Diversions

We (hopefully) get Vanna back today.  I'm getting anxious to try her out and get on the road.  While not so patiently waiting, I found this amusing video on youtube.  I hope you enjoy it.

And here's a 1987 ad for the Vanagon from Volkswagen:

                                   

8:00 p.m. update:  Vanna Nicole is still in the shop.  Maybe Friday she will come home, the tramp.

Preparations

Vanna is back in the shop (no surprise there).  Electrical issues this time.  We were driving at night and the dashboard lights went out.  Total darkness.  We also discovered that at precisely the moment those lights quit working the rear back-up lights turned on and won't turn off.  We may have lost the lights on the dash, but they seem to have migrated around to the rear of the van.   It's Halloween, so I blame gremlins.

But the major problem is the secondary battery- the one that powers all the lights inside the camper, the radio, and the fridge- doesn't seem to be charging properly.  The alternator squeaks under the strain of trying to charge it.   Or maybe the squeaking is the sound of money flying out of my wallet again.

We are still hoping to depart on November 4.  In the meantime, I've been doing some motivational reading.

I started with an account of a young couple from Arizona who quit their jobs and drove their 1984 Westfalia from Arizona to Ushuaia, Argentina over the course of a year.  It's called Drive Nacho Drive. It is a fascinating read and highly recommended.  You can order it on Amazon.

After they drove the length of the Americas, they shipped their van to Southeast Asia and are now driving across Indochina, India, Europe. You can read about that part of their adventure at www.drivenachodrive.com

I've also re-read William Least Heat Moon's masterpiece of travel writing Blue Highways.   He took off in a Ford Econoline van (no toilet) in search of himself and America.  It was first published 35 years ago and spent almost a year on the NYTimes bestseller list.  Must reading.  

Here's a quote:

"When you're traveling, you are what you are, right there and then.  People don't have your past to hold against you.  No yesterdays on the road."

After reading Blue Highways here are some of the places I'd like to visit to see how much they have changed from his description 35 years ago:

Highway 89, California

Austin, Nevada

Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona

Hachita, New Mexico

Deming, New Mexico

Fredericksburg, Texas

Bath, North Carolina

New Bern, North Carolina

Ninety Six, South Carolina

Newberry, South Carolina

Jonesborough, Tennessee

Greenwich, New Jersey

Salem, New Jersey

I also want to see Marfa, Texas, Houma, Louisiana,  and Columbus, Indiana.  Other recommendations?

The last book I will re-read before departing is John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley.    

Here's are two quotes:  

"When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."

"A journey is like marriage.  The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."

Steinbeck set out to see America with his beloved dog at age 58.  I'm beating him by two years.
More importantly,  I think my dog is cuter than his.  You be the judge:

Charley
(and John Steinbeck)

Lilly
"so sweet she gives me sugar diabetes"

Lesson number 7:  Everyone thinks his/her dog is the cutest.  And everyone is correct.

Expen$ive

We left the vanagon at Northwesty for over a week.  We were supposed to be able to pick it up on Tuesday.  We called Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday.  Finally on Friday we were told that all was complete.  When we got to the shop at one o'clock the van was still up on the rack.  We waited an hour... It was out for a test drive...  We waited another hour...  One of the coolant hoses had sprung a leak...  I waited another two hours... Finally at closing time at 6:00 the van was ready.

  Here are the receipts:

After ringing up another big credit card bill I drove it home.  It seemed to drive just fine.  But the bluetooth phone no longer worked properly.  I could hear the caller but they couldn't hear me.  Damn. Eventually, the stereo system gave out completely.

I took it to a friend's house, a master mechanic.   We took out the stereo/bluetooth phone.  Not surprisingly, the microphone had not been plugged in.  Then we noticed that the cigarette lighter adapter was no longer hot. After a couple of hours, we found a male/female connected that had not been hooked up.  We hooked them up, and the cigarette lighter had power.
We never did figure out why the stereo wouldn't work.  The power lead was hot, but no sound.  Very sad.  I was depressed that night thinking this van would break down at every possible opportunity and every possible way.

Little did I know what was to come.

We drove it a few miles the next day, Sunday.  In the course of less than an hour, it became virtually impossible to shift into reverse, first, or second.  Clearly something was terribly wrong.  I knew that the clutch had been fine, and that it didn't pop out of gear, so I figured the shift linkage must have fallen apart.  We barely got it parked and waited 'til morning to drive back to Northwesty.

Monday morning we attempted to get the van into reverse so we could pull out of the parking space. Many attempts and lots of very bad words later, we were able to get it into the street.  I drove it in third gear most of the way to Renton, even starting from dead stop on a hill at a light.  The clutch got an unfortunate workout.  So did my credit card.

The only good news is while it was undriveable, I was able to sand, prime, and repaint the few small rust spots under the window seals in back.  It looks great, and the color matches perfectly.  One small success.

Oh yeah, and the other really good news is that John has been an incredibly supportive throughout all of this.  He has never once gotten upset with me or asked me to abandon this crazy idea.   I'm retired, I have a wonderful partner, two beautiful dogs, and a great adventure ahead.   Life just can't get any better.

Lesson number 6:  I must always remember that I'm a very lucky man.

Nuts

While waiting for Northwesty Vans to complete the "makeover" of Vanna, I lucked onto a website of fellow Volkswagen crazies devotees, thesamba.com.  What, I'm not alone in my madness?  There are others like me who totally love their Vanagons? And these people don't charge me money for advice or help? Things are looking up.

From thesamba, I've been told the most important upgrade to my camper is a memory foam mattress pad.  Evidently the beds in a Vanagon are not the same level of comfort one would find at a Hilton.  And comfort is important.  Why?

"Show me another vehicle where you can boff your significant other in reasonable comfort anywhere at almost anytime. Try that in a honda crx."   
(from  www.carlustblog.com/2008/08/volkswagen-vana.html   A very funny read.  Highly recommended.)  

Another helpful samba member turned me on to an app called "vanagon rescue squad" which might just save my bacon in case of a breakdown.  But I know that can't happen after all the money I've spent, right?

And I've started my education about auto mechanics. I've ordered several books from Amazon and Ebay, including the bible of Vanagon maintenance, the "Bentley" manual.  But I'm starting with a high school text on auto mechanics, appropriately titled.

I've also read How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by John Muir.  It's the original Volkswagen for Dummies.   It is a philosophy lesson disguised as a repair manual.  Here's an excerpt on what to do when your engine overheats:

"Do nothing until the engine cools!  Read, enjoy the scenery, take a little walk.  If you have a bus, and a friend, it might be a good time to go in the back and ball."

I've begun to plan our route to Florida.  We joined AAA, mostly for the towing coverage, but I also got several maps and have highlighted roads of interest.   We will take the southern route, heading down through Oregon and California and then across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (ugh), and the the Gulf Coast.  We plan on spending Thanksgiving in New Orleans.  My goal is to drive as few interstate highways/freeways as possible.  It will be back roads and small towns as much as possible.

I've also found a website that lists all of the Scenic Byways in the U.S. and I plan on driving as many of them as possible on our way to Florida.

So John's right; I'm crazy.  There are worse things I suspect.

Round Two

My training told me I should get a second opinion.  We paid Wolfsburg Motorwerks $500 (ouch) and took the van home.  I did some more research and found a shop in Renton that worked only on Vanagons.  Northwesty Vans.  I called and told them my plight.  They said they would be glad to look at our van for free and give us an opinion.

John and I drove to Renton and spoke with the owner of Northwesty, Kirk.  He seemed to know everything about Vanagons, and he was really nice.   He could do the repairs Wolfsburg Motorwerks had suggested, but better and cheaper (of course).  Plus, one of his employees had just rebuilt a 2.2 waterboxer engine and wanted to sell it.  We were told it would be perfect for our van, and it cost only $4,500, including a new stainless steel exhaust system.  Here it is:

Amazingly, the work they proposed to do amounted to just a few dollars shy of $15,000.  Coincidence maybe, but being the sucker trusting person I am, I agreed and they rang up a credit card receipt for $7,000 to begin work.

Lesson number 5: Auto mechanics are like doctors.  See a specialist and get a second opinion.

Hard Lessons

I researched auto repair shops that specialized in Volkswagens and made an appointment to drop it off at Wolfsburg Motorwerks in Ballard to be inspected the first available appointment the next week.  I told them I was planning on driving cross country in the van and wanted to be relatively sure the van wouldn't break down along the way.  I wanted them to fix/repair/replace anything they thought might go wrong.

While waiting to take the car to them I decided I could perform a few repairs myself.  Stupid me.
The washer fluid motor didn't work, so I pulled out the washer fluid reservoir from under the van.  I was drenched with washer fluid.  I bought a used replacement motor from a shop in Kent, only to find the motor wasn't compatible with my reservoir.  I gave up on that.

I thought I could spray paint the front grill black, as it had faded badly.  I got the appropriate spray paint for plastic, pulled off the grill and painted it.  After it dried, it looked worse than before.  It ended up looking something like this:

I gave up on that.

I figured I would start with something easy, like replacing the cigarette lighter jack.  The original lighter receptacle was worn and plugs fell out.  I pulled the old one, wired a used one I had bought from the same dealer in Kent, and immediately blew the fuse to the stereo, lighter, refrigerator, everything.   So my new fancy stereo was dead.  I gave up on that.

Lesson number 3:  Leave the repairs to people who know what they are doing.

I got my first call from Wolfsburg Motorwerks the day after dropping off the van.  Their initial estimate of repair to be done was a little over $3,000.   They found the suspension was original and needed lots of work.  But they hadn't checked the compression on the engine yet and they would call me back. They had heard the knocking noise and hadn't figured out what it was.  I figured $3,000 wasn't so bad.

Lesson number 4:  Don't believe the first estimate.


I got another call from Wolfsburg the next day.  The work had climbed to just shy of $7,000.
Here is what they proposed to do:

brake hoses
cv joints
steering rack
wheel bearings
fuel hoses
hatch struts
radiator
cooling hoses
front end repair
new brakes
new shocks.

And they still hadn't inspected the engine.

I texted the seller of the van that everything he had promised me about the van was incorrect.  He texted back the name of the shop in LA where he had had work done.  I called them.  The "rebuilt" suspension?  new shocks in 2003.  The "rebuilt" engine?  new spark plugs 4 years ago.  The "rebuilt" transmission?  a new clutch several years earlier.  I cried.

Several days later I got another call from Wolfsburg.  The good news:  the compression test on all 4 cylinders seemed fine, but 3 were in the 120 range and 1 was 180.  They had no idea why the discrepancy.  The bad news: they weren't sure, but they thought the knocking sound was from a bad push rod.  Translation: engine rebuild.  Bottom line: $6,000 more.   I cried again.

Two days later, I got the final estimate for work needed to bring the van up to shape.  Just a few dollars shy of $15,000.  I was so shocked I couldn't cry.

To cheer myself up, I bought one accessory that no Vanagon should be without.
Here it is:

I named her "Vanna",  and the van is now officially named "Vanna Nicole" because she's an expensive, high maintenance girl.

Beginnings

I blame all of this on my dogs.  Two mutts.  Whom I love more than anything in the world, except John of course.

Here they are, all three of them:

(my foot too)

I retired from medical practice a month ago, and our plan was to drive our dogs to our winter home in Florida.  (We can't fly them since they are too big to fit under the seat, and who in their right mind would put their loved ones in cargo?)  For two years John had driven them from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale and back in a mad dash.  It was 5 or 6 days of driving 3,400 miles each way.  No fun. Now that we are both retired, I figured what's the rush to get there?  We still had to drive the dogs, but why not enjoy the drive, stop along the way, see the country?

So I told John I wanted to buy a camper van to drive cross country.  His reaction?  He thought I was nuts, an impression that was confirmed when we drove 30 miles to see our first option for purchase.  It was a 1982 Ford Econoline van with over 200,000 miles on it.  The upside: it was cheap, it had a bed, a kitchenette, and a toilet.  The downside: it was a Ford, it smelled bad, it was ugly, and it had a toilet. (Who wants to drive around in a hot car with a sloshing toilet in the back?)

John was convinced I was insane.  He was right.

We were driving home from seeing that mess of a vehicle when I searched craigslist one last time on my phone.  Voila!  A new listing, a Vanagon on Queen Anne.  We were 10 minutes away.  We called the seller and drove right over.  It was love at first sight- a 1984 Vanagon Westfalia Wolfsburg edition. Brown and tan,"maple bar" colors.  It was beautiful, and the owner assured us that absolutely everything on the van had been rebuilt:  rebuilt engine, rebuilt transmission, rebuilt suspension.  Plus, he had just redone the captains chairs in butter-soft leather.  And it had no toilet.  Who could resist?

Here it is:

We bought it on the spot, no inspection.  The seller even knocked $500 off the price, so we got it at the bargain price of $11,500.  What a nice guy.

Lesson number 1:  Some people, even Vanagon owners, are dishonest.

What's the first thing a sane person would do after buying a 30 year old car?  Take it to a shop to have it inspected?  No.  We took it to Car Toys to have a new stereo system installed!  $800 later and we were rocking in our van.  Driving it home, we decided to test it by taking it up the steepest hill in Seattle, Dravus Street.   The van seemed to perform ok going up the hill in second gear until I heard a loud knocking that wasn't coming from the stereo.  Finally a glimmer of sanity.  Maybe I should get the engine checked out.  Duh.

Lesson number 2: Get a buyers inspection before buying the car