just back from france! 1500 [S]miles :)

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six

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hi all

just back from a nice trip to france surfing and cruising the villages round and about.

The lead up to the trip was not fun. 5 nights 3 hours sleep, working from 5 straight after work, almost a divorce i was not good company! Mainly rebuilding large parts of engine ( i think i can now say its no longer an airspeed engine! ), installing the interior and wiring in split charge system.

I covered 1500 miles almost dead on, 55-60 mph cruise, longest single stint was 8 hours straight, stopped to refuel only bus drove nice all the way. No real issues, goes 55-60 everywhere, some hills it got hot 115-120 deg c but quickly cooled again.

Just finished the calcs with the recipts and mileage takings along the way and we averaged 28.5 mpg loaded with the 'rack which im happy with some more time with the af meter ill get it better, a bit rich atm.

We had a few hiccups, day one the breather pipe broke (perished as it was cheap) i switched that for some spare hose and off we went.

Day 2 after a 15 hour sleep i was normalish again.. done a 8 hour blast heading south for some awesume surf in the biscay bay, thought we'd safe some time using the toll roads..

driving up to one at 60.. no breaks.. thank god for dual circuit we stopped just without incident.. I found a brake flare on the rear metal pipe had sheared off. had to crawl it off the toll road as the recovery guys dont help, spent 3 hours after getting a tow truck! The rescue comp got us a hotel for the night nice. All i can say is we wont be using HIC insurance's europe brake down again. all they had to do was tow the van 5KM in morning. it was the first in the pound.. they wouldnt tell us what garage it was going to, but told it it would be there at 9 to get fixed.

Long story, but we found it destined for a VW dealer, no good as we called the dealer, they dont have spares nor the abilty to make some brake line! Duh! so a 630 at night found out the van had been left outside the VW dealer got dropped at 530 after they closed.

Rather not happy, Finally got the assistance comp to take the van to a proper VW chap.. (made it sound like they done us a massive favor! )

Anyways, if you are ever in the shit on the west of france pop in and see tony at Bugs-are-us.net the nicest VW i have ever met neither of us spoke much of the other language butwe got through, had a laugh and it restored a little faith in the VW garages, after a run of them I happened to be conned by he was different, waited till we got there well after 7 that night, replaced the line bled the brakes and fixed all the problems the tow truck driver casued towing the van.

The bill was soo cheap. amazing guy, go there.. great day out for the kids lol ! anyhoo writted a thank you letter and just getting it translated now by a propper french person before i send it.

Our holiday went on thanks to him, the van gets hot in the 35 deg heat.. so a oil cooler is on the cards for next time, but the rest was great. Beer was cold, fridge and the fans/extraction worked like a charm and the rear popout window is with its weight in gold!

Few pics on here for yous chaps.

Ill be filling a claim formally via HIC, my sump, sender, oil plate, exhaust is fooked thanks to the driver who didn't take much care at all. prolly harassing him all day via the euro assistance is the cause but no excuse, he managed to tow the van 15KM without a problem the night before!

Hard days camping and a hard days surfing. !
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Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip despite the problems. Judging by the photos you were only a couple of hours drive from here.

Agreed the smaller garages are always going to be the best bet. Big dealerships are mostly only interested in new stuff, servicing, sales etc. trying to cover their huge overheads and often dont seem to have time for people but I guess the same is probably true in the UK.

It was indeed pretty hot while you were here and oil temp going to 120 is not unheard of. If you had new components in the engine you may well find it runs progressively cooler as it all beds in. They commonly improved over the first 3000 miles.

As for fitting an extra cooler - you should not actually need one. Even engines touching 100 bhp work fine on a stock cooler. Dont forget these engines coped with the heat of the deserts all over the world. If your engine continues to run hot my advice would be firstly to check how accurate your gauge is. You can heat up some oil in an old saucepan with a blowlamp and use a cooking thermometer to compare readings. They should both still agree at around 120 - I have seen gauges that were as much as 14 degrees out.

If the gauge tests ok and the engine still runs hot its time to find out why.

Adding an extra cooler is treating the symptom and not the cause and, though an extra cooler would lower the oil temperature, it would not lower the temperature in the combustion chamber, meaning the piston top and the head and valves would still be overheating.
 
sounds like after a mad start you got chill and relax in the end ;) hats off for the trip and get some pics up ;) good luck with the insurance , they are a great till we try and claim :shock:

chris
 
we got as far as biarritz down the cost, and it was nice and relaxed once the issues were sorted.

Trikky2, bus has 2200 miles on it now. yes noticed it running cooler as miles went on, in uk temps it never gets hot anymore, the drive off the ferry we done a 40 min blast, barely hit 90deg c oil temp. After all the issues before i left, I calibrated all the guages, from 60 - 140 deg c usinf oil and also water the latter to veryfi the 100c mark.

I noticed the 20/50 halfords classic oil in her really lost pressure at 120deg c fast, slowed to 50 mph and temps were back to 100 and good pressure again. Im not convinced how much benifit if any a deep sump and all that extra super hot oil gave, sure it took longer to get to temp, but i dont race round corners etc.

I think before I go spending more money, ill be taking the engine out, whip off the heads and measure CR. and go from there. i'll fill the tech section with queries as i find them. ah winter projects hey!

~Ill get more pics up tonight chaps.
 
Hi

what did the afr read - as if it's warm side of rich [ remember the egt diagram I posted ] then getting the thing down on the afr should allow a cooler head temp overall.
I agree with tricky2 about not needing an extra cooler.

Anyone though about ducting some additional air [similar to they do with brakes on modern cars] although this may be overcooling?

any more pics?
 
Heres the pictures :)

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Mimizan forest.. hunting for surf locations.. tuff day out
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sat in a field. me and the cows
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Obligatory break down pics!
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Good holiday thread dude.

We hope to head to Biarritz area next summer, bus should be on the road this week for the first time since landing in this country so I have a bit of time to prepare. :lol:
 
must be pretty much common every days types of scenes for you mr trikky :)

will be sorting out cr will ensure its down to about 8.3:1 that should sort the heaty bits out.. the wide is already looking out for cheap ferries Hopefully get another trip over early next year. get away from the tourists it really is a nice place to be can see why you live there!
 
Hi six,

Sounds like a cool trip and the pics are great too.

How about getting it in Camper&Bus?

If you fancy it I'd need you write me about 1500 words (or there abouts but don’t worry if it’s less more – that’s just the guideline) and write it on a regular Word document.

I’d also need as many pics as you can send me – so we have a choice.

They need to be high res and readable on any computer as we use Macs here.

The pictures should show the Bus, scenery (with and without the Bus in), you and any interesting people, places, things you saw or did along the way.

If you can label them that would be even better and be a massive help with the captions – maybe number them and then label them on the word document.

Pop it all on a disc or if you prefer upload it to a hosting site and send me the link.

My address here is

James Peene
VolksWorld Camper&Bus
IPC Media Ltd
Leon House
233 High Street
Croydon
CR9 1HZ

It would be cool to get this in as a road trip...

Regards

james
 
retro.james said:
Hi six,

Sounds like a cool trip and the pics are great too.

How about getting it in Camper&Bus?

If you fancy it I'd need you write me about 1500 words (or there abouts but don’t worry if it’s less more – that’s just the guideline) and write it on a regular Word document.

I’d also need as many pics as you can send me – so we have a choice.

They need to be high res and readable on any computer as we use Macs here.

The pictures should show the Bus, scenery (with and without the Bus in), you and any interesting people, places, things you saw or did along the way.

If you can label them that would be even better and be a massive help with the captions – maybe number them and then label them on the word document.

Pop it all on a disc or if you prefer upload it to a hosting site and send me the link.

My address here is

James Peene
VolksWorld Camper&Bus
IPC Media Ltd
Leon House
233 High Street
Croydon
CR9 1HZ

It would be cool to get this in as a road trip...

Regards

james

Cool as get it done Six, looking forward to the write up :mrgreen:
 
Nice pics , Biarritz area is lovely isn't it? :)

Glad problems didn't stop you! :D
 

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