Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2015 09:33:31 -0700
Reply-To: John Goubeaux <john@UCSB.EDU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: John Goubeaux <john@UCSB.EDU>
Organization: UCSB
Subject: Re: Westy camping in Europe, home now, part 1
In-Reply-To: <55AA5F17.504@cox.net>
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Nice Mark, Thanks !
The part about the California license plates made me laugh ... :)
I recently had a friend ship her car ( with CA plates ) back to Zurich.
She was so proud to have CA plates ( a big status symbol in EuroLand )
on her car.
I warned her to remove them BUT she did not listen and sure enough they
were stolen in short time.
I look forward to hearing more stories.
-john
n 7/18/15 7:13 AM, mark drillock wrote:
> We shipped our Westy over and camped in 10 countries. We covered about
> 6,000 miles in 2 months, mostly on secondary roads and smaller. We
> stayed at public and private campgrounds and often took trains or buses
> from them into the cities for tourist activities. The camping was easy
> and the people were friendly. Our Calif plates stood out and people
> gawked at them everywhere we went, at times like we were in a UFO. I
> can't tell you how many times someone saw the front plate and then went
> to the back to see if it matched, then scratching their heads. The only
> other vehicle we saw with US plates was an aircooled Westy, with
> European plates in the normal spots but a couple of old US plates
> screwed onto the back hatch. In the last weeks of our trip we started
> using more high speed roads to cover ground quickly. We probably should
> have done some of that earlier but I wanted to see more real towns and
> not just ones on the major routes. We tried not to drive at all in the
> streets of bigger cities but it happened sometimes.
>
> Depending on where we were there were few if any other T3 models on the
> road but in some places in Germany they were a common sight. Lots of
> camper variations and with as many truck versions as vans, often in
> commercial use. In Italy we were approached daily by people wanting to
> buy ours and this happened in other countries too. Our van is not
> perfect but it looks better than most of the other T3 campers we saw.
> Newer VW camper vans were everywhere at the campgrounds and I stopped at
> a VW dealer to have a quick look at a T6 Westy poptop model.
>
> We had no mechanical issues of any kind. I added air to the tires and
> oil to the engine. We used 1/2 quart every 2000 miles. Coolant level
> stayed steady. I believe the 87 Westy has the original engine since that
> is what the PO told me and the engine serial number is correct for the
> vehicle manufacturing date. The heads are not original though.
>
> We left the van there in storage so we could return and do it some more.
> There is a lot left to see and unusual heat kept us from seeing some
> places we had planned on. I'll be taking a 3 window canvas to install
> next time so heat won't matter as much.
>
>
> Mark
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