Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 10:50:36 -0700
Reply-To: Tobin Copley <tobin.copley@ubc.ca>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tobin Copley <tobin.copley@ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: off road in a Vanagon Was Tries
In-Reply-To: <20000803.210417.-274791.2.kayakjr@juno.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
At 9:04 PM -0400 8/3/00, kayakjr@juno.com wrote:
>I'd be interested in knowing others feeling on off-road(or off pavement)
>with a 2WD Vanagon, and comparisons to the older bay window vans) I have
>a friend who has owned several 4-WD's, and done a fair amount of
>off-roading and he said his 81 Westy (now given to me) was the best
>vechicle he has driven in snow, and he was working a ski slope in
>Colorado at the time.
To clarify: I have no issue with traction on pavement. With my
diesel and all of its gear-mashing, axle-swapping 48 hp of raw power,
I'll buy everyone on the list a drink if I manage to ever have a
problem spinning drive wheels with the throttle in rain with good
tread tires. Any brand all-season tire, any kind of rain. And we
know rain here on the wet coast.
I'm not even talking about traction problems on graded gravel roads.
Fine there too. Any car is. My concern is with stuff like wet grass
on an incline, wet snow, loose gravel or cobbles, deepish sand, dirt
road washouts, dirt road tight corners on inclines, that sort of
thing. This stuff seems to really throw vanagons for a loop.
Nothing seriously 4WD--this is a vanagon not a Rover Defender. I'm
not trying to beat my ride up, just trying to get into out of the way
camp sites I never had any problems driving to in my old bay window
buses.
I am not looking forward to the thick wet snow we get here on our
steep twisty roads. But I'll reserve judgement for now, and we'll
see how it goes. As much of a mechanical boondoggle as our old Isuzu
Trooper was, nothing can hold a candle to real 4WD in serious snow or
rough off-road. We drove that thing up rough mountain tracks so
steep and loose we couldn't walk on it.
Vanagons have a disadvantage in low traction conditions relative to
the bays right from the start since VW redesigned the vanagon to have
more weight on the forward axle. A good move, on balance (heh) since
cross-wind vulnerability was much reduced (that combined with moving
the centre of effort aft).
>Was your bay a non-camper and the westy equip. hurting the wght.
>distribution? One could off-road with a minimum of fuel in the front,
>carrying jerry cans on the rear to make up for capacity and more
>improvement in weight distribution.
Both our bays were westies. The best was a standard westy (no built
in stove), the other was a deluxe. We plowed the propane tank only a
few times (tried to be careful with it there), but it was never
damaged. High-centred the standard a few times, did some exhaust
system damage a few times by miscalculating the departure angle, and
of course often used the front bumper for some deep plowing,
sometimes several times a minute when the road was very rough yet we
had to maintain momentum to avoid getting stuck. Never did any
other-than-cosmetic damage to the loaf bumpers--those vanagon bumpers
look pretty flimsy, and the plastic end caps... well, I've already
smeared one off. I think I'll take the other one off before going
anywhere bumpy again.
>10 gal on the rear in jerry's is roughly a 200 lb improvement in
>distibution. Off course you could carry a couple of agressive tires and
>mount them when venturing and put the street tires on the back of the van
>too. What the h*ll, get a step bumper anfd put the whole family back
>there, the dogs too - my two way 185 lbs together!
Yeah, that'll gain some traction all right--and lower the rear end
several inches. I guess as long as you store the torn off exhaust
parts behind the rear seats you can keep that weight in the rear
instead of incrementally leaving it scattered on the road behind you.
;-)
Like I said before, I'd raise the bus a bit if I could, but even one
inch higher and i get charged overheight on the ferry. :-/
I guess this is where I break out the mountain bikes or hiking shoes.
T.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin Copley Bowen Island, BC, Canada tobin.copley@ubc.ca
'82 Westfalia 1.6L NA diesel ("Stinky")
'97 son Russell =============
'99 daughter Margaret /_| |_L| |__|:| clatter
1995: 'Round US, Mexico, Canada 15,000 mi {. .| clatter!
1996: Vancouver to Inuvik, NWT 7,400 km ~-()-==----()-~
Previous buses: '76 westy deluxe (Daisy), '76 westy standard (Mango)
http://www.sfu.ca/~tcopley/vw/
