My attention has returned!

After pretty much hanging up my Vanagon hat for the winter my attention is finally returning to the greatest vehicle ever made. I needed to take a detour to sort out some gear for my cycling obsession. I've only got so much disposable income so I had to give the bikes the priority for a bit. Now that I've got that whole bike thing all set I'm ready to get back to the van. By the way, I got a sweet Cervelo Dual TT bike and a Felt F55 road bike thanks to the magic of eBay and craigslist + selling some gear from older hobbies - I know, I know - I have a sickness. Regardless, spring is in the air now and its time to start thinking about fixing up the rig for the coming season.

First on the list is my first real mechanical problem. At some point in early January I was out driving the van and slowly started loosing power. The van didn't stop completely it just slowed to a crawl. I was able to limp to my office to take a look and my hunch is that my fuel pump has finally gone out. The thing has been making a terrible noise since I bought the van so I guess its about time for the thing to finally die. I say this as if I know what I'm talking about but the truth is that I know a buzzing noise was emminating from the general area of the fuel pump and that now the buzzing is gone. That coupled with the fact that if that fuel pump wasn't delivering adequate fuel then the car would loose power makes me think that I should replace the fuel pump if I want the van to work again. Other than that I am basically guessing.

In spite of my general lack of knowledge, I'm compelled to attempt to fix this thing myself. I located a new Bosche fuel pump for just north of $130 online the other day so I'm thinking I'll just buy it and try my hand at installing it myself. I'm smart enough to realize that this could be a challenge to actually do but I'm not smart enough to convince myself that I need a trained professional. I'll admit that I am curious about how I'm going to avoid dumping fuel all over the place as soon as I unhook the old one but for some reason I'm optimistic that the answer will present itself in due time. I suppose I could check with the local shop just to get an estimate on what they would charge me if I had the part in hand but what would be the fun in that?

Other than that I've started a bit of a master list of all the things that I could possibly do to "pimp my ride". So far I've focused on replacing existing parts with working, ususally better looking, replacements via the smattering of Vanagon online offerings. Once I'm happy with my list then I'll go through and priortize how useful each option is and start to weight its importance to me. What I've learned so far is that I can pretty much spend as much as I would like making this van nice. It appears that there is always something else that you can buy so I'm trying to just focus on what would really add value.

My basic plan is to just focus on cosmetic issues and continue patching the mechnical until I hit the point of complete engine failure. Hopefully this failure point will be several years away and I will have time to address most of the cosmetic issues in the meanwhile. Eventually I'd like to replace the engine and transmission with something new and non-Volkswagen. The van is just plain underpowered as is and the transmission really limits your highway speed. The reality is that if I'm ever going to convince my wife that the Vanagon is the greatest all purpose road vehicle ever then I'm going to need to be able to drive faster than 65 mph. Now there are several places that will do engine replacements for you but the catch is that I think I'm looking at a minimum of $10k to get it done. Personally I'm thrilled to do that but the fact is that doing the replacement is basically going to be the cost of a new car and I'll need to approach it as such. So its best if I just focus on what I can do - which is cosmetics.

Now there are two approaches I could take here - interior first or exterior first. The exterior is overall a lot less expensive to deal with and it does actually add a lot to the vehicle. One of the most important upgrades I want to do is to replace the front headlights and grill with a South African setup that gives me four headlights and should make driving at night a lot more pleasant. Another thing I'd like to do is replace the bumpers with aftermarket bumpers that include a 2" rear hitch. That would give me the ability to add a bike rack to the rear or one of those sweet tow hitch grills. It might actually be quite nice to not have to keep bikes inside the van. I haul mine around a lot and it really takes up quite a bit of room.

The downside to the exterior first approach is that it will make the van look nicer to thieves while not actually make it feel nicer to the driver/passengers. That really sucks.

If I went with the interior first approach then I could also add a ton of value to the van. My wife and my biggest complaint is how crappy the seats are that are in the van now. I'm also really not happy with how well the carpets, seats, and everything else are able to trap and hold every single hair that falls off my dog. Replacing that stuff with something more durable and good looking would really make the van feel nice but wouldn't really increase its appeal to the casual thief since I usually keep the curtains drawn.

Right now I'm leaning towards the interior approach but I'm going to need to finish sorting out pricing and how I plan to pay for all of this stuff. I may have to sacrifice a few things but making the van more comfortable will make travelling a lot easier in the future.

A few other random thoughts:
- I'm leaning further towards removing the fridge. It only really works when plugged in, its not efficient at all, it doesn't really keep drinks all that cold, and I don't have shore power to plug into all that often in practice. Plus, I'd love to get some more storage. I'm also considering moving my aux battery and cleaning up my power stuff in general. Honestly a cooler is usually enough for my needs so why waste all that space and weight with the fridge?

- I need to get more off the grid with my power setup. It find it quite hard to actually plug the van in and it wrecks my second battery. I think I need to bump up my solar panel priority so I can get reliable power from the van.

- I need a real gague for checking how much charge is left in my batteries. Right now I am just guessing and it leaves me without coffee some morning.

- I'm leaning towards wanting my stove to work. I'm only going to do it if I replace my LP tank. The cost of doing that is a bit of a hangup though especially considering I can just get a coleman stove or use my backpacking stove for the exact same thing at far less cost.

Enough for now.