Date:         Tue, 21 May 1996 12:05:14 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         dlytle@as.arizona.edu (Dyer Lytle)
Subject:      new westy tent, '66 progress



Hi all, just a few things,

Today I bought a Westfalia accessory tent (The Drive-Away model with floor)
and it brings up a question about tent poles.  Perhaps some of the people
with tents have had a similar experience.  The tent looks good and all the
poles but one seem to be in reasonably good shape.  That pole is one of the
upper corner poles and is a little over-bent.  That is, the pole naturally has
a bend in it of about 60 degrees or so but this one is bent about 75 degrees
and there is a bit of a crease in the underside and very small cracks on
the outside edges.  I need to straighten this and reinforce it.  Has anyone had
any experience doing this?  What I though I would do would be to slowly bend
it back to the normal angle, tapping the sides with a hammer to remove the
crease, then weld the cracks closed and weld on a small, flat piece of metal
for a brace inside the bend.  (The poles seem to be steel since my magnet
sticks to it.) Other observations so far: This is a well made, *heavy* tent.


Other things with the '66 project.

The used dual-port cylinder tin I bought and had sand-blasted showed a few
cracks around the intake-manifold holes so I spent some time carefully welding
them and grinding down the welds.  This was made more difficult by the
thinness of the metal.  The metal in these things aren't terribly thick
even when new and after a bit of rust and sand-blasting are even thinner.
It was very easy to accidently poke holes in the metal even with the welder
set at the lowest power.  When I was done I painted them an attached them
to the engine, they fit *much* better than the new aftermarket tin I had
before.  I assembled all the tin, except the fan shroud, on the engine and
it fits and seals very well, should help keep this engine cool.

I also finished intalling the new rubber brake lines and did some re-wiring
in the engine compartment as well as reinstalling all the wires and do-dads
that I took out when I painted in there.

More later,

 -Dyer


------------------------------
Dyer Lytle              
dlytle@as.arizona.edu   
http://as.arizona.edu/~dlytle
HST NICMOS Project      
Steward Observatory     
University of Arizona   
------------------------------