Getting Closer to a Decision

After doing some more price comparisons and thinking about what I really need on the van, I'm thinking the seats have got to be my first purchase. Riding comfortably is a big part of enjoying a long drive so it should be the thing I address first. Plus I found this amazing sewing shop called SewFine (http://www.sewfineproducts.com/) that specialized in creating new interiors for Volkswagens. They offer a couple of options. I can either get completely new bucket seats that are similar to the original ones or I can just get the replacement fabric and/or foam for my original seats. Due to the cost of the new seats I'm thinking I'll just get covers and foam for the seats I have. They still won't be the greatest seats ever made but they'll look nice and feel a lot better.

The thing I'm most excited about with the new seat covers is that they offer a lot of different fabrics. When I'm using the van I'm often really dirty and in the company of dogs. Those two things don't really mix well with the normal car upholstry. SewFine offers vinyl and leather options for their covers though. I'm leaning towards the vinyl - its relative cheap, should be easy to keep clean, and will wipe right off. My only concern with the vinyl is my dog's nails. I'm not positive that he won't just poke a hole right through that stuff. I guess it will depend on the vinyl but its a concern.

Beyond the seat covers I'm going to pick up some rubber mats for the interior. I've found some at GoWesty (www.gowesty.com) that will cover just about every surface that gets any traffic in the van. I've been using something similar in my Tacoma pickup for years and am a firm believer. Its nice to be able to just hop in the truck covered in mud and not have to worry about any challenging cleanups. I need that same sort of thing for the van. Every trip I've taken it on I just get dirt and all sorts of other filth all over the place. If I covered the thing in rubber I think I'd be able to keep things a lot cleaner.

That should do it for the first round of upgrades. I've just got to pick my colors and then place my order. I'm leaning towards black and brown or brown and tan for the seats and black for the mats. Nice simple colors. It might make things a bit dark but those colors are easy to match and hide the filth well.

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.

Vanagon Blogging is Slow

Once again I've gone over a month without updating the site. This is mostly because I've gone over a month without updating the Vanagon. Lately I've been spending my available funding on other projects so not a lot has been happening with the old van. I have however been using it a fair amount and learned a few more things along the way. I was thinking I'd upgrade the seats but my wife and I decided to try out a new budget starting November 1st so I decided to put the seats on the back burner. Its still something I think is worth spending some money on but I think I'm going to wait a few months before I actually do anything about it.

One of the most interesting things that I've done with the van recently is began to understand how it does in the colder weather. My wife and I took the van camping up in the Catskills in mid-November where the weather was in the 30s during the day. I quickly realized that the first problem is that the heater doesn't work while I'm driving down the highway. The reason for this is that the engine temperature barely registers when I'm cruising along at 65mph in the cold. I'm hoping its just a thermostat problem but I haven't really gotten the chance to look into it. Regardless, this made living out of the van for a weekend of camping a little more challenging. I'm not going to lie, it was cold.

Another thing I learned on that trip was that when it is around 20 outside it is cold sleeping in the van as well. We just spent one night out but the dog's water bowl was frozen solid by morning. My wife and I weren't too cold because we had good sleeping bags but the poor pup was shivering all night since he isn't completely sold on the idea of being covering in blankets. I think it will be worth considering some sort of heating solution while camping. I don't think I spend enough time in the cold to justify a furnace type solution but it would be nice to add some sort of heating element. My main concern is with saftey though. I'll have to look through some of the Vanagon list archives and see if I can find some suggestions. I'm leaning towards an electric camping heater that would be safe for usage in an unventilated area.

The only other exciting thing I've done on the van recently was change the oil. That may not sound all that exciting but the filter was completely stuck and refused to come off without a fight. I bought and tried two different oil filter wrenches and all I had to show for it was a sheared filter that was dripping oil all over me. Luckily my Dad came through with a plan that worked perfectly. He told me to get a big bad screw driver and drive it through the filter so I could use it for leverage. It took driving that screw driver through the filter twice and using all my weight to get the thing started but the filter did eventually come off. So if you find yourself with an oil filter stuck on your engine, just drive a big screwdriver through it and wrench that thing right off.

Next up for the Vanagon is its longest trip yet. I'm heading down to Alabama this Friday and I'm looking at 800 miles each way. My Dad is going to help me fix a few things on the van while I'm down there so hopefully I'll have something more substancial to report after the New Year.

Happy Holidays!

New Seat Possibilities

Looks like I might be on the path towards my first big upgrade. After my post yesterday I decided to see what some of my options were for dealing with the front seats of the van. I posted to the Vanagon mailing list asking for help and got some great replies. The most interesting was from a guy up in southern PA who is currently parting out several Vanagons. He told me that the post 86 Vanagon seats were a dramatic improvement over the stock 84 seats. They are far more ergonomic, are constructed better, and have arm rests. He said he had several sets that I could take a look at this weekend if I like. He was looking to get around $200 a set which I think would be well worth it if I could avoid another trip with a spring or two in my back. I'll let you know how it goes.

Its been a while

Its been a while since I've posted an update so I figured I'd stop by and report what the van has been up to. I haven't done any real work on the van per say other than a little bit of cleaning but I have gone on several more trips and I've really started to get my head around what is actually needed vs. what would be cool.

Since mid-August I've taken the van up to the Gunks a couple of times to do some climbing and I've taken it to a couple of different bicycling events. Other than that I've just driven it around town a fair bit and hauled some friends down to a great crab shack on the coast. At this point I've slept in the van around a dozen nights under various circumstances and feel like I've got my usage dialed.

The biggest surprise about the van is what an excellent thing it is to be able to get a good nights sleep while stealth camping. The best example of this is when I drove the van down to DC for my first triathlon and I was able to sleep undisturbed for free right on the side of the road near the race. As long as you don't pop the top, draw the curtains, and throw up the heat reflector in the windshield I really don't think anyone would bother me. I've learned how to set things up to sleep comfortably with my bike, climbing gear, and dog all in the car with me while the doors are locked and windows up. All you've really got to do is remember to open the skylight and you are golden.

I've also gotten really spoiled by shore power and am bummed when I don't have it. I just keep a 100' extension cord with an adapter in the van and plug in to anything I can find when I'm camping. The biggest advantage of the shore power is being able to power the fridge and the battery charger. That lets me have cold beer and a nice fully charged aux battery all while I'm using the lights, playing gamecube, using my laptop, and running the fans. Its pretty sweet. Unfortunately I'm a lot more limited running on aux power. I've only got a 900W inverter so it strains a bit to run the lights and the coffee machine at the same time. Still, life could be worse.

The things I hate about the van so far are the driver's seat, the seat covers, and the overall poor condition of the cockpit. The dash is really faded, cracked in places, and the driver and passenger door interiors are just terrible. I'm also totally tired of the terrible seat covers that came with the van, the nasty carpet, and the rotting liner panels throughout. The seat seriously could not be any less comfortable as well. To make things worse I've got in pushed pretty far forward to make room for the aux battery which is too tall for the compartment behind the driver's seat. I'm going to have to find some sort of replacement but I'm really not sure how to go about it.

I'm also going nuts about the lack of power steering. It really makes driving around the city a pretty serious pain in the ass. Having to really crank the steering wheel around just to get off my block does not make me very excited to get out on the road. I talked with my dad about maybe adding power steering. I'm going to drive the van down to him over Christmas and maybe we can figure something out.

I'd also hoped to be a lot farther along with the cleaning of the van at this point. I've still got mildew in the poptop, nothing covering the galley area floor, and dirty fabric. I should stop complaining in the blog and do something about it but I've had a hard time justifying the funds lately and I've just been focused on other things.

Even though there is a lot I'd like to change this thing is still awesome. The ease of van camping makes me never want to fiddle with car-camping in any other way. It's also great to have a place that I don't mind leaving my dog if I want to go out to dinner or something while I'm out on the road. If only this thing would drive a little bit faster and I'd drive it everywhere. While I'm at it I'd also like some sort of free infinite energy supply to power the van rather than gas. Stupid gas.