At least in a camper you can put the kettle on when you break down. Until I learned a bit about them our family trips always involved one chorus of 'Can you smell petrol' and one especially memorable occurance of a total stranger (in Ambleside car park) pointing out to us the steady trail of petrol visible on the wet ground! Just to add, the camper had been checked over and serviced by a local 'expert' who'd fitted the fuel filter with a tight bend in the pipe so that fuel leaked out of it. Moral of the story, learn to do stuff yourself and definitely change ALL fuel lines. Enjoy the journey!
You think seals are bad? I had a walrus in my tank when I first bought the van. God knows how it got there.
They eat nuts ,monkey nuts in the summer and hazel in the winter,so if you are nuts you'll have them queueing round the block to get some of your nuts
..in my opinion and experience th3 key is apart from keeping it maintain properly, using and using it as much as you can..they have been made for it and they love to be used and not sit on the drive/in the garage..all my ac vws through all those years had been used quite hard and in general most of them looked like junk..but mechanically is a different story..I always do my best to keep them running like a swiss clock..I dont need the look of show car with a perfectly straight bodywork and shiny bits I want to drive then hard and enjoy..I know of lots of owners they put lots of money in them then dont use them much to avoid get any scratches on there perfect bodywork in the carpark for instance..they look like million of dollars inside and out but all those rare times they take them out for quick run or holiday trip once a year always something goes wrong..imho if you maintain/use them as they should they are as reliable as any other modern car on the road..the chance you breakdown is exactly the same..btw we went to Stanford Hall yeasterday and back and did pass quite few stranded modern cars on the sites of motorway..so get them used..ps I daily drive mine now and my modern daily has been pull in a dark corner of my front garden Wysłane z iPad za pomocą Tapatalk
Yeap get rid of your daily and use em all the time. I’m back on my bike around town to get a bit fitter again but use the van as much as I can. Exciting trip to the tip yesterday in it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
..there’s another key factor imo tho..keep them as original as possible..I mean mechanically..this is prabably the hardest part of it..we all know the quality and availability of most even crucial for relability of our lovely vehicles parts..I know of an old school mechanic who works on ac VWs all his life and he even stopped throwing away slightly worn main bearings..he keep them just in case and claims there’s still more life in them then in new ‘chineese’ ones..I recon that lots of failures even terminal failures are caused by the quality of parts not the work itself..also its a great idea to learn and more importantly to know your vw..to listen to the engine while driving to imagine how everythings on ur bus works together..to recognise the sounds..I know myself its not that easy as I still know nothing but if you prepared to work on it to read about it and think about your vw and it will come one day eventually.. Wysłane z iPad za pomocą Tapatalk
At the end of the day, the engines are light aircraft engines. Think of it as though it still is, and maintain it to stop you ‘ falling out of the sky’. A well maintained engine and running gear, beats shiney paintwork. Rat looks ok, anyway, in my books.
Hopefully I’ve got the right size on its way from heritage in stainless to go on. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This morning, saw a poor soul going home from Stanford on the back of the big yellow truck. Dark red over white T2 Felt for them, but worse if they'd broke down on the way there.
I have done 70000+ miles in my bus, and it has never blown up going on holiday, usually a couple of thousand miles later going to work. I dont really worry about breaking down as I carry a lot of tools and some spares, and the attitude that anything put together in 1973 is a doddle to fix even in at the roadside compared with a 2019 plastic trimmed box of computers with a teeny short lived hard thrashed economy engine stashed inside it. And only twice needing yellow taxi near the Fareham West junction on the M27 that has a pair of hill summits arranged so you blast up one hill foot on the pedal, then back off down hill on the next and the engine goes tinkle in the dip between them, where the A32 goes north. I have had more stops in my time - throttle cable slipping out, centre lead dropping out of ignition coil, battery going flat because loose alternator wire, petrol pipe just falling off because I didnt push it on hard enough before doing up the clamp, rocker arm assembly falling off, massive oil leaks because rocker cover gasket pinched, carburettor flooding when pootling along because of leaky needle valve ... But all of those have been brief stops before continuing. The last time my engine blew up I was enjoying planning my rebuild in great detail while waiting for the yellow taxi, and enjoying the challenge, rather than getting depressed. The only down side was I actually had replacement parts in my spares box at home for the part that broke - a set of new valves to replace some stainless ones that had done 50000 miles in two engines .. Then my wife suggested I just bought a new engine. Never one to miss an opportunity I reached out to JK and bought a Preservation Parts engine , in total denial of all my rebuilding tendencies. It got me back on the road in 2 weeks, and it has only got better as it has finally run in around 5000 miles of use. Cooler, quieter, more torque and more economical because it has a more modern engine case and a set of EMPI heads which have better gas flow out of the box. So if you are really worried and have the cash, I would recommend a mostly new engine for peace of mind rather than a rebuild the next time the recon engine breaks another part. This of course assumes that what killed the old engine was not a fault in the carburettor or manifold, or something else that would get put on the new engine. Sometimes when people report that two or three engines in a row fail in the same way, it might be the constant in the equation, the installation, rather than the variable of the engine that is the problem. Keep driving it regularly and you will notice when it is not right. Jump in after months off the road and you may not recognise the strange noise as being a problem. .
