway. Writing things down can be such a pain.
I have often thought about creating a complete wiring schematic just for Olly.
Ideally, I would have an appendix to my Bentleys documenting my repairs and modifications. Something like an ship’s engineering log, complete with diagrams and pictures. Of course, this takes time, and I seem to have less time than memory.
Some list members give repair reports. I enjoy reading these out of voyeurism, and also because I gain insights into my own van. Online blogs are also good, because they often have photographs. The best part of both of these methods of public documentation is that they share the record with the community, helping us all keep all our peculiar vehicles running just a little longer.
On Fixing Things Right
This past week I finally got around to fixing a couple of sheet fed-scanners we use in the office. They were both making horrible clacking noises, but eventually I got the scanners whirring quietly again, much to the nurses’ joy. The magical fix? A couple pads made from multiple layers of scotch tape, wedged next to one of the axles.
You’re not supposed to mend high tech equipment with a few cents worth of generic office supply. But similar things happen on my Vanagon from time to time. My instrument cluster is held together with a few drywall screws. And wired together with cat-5 cable. Some holes in the body are patched with riveted sheet metal. Some of the paint is rattle-can Rustoleum. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit these things, not because my van isn’t a Go-Westy premium blend, but because these fixes weren’t done right. Some might say I fixed things right when I replaced my zip-tied headlight adjustment screws with a South African Grill. Of course it was expensive. But done right.
On the other hand, those simple home-brew fixes all work. The problems have been solved and I’ve moved on with life, so by that measure they are “right.” But using scotch tape or a found screw seems a bit like cheating or somehow improper. Like maybe I’ll regret it later.
I’ll admit I’m a bit conflicted. When I start a project I sometimes wonder what some of the smart folks out there in List-land would say. Probably something like, “Back away from the JB Weld, sir.” Fortunately I usually have enough confidence (just enough!) to go ahead with my plans. And so Olly keeps trucking along.
On TheSamba forums, the phrase “fix it right” appears over 7000 times. It occurs about 1400 times in relation to Vanagons, and most frequently as an admonishment. As in, “Quit being a cheap bastard and fix it right, you idiot!” For the record, the phrase “fix it right” doesn’t (or didn’t) appear once in the history of the List Archives according to Google. That might say something about the tolerance list community, and possibly indicate why I generally enjoy hanging out here.
On Previous Owners
I am coming up on six years of Vanagon ownership in March of this year. Olly came to me by way of a dealership in Colorado. Before that he lived for a bit in the Pacific Northwest, but he began life in Texas like so many German immigrants. I take some measure of joy in the fact that I’ve brought him back “home.” Vans are rare in these parts.
I know all of this because of a CarFax report and some receipts I found in the van, but otherwise the previous owners are a mystery to me. I don’t know the names of these vanagonauts or the roads they travelled in Olly. I’d like to think that some of the longtime van owners out there passed Olly and exchanged a Vanagon wave during his 145,000 previous-to-me miles, but that’s purely fantasy.
What I do know is that Olly has been both loved and neglected. For the most part he came to me blessedly stock, although less than fully functional. I say “blessedly” not because I believe that a stock van is inherently better, but because it made learning about the ins and outs of Vanagons a lot easier in a place where there are few references other than Bentley and the list. Electrical gremlins are much easier to exorcize when the diagrams approximate reality.
That being said, there are signs-a-plenty that Olly has been captained by others. Patched metal, taped wires, jumped connections, POR-15’d spots, and stripped non-metric bolts point to both care and neglect. Most often I curse the previous owner’s bone-headedness, like when I find that BOTH the front door wiring harnesses were snipped instead of being disconnected properly just a few inches further under the dash.
It’s frustrating to stumble across such examples the PO’s handiwork while I’m in the middle of fixing something else, but lately I’ve been trying to view these scars as talismans. That the repairs were done at all is an indication that someone, somewhere along the way wanted to keep this van on the road a little longer. That those folks cared about this van, even if they lacked expertise or proper tools. Many vans are not so lucky. Mine was, and so it has to come to me.
For that I am grateful.
So I here’s to you, all you previous owners, for your stubbornness that kept the four wheels rolling even when you had no business trying. For your bravery in owning a Vanagon at all. And for your wisdom to pass the van (and the mess you made) on to someone else when the time came. I thank you.
Butterflies and Jellyfish
Mustang Island State Park, located on one of the Texas barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico. According to propoganda provided by the TPWD, hundreds of wild horses once roamed the island. They are no more, but have been evolutionarily replaced by jellyfish and sand crabs, which we did observe in quantity.
The van drove wonderfully, despite the onslaught of a million butterflies bent on the complete obfuscation of our windshield. Once at the park we set up camp and ate leftover chili. Bedtime came early, but the strong breeze coming off the Gulf made for cool sleeping. Saturday saw us watching the sunrise, reading, napping, wandering, and dodging jellyfish. The breeze became more gusty as the day wore on, leaving a gritty film of salt on everything.
The park was nevertheless pleasant, largely because the human element was sparse. The campsites on either side of us, as well as many others throughout the campground, were vacant. I wouldn’t dare go to the park in July or August for fear of the herds of beach goers, but October is definitely acceptable. I suspect that January or February might be a bit cold temperature-wise, but would otherwise be delightful.
Perhaps you’d like to see some pictures.
Bostig Installed
A month later than originally intended, the Zetec is installed in Olly. The delay was due to hold-ups on Bostig’s end, but to be fair, I had quite aggressively high expectations about the timing of the project. When I expressed my frustration to Jim about the teasingly slow trickle of parts, he was quite apologetic about the whole situation, and from then on Nate then kept me posted with progress updates. Unfortunately, my summer travel plans revolved around a completed engine conversion and a deadline, and so therefore fell through.
Even if Bostig had shipped out on their timetable, I realize I probably would have been pressed to complete all aspects of the install in just under three weeks. It wouldn’t have been impossible, but converting an engine is a Very Big Thing, and even in as well documented a system as the Bostig, there’s going to be some quirkiness that varies from vehicle to vehicle that just needs to be worked through. And that doesn’t include rework when you fuck things up due to your own personal level of ineptitude. Mine wasn’t terribly high, but sufficient to keep things interesting. Like when I over-torqued one of the transmission mount bolts. My advice is to avoid doing that.
Another factor that slowed progress is that I did the conversion completely solo. For most of the process that’s perfectly fine, though there are a couple of points when an extra pair of hands or eyes can be helpful. The real problem with working alone was that I had to be my own supervisor, which meant a lot of double or triple checking to make sure everything was right. None of the install is complicated, but I am not an auto mechanic by trade and I hate fixing things I should have gotten right the first go around. Since there was no one to catch my mistakes but me, I took my time.
And that’s how it is supposed to be. Because let me say this: doing the Bostig conversion was tremendous fun. Okay, working in 100 degree Texas heat was not so much fun. And being covered with grease and grime was not particularly entertaining either. But that aside, the whole system is so so well designed that it was delightful to assemble and install. And when you turn the key (and it starts, after unsticking the injectors) it is pure joy. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Of course, that would involve buying another Vanagon, which isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had.
For what it’s worth, driving the van is fun. It’s got decent pick-up and drives 70 with power to spare. I admit that I’ll miss the chugging sound of the boxer engine, but the Zetec definitely sounds confident and ready. And the engine’s got just enough low rumble to let you know that while it may have been born in a Ford Focus, you should not mistake it for some wimpy girly motor that can’t carry it’s weight. It has found its place in a Vanagon.
There’s still a handful of things to do. I’ve got some parts coming, including a brake booster line attachment, which will need installation. I’m still doing some road testing to make sure everything is in specification. Electrically, everything’s fine. Fuel trims seem good. The cooling system is working, but is running much hotter (210-225 degrees F) than the WBX did, so my stock gauge and idiot coolant level light are quite angry. I know there’s some air that still can be bled out of the system, which should help bring the temps down slightly. And I didn’t switch the radiator send and return lines as Bostig recommends. Jim says that shouldn’t be a problem, and has even assured me that my temp ranges are fine, but I’d still like to see what I can do to cool things down. In any case, I definitely need to examine the gauge and temp sender, as right now they’re effectively useless. Eventually I’ve got to find an A/C guy who can make some new lines. Things to do, but they will get done.
Originally I thought I’d drop the Zetec into the van in a weekend, tune it up, and then roar off to the mountains of Colorado. That didn’t happen. I didn’t get the vacation I wanted this summer, but I did get the van I wanted. There will be more summers (and Texas autumns, winters, and best of all, springs). I’m quite confident that when those seasons arrive, Olly will be up to the task of taking me to the places I want to go.