Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 16:03:18 -0700
Reply-To: Todd Crosland <tcrosland@PHILLIPSAGENCY.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Todd Crosland <tcrosland@PHILLIPSAGENCY.COM>
Subject: California Campers..careful.
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
First about myself, I have been subscribing to the vanagon list most of the
summer, with interest in learning the common problems of the vanagon before
buying.
About two months ago someone on the list posted a classified from the SF
Chronicle about an 87 westy synchro, 62000 miles, $13,500. I called and
asked all the questions that I could think of during three different calls,
I wanted to be quite sure because I would have to fly from Salt Lake to San
Francisco to see this thing.
Turns out that Sorin of California Campers is the owner of the bus. Sounds
like a good guy on the phone but you never know, trusting my clearly
misguided instincts my wife and I board a plane to SF.
To make a really long story short, everything was wrong with the bus.
different tires front and back
air condish doesn't work
fridge doesn't work
differential lock doesn't work
a total festival of rust, seams, sides, front, back and bottom, bondo, bad
paint, dents and more bondo.
inside was a mess, stained carpet, cracks in the cabinets...
odometer works only occasionally, 65,000 miles not a chance
it had the evil bucking thing, to an extreme degree
Curious thing is that on the phone there were none of these problems. A few
little seam bubbles, clean, everything works, runs great, yada, yada, yada.
Obviously, I have my own opinion about the ethics of this individual,
question comes down to this, can someone that owns 25 late-model Vanagons,
describe a bus so completely incorrectly without doing it on purpose?
Sometimes, everyone gets lucky, a week after my very bad (and expensive)
experience with the guy in SF, I saw an ad on e-page?
87 Westy GL 40,000 kept in garage...
Called the guy, flew to Denver, bought the bus.
Just the item I was looking for, this bus is new,
bought new by retired couple, husband dies the next year, a few trips to the
store, sits in garage, given to son last spring with 30,000 miles.
camper stuff never used, body perfect, the carpets had been covered their
entire life, has every reciept in a file, serviced every 3,000...
The moral of the story, California Campers may not be your best bet. Mildly.
PS, I've noticed the contoversy when someone posts a negative message some
vendor, repair shop, or whatever.
In my estimation the only thing wrong in posting this message is that I
didn't do it sooner.
...........................
Todd Crosland
Sr. Art Director
THE PHILLIPS AGENCY
70 North Main, Midvale, UT 84047
t 801.569.0070 f 801.569.0072 c 801.652.6532
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 11:00:54 -0800
> From: Tom Young <young@SHERLOCK.SIMS.BERKELEY.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Any experience with California Campers?
>
> No one has ever asked this question before, so I've never related my
> disappointing experience with California Campers.
>
> About a year ago we decided to rent a Westfalia from CC to use on a
> visit to our daughter on Vancouver Island, Canada. So, after communicating
> a couple of times via email with Sorin (the proprietor) my wife
> and I drove to San Francisco on a Friday afternoon to pick up the van. We
> met Sorin, got a quick rundown on how the camping equipment worked, and my
> wife jumped back into our car to return to work in the East Bay. I hung
> around to finish up the paperwork, planning to follow her home shortly.
>
> After finishing the paperwork I bade Sorin farewell and jumped into the van
> and drove down the hill from Sorin's apartment. There's a stop sign at the
> bottom of his hill so I stepped on the brakes.... and drifted through
> the intersection when the brake pedal traveled almost completely to the
> floor!
>
> By pumping the brake pedal I got the van stopped, then turned around and
> drove back up the hill. When I explained to Sorin what just happened
> at the bottom of his hill it appeared that he didn't see any problem;
> his response (I'm not making this up) was that "the brakes on that van
> hold a little low."!!!! I jumped back in the parked van, stepped on the
> brakes and showed him that the pedal almost hit the floor before
> stopping; sure, you could pump them up, but I'd be damned if I was going
> to drive all the way to Vancouver that way, with my family in the car.
> After a bit of discussion, Sorin agreed that I could take a different
> vehicle.
>
> Sorin didn't have another van ready at the momement so I hung out while
> he prepares another Westy. While he's doing this I look at the tires
> on the rear of the 2nd van. They're getting a bit thin - still legal,
> but not the kind of tires I'd use on a van I was renting to someone for a
> 1,500 mile road trip. I point this out to Sorin, and he tells me he was
> planning on replacing them after the next rental. After a bit more
> discussion on the matter - I'd like to swap wheels with the Westie with
> the bad brakes - he says we can go down to his tire supplier and get
> new tires, but it would probably take a couple of hours. Since it's now
> getting late in the day and we are planning on leaving early in the
> morning, I decide I'll risk it with the tires on the van and start the
> drive home.
>
> On the drive through the city streets of San Francisco, getting to the
> freeway, I'm noticing a slight "klunk" that seems to be coming from
> somewhere down by the front tires, and a slight judder in the steering
> wheel, but I attribute that to San Francisco's bad streets. The car
> smooths out nicely on the drive home on the freeway, and I park the van in
> our driveway. After a 3 or 4 hours of stowing and packing, we're ready to
> make our getaway at the dawn's early light.
>
> Bright and early the next morning we all hop into the van and I begin the
> short drive over to my mother's house to pick her up; we plan to drop
> her off in Seattle to visit some friends while we go on into Canada.
>
> At that time the streets around my mother's house had just been
> freshly paved and were smooth and nice like only new pavement can be.
> Driving on these smoothly surfaced roads made it real clear that
> what I'd been hearing and feeling the day before was not the
> judder and shake from driving pot-holed streets. Rather, I'd been feeling
> the judder and shake of a bad right front wheel bearing in the van!
>
> Calling Sorin from my mother's house I told him that I needed yet
> another van because of the bad wheel bearing on van number 2 and asked
> that he bring one out to me in Walnut Creek, posthaste.
>
> Now, as it was a weekend morning, (Saturday), it should take only about 25
> minutes to drive from San Francisco to Walnut Creek. Figure another 20
> or 30 minutes to get your pants on, squirt off another van, etc. and I
> figured Sorin would be showing up right around 8:30 AM, since I'd called
> him shortly before 7:30 AM. At around 10:15 Sorin shows up in van #3; it
> had taken him that long because the wife and baby and all their gear
> were in the car with him, all set to swap vans and take a little trip
> down to Monterey!
>
> Another hour or so changing paperwork, swapping the loads in the two
> vans, etc. and off we go, getting away over 3 hours later than we
> planned, I can't really blame Sorin for us getting stuck at the
> California/Oregon border that night due to snow on the pass, but they did
> shut it down about 15 minutes before we came through.
>
> The next day, driving into a rest stop just south of Portland, I hear
> some car that's clearly got a bad muffler; it's making that "rumph,
> rumph" noise that sounds like you've driving a souped-up piece of American
> iron with a hot cam. It wasn't until I pulled into a parking space that
> it became clear that the car with the making the noise was us! Crawling
> under the car (in the rain - hey, it's Oregon) I see that all the bolts
> and the related gasket that attach one of the left-side exhaust
> manifolds to the collector have disappeared somewhere between the Oregon
> border and our rest stop.
>
> If you've ever driven in Oregon you'll have noticed that they have that
> funny law against pumping your own gas. It seems that they must have
> another law against repair shops staying open late on a rainy Sunday
> afternoon, because we drove around for over an hour in Portland trying to
> find anyone that could help us. We finally found an open "76" station with
> a "mechanic" on duty. 'Course, he didn't have the gasket we needed,
> though he figured he could cut the material he needed from some other
> gaskets he had on hand. The other problem was that he didn't have any
> bolts in the shop to replace the missing ones!
>
> Off I go, running through the rain, to the nearest Home Depot to find my
> "mechanic" some bolts. When I get back he bolts everything together, I
> fire up the car, and once more I'm driving a something that sounds
> like a Vanagon, not a hot V8-engined F*rd. I pay the man and off we go,
> heading toward Seattle.
>
> Slowing down in the Seattle suburbs, looking for the house where we're
> going to drop my mom, it's obvious that the "fix" in Portland didn't last
> the day because once more we're hearing the "rumph, rumph, rumph" of
> exhaust where the gasket has blown out from between the flanges. Since
> it's clear we can't get across the Canadian border sounding like that we
> spend another couple of fruitless hours trying to find a chain-store
> FLAPS that might have the gasket we need. No luck.
>
> Giving up, we drove up to Bellingham, Washington, the last town south of
> the border that has a VW dealership. We planned to get to the dealership
> first thing Monday morning, get the car fixed, then hot-foot it up to
> the border and catch the first ferry of the day to Vancouver Island.
>
> It was important that we catch the FIRST ferry of the day because our
> daughter's school had planned a 2-day ecology field study and if we
> missed the first ferry we couldn't see her until the group came back to
> campus, which was the last day of our trip. Of course, we had REALLY
> planned to be across the border Sunday night, but our problems with the
> California Campers vans had spoiled those plans.
>
> The next moring I'm at the dealership before they open, which doesn't
> really do me any good because the parts department doesn't open until
> an hour after the repair shop opens. However, eventually the van gets
> fixed, we pay the man (yet again) and off we go to the border. We get
> across and finally get to the ferry just as the first ferry of the
> morning is pushing away from the dock, with the next scheduled ferry
> set to go 2 hours later. So, no, we didn't get to see our daughter
> that day.
>
> For the next couple of days we bummed around Vancouver Island (a very
> pretty place) but a huge windstorm prevented us from even trying out
> camping in the Westy, which was point of renting the vehicle in the
> first place. We finally get to see our daughter our last day on the
> island, and then head back toward Seattle to pick up my mom for the
> trip home.
>
> At some point in southern Washington I let my wife take over driving
> and I go sit in the back seat to get some rest. Lightly dozing, it
> slowly comes to me that the engine tone has changed; it's lower and
> throaty, clearly not another exhaust leak, but somehow changed from
> it's normal tone. Struggling to come awake I notice that a Winnabeggo
> camper is passing us on the left as the van labors up a small rise on the
> freeway. I have my wife pull over on the side of the freeway and I take
> over driving, trying to find a spot where I can park the car and possibly
> figure out what's happening here. Naturally, it's blacker than the
> inside of a cow, it's raining, and there isn't the light of a rest stop
> or gas station for as far as the eye can see.
>
> Laboring on, we finally find a gas station and I pull in and turn off the
> car. Emptying everything out of the back, I pull up the engine cover
> and start looking for frayed wires, loose hoses, anything that might
> explain why we've got no power. I detach and re-attach everything I
> can find, but don't see anything wrong. I slide under the car and
> look for anything gone awry down there with the same results -
> everything looks fine.
>
> I load everything back into the car, crank the engine over and - it's
> running fine! "Ah ha," I exclaim. "It's one of those 'wet westy' ECU
> thingies that I've read about on the list where turning the ignition
> off and on resets something and the car runs fine after that!" Since
> it was now getting close to midnight, we found a motel and called it a
> night.
>
> The next morning, 20 or so minutes down the road, the problem we'd
> experienced the night before resurfaced, and this time turning off the
> ignition and restarting the car didn't help a thing. Once more I do
> the chinese firedrill of pulling everything out of the back, tugging
> and pulling on wire and hoses, sliding under the car yet again, but I
> can't find a thing that explains our problem.
>
> Oregon has some long lonely stretches of road, and we were in the
> middle of one of those. So we soldier on, with the car running slower and
> slower, the exhaust note getting lower and lower, as we stuggle up and
> down the hills of southern Oregon. At some point it dawns on me that
> what we're probably experiencing is a clogged catalytic converter - that
> would explain the loss of power and the exhaust tone - but there's not a
> damn thing I can do about it out in the middle of nowhere, so on we go,
> driving on the shoulder of the road at less than 10 miles per hour.
>
> At some point the van simply dies altogether. Luckily we're able to
> drift off the freeway, down a nearby offramp, maybe a mile or so from
> the nearest phone. I make the hike, call AAA, and walk back to the car.
>
> This story has gone on way too long already so I'll just say that after
> I used my AAA card to have the van towed the 40 or so miles to a city
> that had a VW dealership, I rented a compact car (at $75 per day), we
> crammed 4 people and all our gear into it, and drove home.
>
> I guess I can't really blame the speeding ticket I got from the
> California Highway Patrol at 1:00 AM just south of the border on
> California Campers either, but it did make a nice end to a wonderful trip.
>
> No, I won't be renting a Westie from California Campers anytime soon.
>
> On Sun, 31 Oct 1999, Roland Niebisch wrote:
>
>> at California Campers (San Francisco and LA) you can (only) rent =
>> Westfalia Vanagon Campers. Perhaps we'll come over from Germany next =
>> year and spend our holidays in and with one of their cars. Does anybody =
>> has experiences ?
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tom Young young@sherlock.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU
> Lafayette, CA 94549 '81 Vanagon
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
| 
