We left Busfest and headed to Woolacombe. This was our second time on the Twitchen House campsite which has amazing views of the Bay. We only stayed three nights this time round but this was all due to the number of places we were scheduled to stop at over the two weeks we had in September.
The first full day we had was spent on the bay. We are familiar with a small path that meanders from the camp site at the top which is fairly wooded, to the bay at the bottom. Other places we visited during our stay were Ilfracombe and Croyde Bay.
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One of our main reasons for heading back to this campsite was to enjoy the views in our campervan. The previous year at the same time in September we had stayed on the same pitch, but were camping under canvas. It was the last night that we had seen the Westy Syncro that inspired me to by Wolfgang (below). 🙂
So I had to park the van on the seafront and take a photo for posterity 🙂
My van came with a Sherpas Combi Translift roof rack system fitted. I didn’t know at the time that some of the components were missing and just saw it as a roof rack much the same as you get from any motor factors. The previous owner gave me the impression that the leaking roof may have something to do with the way the system was mounted to the roof. So i took the whole lot off just to be on the safe side. It transpired that the water ingress was down to a perished skylight seal but i didn’t miss the rack initially.
However, the more i thought about it and the more i looked into the Sherpas system, the more I realized that it was a pretty well designed and functional addition to the van. The fact that the rails slide off the roof allowing easy mounting of things like kayaks and roof boxes made it pretty darn cool.
I had the alloy roof runners that mounted to the roof, and the main cross members mounted to them. There were some components that i had cleaned up and tried to refurbish, but they weren’t brilliant and could really have done with replacing. So I set to looking for the parts to make my Translift complete. I searched on Gumtree one day and saw a complete set of bars and sliders going for £20. This was ridiculously cheap as they are pretty rare and hard to get hold of. So I snapped them up 🙂 …..
Gumtree bargain 😉
So I added them to the van and here you can see the system in action. The top rails slide of and position at the side of the van for easy access
So I was pretty happy. But I continued to search to find some of the extras like the locks to secure the rack sliders to stop theft, and kayak holders. . I found another complete set of on E bay, but the price was quite a lot more expensive. Probably more realistic in the grand scheme of things. This was a complete system with all of the bells and whistles that i was missing. At £200 it was a lot of money, but I know these don’t come available very often.
So it’s now complete 🙂 .Here you can see the rack from above with my new 200watt solar array attached 🙂
Great weekend consisting of a visit to Chatsworth house on the Saturday, a camp over at Tax Farm and a cycle ride along Cromford canal with a surprise scooter really at the rugby club.
Unfortunately my van never came with a night heater fitted. It must have been removed at some point in the vans life prior to me owning it. We lived with it for a period of time, but I knew it was something that i would want to get sorted at some point in the future. I managed to buy a second hand one from a guy on the Brick Yard forum.
I brought it as an unknown entity and stripped it down to find that the motor had blown and the blower assembly had seized.
On the bench for stripdownStripped and evaluatedDe-coked components
I came to the conclusion that the build up of coke in the combustion chamber probably cause the motor to stop and burn out. So after a strip down and de-coked the of all of the moving components, I had gotten the fan assembly spinning again quite nicely. I could not find a replacement motor so decided to have a go at repairing the faulty one. This involved soldering a very fine wire in place but i did it and was really happy with the progress 🙂 .
Unfortunately my Eber resurrection failed at the last hurdle. I was informed that the heater was in actual fact a petrol model after I posted a picture of what I thought was the glow plug on a forum. I was told that it was in fact a spark plug, so it to an abrupt holt as my is diesel .
Advice had been given previously that i was wasting my time trying to resurrect a 25 year old heater as it was never going to be as reliable as a new one. I wanted to prove to myself that it could be done but the fact the heater i had bought was the wrong fuel type meant that i had to throw the towel in and look for an alternative. I was reluctant to throw good money after bad and buy another questionable second hand unit. Fortunately a forum member suggested I considered getting a newer unit and that he actually had a selection of heaters for sale. So after a few pm’s I settled on a Webasto Airtop 2000st.
The original Eberspacker heater box had already been refurbished by myself previously with a good few coats of Hammerite black in anticipation of the original heater being completed and working.
Original Eberspacher housing
Fortunatly new heater was small enough to fit in this so it would not have to take up space inside the van. Below you can see all of the parts together, including new heater hose which bridges the gap from heater unit into the van
New Webasto and original Eber housing
Here you can see the heater is mounted in the housing and a register plate has been screwed in place for inlet and exhaust.
The original Eberspacher controller was removed from the right hand side of the van to make way for the Webasto controller. The Eber controller was also linked by a loom to the timer unit that mounts at the front of the rock and roll bed so this came out at the same time. That gap would now be filled by a small square clock which was sent as a good will gesture from the fellow that i bought the heater off 😉 .
So all that was left to do was to fit the unit to the van. Knowing that there would be a lot of work underneath the van, and i would struggle to get access to do the job properly, i decided to take it to a local trusted garage. I loaded all of the parts i wanted fitting and dropped the van off.
A day or so later I collected Wolfgang with a fully installed and working night heater. I can’t recommend these units highly enough and wouldn’t want to be without one now 😉
Had a great time at this meeting. It was the first one and I hope there will be one in 2016. It was small enough to have that personal touch with the organizers, but large enough not to be a disappointment. The highlight of this show for me was having the opportunity to meet some other Atlantic owners and have a few drinks and share stories.
Left To Right-Tarijc, Kent West, WolfgangChilling with good company
My camper never came with the under-tray components that are fitted from new. This basically consists of a large, thin pressed metal element that sits underneath the engine. It contains high density proofing that is held onto the tinware by plastic cross retainers. To complete the this there is a separate part that draws air into the turbo to keep that cool, and another piece of tinware that drops down at the back of the van to provide a fastening point for the main under-tray.
Being a newcomer to the whole T3 van scene I didn’t have the experience to know what should have been fitted to the vehicle and what shouldn’t. It was around the time i decided to change my exhaust that I realize that this part was missing. After some discussion on forums it soon became clear that the extra time for maintenance in having to remove these items, often lead to it never being put back on again.
However, after some thought i decided to track down these missing parts and fit them back on the van. My reasoning was, they were designed by VW to be fitted, so they must have had a justification for doing so. The obvious ones were to reduce noise, and cool the turbo. Stopping dirt and dust from the road filtering into the engine bay is another, and reducing the amount of muck getting on the bottom of the engine \ sump.
I found a complete set of tinware in the UK, and had it shipped over. It total it cost me about £60 including delivery. It was covered in a thick black oily deposit. Waxoil, Dinitrol or Tetroseal?
Removing the black oily covering
Anyway, I decided that it was going to be cleaned off and the whole thing would be painted in Hammerite silver. I removed the black oily covering with petrol which was really effective at breaking it down to a liquid. I then just wiped it off with a rag. I must admit, although the covering was not pleasing on the eye, i feel it must have done it’s job in preserving the tinware, Although it is galvanized, i feel it would have been in a lot worse condition if not for the gunk.
Gunk removed
Unfortunately , that’s about as exciting as this post gets. As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, that is the finished article. As with most of the maintenance work underneath the van, it’s always easier to get a garage to do it due to the awkward position of the items. This was fitted along with the Webasto night heater.
Its questionable as to weather or not this makes a great deal of difference acoustically whilst inside the van. However, It does make a difference from outside (which my neighbors will surely appreciate 🙂 ) .
I decided i didn’t want to go upwards with roof bars and top boxes because I wanted to increase the flexibility as far as restricted height car parks were concerned. So looking at other options I saw the Fiamma Ultrabox 320. This was designed to go on the back of campers and motor homes and fits on the bike rack I already had installed.
So after deciding this was the way to go I looked on Ebay, Gum Tree and finally found one that met our price bracket on Pre-Loved. It was virtually new and only been used once before the owners sold the motorhome. We got the box for £140 which was a massive saving from the £400 odd they cost new.
We decided to make a weekends camp out of collecting the box as it was Lincoln way. We stayed at a campsite we had used earlier in the year (Links Lanes Campsite). The weather was a darn site warmer when we collected the box in June. 🙂
So the box sat on the back of the van quite happily and would have performed as expected. However, the front of the box seemed to seat more on the furthest rail from the van which i felt would would put unnecessary strain on it. So with a little marine ply and a short baton of wood I created a spacer plate to drop into the back rail to make up the distance. This was varnished to protect against the element and then bolted to the bottom of the box. (photos to follow)
Also, I felt that the stark white of the Fiamma products were great if attached to most motor-homes or caravans. But it didn’t compliment my vans colours. So in a matter of weeks I had dropped the box off and had it colour coded ‘Cherry Red (LA3E). This was going to prove to be a massive bonus on future trips in 2015
The real reason for this additional storage space was to remove the requirement to have the external camping components in the van. This includes the tables chairs mats etc. This is / was great as we can pull up on a campsite when it is raining and not have to hoof the outdoor gear outside before we can use the living space. This is what we carry in the back box:
Two large camping chairs, two foot stools, collapsible bucket, wash bowl, BBQ, mallet, Fiamma awning tie down and awning mat and a Utility tent for that all important item …the portaloo.
The first thing I did to protect my seats was to get a cover for the front. I knew the beaded covers were a retro thing and thought at least it would stop the wear and tear on the front seats. So we approached the local motor factors and they had a set of covers in that were 20 years old at £7.99 each(still the same price tag). We bought both and found that they were selling on the internet at £30 each. 🙂
So we all know that the fabric in the Atlantic is rare right? So I set to trying to protect the most used part of the van…the seats. It would make you laugh to find how cheap this was. I bought a set of full luxury seat covers from Halfords that were pretty much in Westfalia Grey and covered the rear seats in a matter of minutes!
OK, so it’s not Atlantic fabric for those that get exited about that, but for me it is more about not having to really worry about the rarity issue and just enjoy the van.
The front Captain Seats were a little more difficult to fit. My wife Mandy modified the sides to cater for the arm rests. She did this with Velcro after cutting up the sides. So in conjunction with the beaded cover, the seats are now very well protected. Maybe just a little cover for the arm rests in light grey and job is a gud un 🙂
I have owned my van for best part of eight months and had lived with it for what it was (an under powered 1990 campervan) . I had seen all the posts on various forums etc about how bad these vehicle were on hills and in general in their standard guise, and had toyed with the idea of dropping in a different engine because i didn’t think i could live with it for the long term. However, i’d almost made my mind up that i was going to live with (and love) it for what it was.
Little did i know that there was actually a problem with the LDA boost controller. This was there to increase the fuel to the engine under load, and the fact that mine was knackered was a big deal as far as performance was concerned. This was highlighted during a service at Brickwerks.
So I set to rectifying the problem. The new ones were not readily available in the UK so I bought a second hand one from North West VW at a cost of £29 delivered. Fitted it and it made a massive difference to the drive ability especially on hills. So the van doesn’t need to be upgraded engine wise! 🙂
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