Date:         Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:31:01 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Subject:      Dual control ? Minimal Van content.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"

I always wanted to make a car
with full dual controls, like for desert racing say - you just hand off
control to the co-driver without breaking stide.
I could build one for someone, got all the parts needed.
scott
turbovans
=

  When my father passed away, my mother gave us their almost new 30' Bounder
Mo-Ho....At the time, we were spending winters in Baja, south of La Paz and
had been using my F-250 with an Alaskan camper to habitate and motivate for
a couple of  months per winter.  With big misgivings, we decided to take the
Bounder, since it was free, almost new and had all kindsa crap...more stuff
than our house, even.

  So I hooked up my small Nissan pickup on the back and off we went...Gas
was still under a buck in Mexico, luckily.

  Well after many harrowing near misses along Baja Hwy 1, which is only 23'
wide (if all the pavement is in place) and many white-knuckled passes of
speeding Mexican busses and trucks, we made it to La Paz...Whew!  Then we
headed out to our beach property which entailed a ten mile stretch of 'Old
Baja' road....large sand washboards...  At about 5 miles onto the El
Sargento road...the steering wheel no longer had any effect on the direction
of the Mo-ho.  With a flourish, when my SO, sitting waaay over in her
captains chair screeched "What the f..are you doing, you're wandering all
over the road!" I calmly handed her the steering wheel (which had come off
in my hands) and said "Here, you drive then"...We'd already had some
Ballenas (liter sized Pacifico beers) so it cracked us up....I stuck some
vicegrips onto the steering shaft and we continued on to our camp....Only to
find out a week later when we went to pick up our mail that GM, which made
the Bounder platform, had issued a recall saying..."You GM truck vehicle may
encounter catastrophic loss of directional stability" or some such...

  What a good thing that wheel didn't come off on any of the previous 1000
miles of highway while we were skirting very dangerous driving encounters by
the hundreds, daily and blitzing along in 10 tons of flying Cheeze at about
150kilometers per hour..What a huge pig and one of the dumber vehicles I've
ever owned...We were popular with our tenting buddies during some long rainy
days, though, showing Videos and munching on microwave popcorn...Sheesh!

  The very next year...That Bounder was history!  I lusted all that winter
over my next door neighbor's Mazda-powered Westie...(van content) and helped
him win an off road race (the Pacifico 300) in his Baja Bug pre-runner...

  Don Hanson