Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 03:51:14 -0700
Reply-To: dnmwilhite@EARTHLINK.NET
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Wilhite <dnmwilhite@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Sleep seven in a Westy - not too long
I ran in the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on Thursday morning. Got back to
the hotel, cleaned up, overate on the breakfast bar, checked out and headed to
Panama City Beach. The trip down was uneventful. Normal cruising speeds were
anywhere from 55-75 mph depending upon traffic and speed limits. Average gas
mileage was 17 mpg (still haven’t checked out my O2 sensor and I do have tall
tires). We spent the afternoon at St. Andrews’s state park beach and watched
fireworks throughout town in the evening.
We weren’t able to get a campsite (I won’t rant about FL State Parks
reservation only practice) for Thursday night, so we ended up parking in a
Grocery Store parking lot. There may be better places to ‘camp out’, but I’m
still kind of new at this thing. I didn’t pop the top because I didn’t want
to look too obvious I was ‘camping out’ overnight. We didn’t see any signs
prohibiting it, but figured it best not to advertise. It was hot and humid
with no breeze blowing and the 12V fan helped some, but not enough. Sleep
was interrupted by a guy cleaning the parking lot. He went around the lot for
about an hour with a back pack blower getting trash lined up and then he got
in his street vacuum and spent another hour or so getting up the trash.
We fortunately got a campsite at St. Andrews for Friday and Saturday nights.
We headed to the site and pitched the tent to unload all of the stuff from the
Westy. When checking the cell phone, we found out that my sister was on her
way down with her two kids. “Oh boy, am I going to have to sleep in the tent”
I thought. That wouldn’t be any fun, because it is hot and humid and you
don’t get the breeze in the campsite like you do on the beach. I decided that
we would find a way for all of us to sleep in the Westy. You may ask yourself
why I didn’t want to use the tent to sleep in? Here’s a simple answer. I had
my window air conditioner unit hanging in the driver’s side window. Keeping
cool was more important than having room.
We ended up with my me, my wife, my 5 and 3 year olds sleeping on the pull-out
bed and my sister with her 1 and 3 year olds sleeping on the pop top bed. On
the pull-out bed, we slept staggered with my wife and I sleeping with our
heads towards one end and the kids had their heads towards the opposite end.
My sister is a little height-impaired so she was able to sleep at an angle up
top with the kids beside her so there was no chance of the kids falling to the
floor through the opening. I had thoughts about the hanging bunk in the
front of the old Type II’s. Maybe I’ll look at rigging one up some day right
after I get finished with my 100 or so other projects I need to get done. Of
course, there shouldn’t be too many instances of trying to sleep seven people
in a Westy.
A couple of good points about my sister coming was that the kids had somebody
to play with and we didn’t have to move the Westy once we got to the campsite.
That meant that I could leave the AC on and keep it cool. It makes me think
of getting a small 4/5 passenger light weight car to tow behind the Westy when
we are going to be camping in the same location. Maybe a good beetle or golf.
I’ll have to check weights on some cars to see what I would want to use.
Hmmm, maybe I’d even trade my 86’ Syncro for a small VW.
On the trip back, I narrowly averted (I hope) major overheating damage. We
got stuck in some major traffic and the engine (and us) started overheating
getting the needle over to ¾ mark. When I was finally able to pull off to
find out what was wrong, I found that the fan fuse had blown. I replaced it
and I thought everything was okay. After another hour or so of intermediate
traffic, I noticed that temperature was again climbing, but the fan wasn’t
coming on. I pulled off, checked the fan fuse and saw that it was intact.
Checked the overflow in the back and noticed that water was coming out of it.
I then pulled off the grill and opened the radiator petcock. Note… I’ve got
the KEP petcock replacement and it’s well worth the money whether or not you
are into the Subaru engine conversions. Well, no water was coming out, so I
figured I must have lost some water due to overheating and then got air
trapped in the radiator. I placed a gallon jug of coolant behind the grill
next to the radiator and ran my hose from the radiator KEP petcock into it.
It may not be the best practice, but this is how I bleed the air from my
system. When the water gets hot and expands, it forces air out of the petcock
and into my ‘jug’ of coolant. When the water again cools and contracts, it
sucks the coolant back in from the ‘jug’. After doing this, my engine
temperature got back to running normally, and we made the next three hours of
the trip with no other events worth mentioning.
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