600 mile round trip and had a great time. Van ran well down to Dorset but gear changes were getting worse as time went on. I was getting really frustrated by now as everything had been renewed. Day two and I was ready to burn it but called into Kombi Classics and can you believe it the coupler cage was defective and rotating at the end. They opened 3 brand new ones and all the same. Anyway OG one found and fitted and all was very good in my world again. The van was great and I love the westy layout for camping. The teenagers tried to pop top bunk but wasn't too comfortable and after years of always sleeping in the awning I ended up being given the van all to myself as we hadn't brought an undershoot for the cold vinyl. One blanket later and I was in heaven in the van. Cant believe how nice it is to sleep in it, almost felt guilt leaving the family outside, almost
Was making a list of all the to do's i was finding when using the van and it is huge!! Id tried freeing up the locks and although better still not right and can only lock the sliding door at the minute.
I did have one more problem and that was the fan belt started squeezing at start up and then the engine started sounding awful. Thankfully traced to a loose nut on the dynamo pulley wheel.
So the journey home, blimey! Where do I start. Well it was ok for a couple of hours but fuel was getting low and i noticed a very slight hesitation when we hit a bump, was it really low on fuel plus i couldn't drop from 4th to 3rd. Made it to a services and was really anxious whether it would restart. It did and after another hour with a couple of progressively more regular coughs I found it wouldn't idle when I hit traffic. As you can believe it became back to back traffic on the M25 and I couldn't idle so had to keep dabbing the accelerator and brake to keep the revs up whilst also trying to use the handbrake to stop. I managed to nurse it for 4 more hours some how and got home. By this time I couldn't get 2nd gear and so roundabout were fun.
Had a great holiday but a big list to resolve. And that was two weeks ago. Managed to trace the gear change issue to the rubber part of the gear coupler coming out. Can you believe it!!! Ordered a urethane bush one, a new automatic choke as I thought that may of been the issue with the carb as it smelt too rich as well.
Yesterday I fitted the new urethane bushes in the OG cage and fitted a new choke. Drove it out of the garage and the fan belt was rattling like a good one. When I went to tighten it it wouldn't hold and I found the thread on the dynamo is shot. Darn it. I decided to bite the bullet and buy an alternator conversion kit as I wanted one later in the year anyway and also ordered a new carb as when i had a loo at that it was looking a bit tired. So thats me up to date and will be adding updates as I go along.
