Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 67 i VWt

“my fixation has now morphed into a personal challenge” I have officially lost the plot this wintertime and I know exactly why. Wheels. Having never previously owned any of what I consider my top five must have sets of wheels, the 1552 Tarmacs on #projectshed stole my heart, and have now stolen my mind, too. Perhaps I’ve been infected by the relentless marketing machine that is Hoonigan and the Ken Block empire, or maybe I’ve just always liked their slab-sided shape and motorsport-derived roots – shout out to Compomotive for the design cues! Whatever the case, I’m smitten. So it was with a wave of disappointment I’ve been forced to leave them on the Van over the recent never-ending winter. Now, some of you will think I’m being a tad…

Swamp people Nick Pashley, Somerset I’ve owned this T4 Syncro for about five years now and want to keep it as original as I possibly can. It was previously fitted with alloy wheels, so these were replaced with a set of original steel wheels, which I had powder coated in black and then shod with chunky BF Goodrich tyres. Then I fitted some heavy duty shock absorbers. The interior retains its original Caravelle seating arrangement, which is ideal for our family of six, and includes an overhead air con system and floor-mounted rear heater. There’s also a solar panel, which provides enough electricity to trickle charge a fridge located at the back of the Van. When my wife and I go away on our own, we use an awning for…

“a nature reserve that used to be a dynamite factory” “the Gorges de Galamus… an exhilarating journey along an extremely narrow, windy, balcony road” Having been on the road for a month by this point (see part one last month in VWt 66), we were well into our stride, and looking forward to reaching the Cévennes National Park – somewhere we had been eager to explore for a while. It didn’t disappoint. The scenery is stunning, and we found a lovely campsite on the banks of the Tarn river, which we had almost to ourselves. We spent the days hiking under the autumn sun, and sampling the fare from the numerous local farmers’ markets. As always, the Campervantastic-supplied T6 California proved to be faultless for our family adventure. Carcassonne was…

Readers of VWt magazine will I suspect fall into three groups – those who have been able to jump straight into a turnkey Van after working hard / raiding the mortgage or pension fund, those who have put a pretty decent Camper together through their own and borrowed skills and those who are thinking about taking the plunge. For the latter two groups, the road to success is often a bumpy one, fraught with decision making and mistakes, but the rewards can be truly satisfying. There is one word, however, that will ease the process, and that’s planning. You can never do too much, but a lack of it will at some point come home to roost, usually at a point when you can least afford it. So here we…

April 13-15 Bus Types VW Show Oswestry Showground, Shropshire, SY11 4AB www.bus-types.co.uk 15 Elsecar at the races Doncaster Racecourse www.elsecarattheraces.com We’ll be there! 27-29 Big Bang Camper and Bus Show Santa Pod Raceway Northants, NN29 7XA www.big-bang.co.uk 27-29 Dubs at the Mill Haselbury Mill, Crewkerne, TA18 7NY www.scrumpydubbers.co.uk May 4-7 The Only Meet is Essex The Orsett Showground, Essex, RM16 3JU / RM16 3JN www.vw-tomie.co.uk We’ll be there! 6 Stanford Hall VW show Lutterworth, Leicestershire, LE17 6DH www.stanfordhallvw.com 9-12 Wörthersee VW Treffen Lake Wörthersee, Austria www.woertherseetreffen.at/en/ 11-13 Vanwest Warren Park Holiday Centre, Brean Sands, Somerset TA8 2RP www.vanwest.co.uk 12-13 VW Budburg Oulton Park Circuit, Cheshire CW6 9BW www.vwbudburg.co.uk We’ll be there! 20 Early Edition 38 Sywell Aerodrome, Northampton, NN6 0BN www.edition38.com 25-27 Volksfling Biggar Agricultural Showground, South Lanarkshire ML12 6AJ…

Product of the month H7 LED headlight bulbs Literally the best headlight upgrade we’ve done, and a fraction of the cost of fancy Xenon headlamps. These LED bulbs come in a variety of fitments and are nothing short of amazing value for money. Pure, intense, 9,000 lumen white light (6500K white balance) in H7, H1, H4 and almost any other bulb fitment you can think of. Who? www.ebay.co.uk How much? Approx. £20 Chippys Workshop table Custom table designs for all T4-T6 applications. Have your own design, your family, your dog, your favourite beer… whatever you like really, printed onto a table of your choice. We’ve recently purchased one for #projectshed and couldn’t be happier with it. Who? www.chippysworkshop.co.uk How much? From £70 Dometic CFX fridges…

“the first chance for all of the bling, air and stance devotees to show off” “[Telford] is the place to be for the first big water-cooled VW event of the year” There’s not really any reason to go to Telford, other than for Ultimate Dubs, or maybe to see the Iron Bridge. But the land of roundabouts with a slightly bizarre shopping complex in the middle of a load of hotels is the place to be for the first big water-cooled VW event of the year. Anticipation reaches fever pitch in the weeks leading up to it as it’s the first chance for all of the bling, air and stance devotees to show off what they’ve been working on over the preceding winter. Standout Vans this year were easily identifiable…

He saw it. He wanted it. He stalked it a little bit. He got it. Back when this 1993 Auto-Sleeper Trident was built, the notion that some 25 years later, a baby born at the same time would make use of a system that instantaneously connects over two billion people worldwide to track it down and buy it would have the men in white coats knocking your door down quicker than you can say Mark Zuckerburg. I’m fully aware that’s quite a long sentence, but then that’s quite a lot of information. And every bit of it is true. We know that because Alex Arber, the 25-year-old owner, told us all about how he used Facebook to find the previous owner and, eventually, bought it. Alex: “It’s not as stalky…

“‘Blimey!’ exclaimed snapper Walker, as we were propelled up the hill past six or seven other accelerating vehicles” “How fast is it, mister?” That’s the question we all long to be asked by a spotty oik who thinks our vehicle is cool. Never before has it really seemed appropriate to ask that of someone sat in a Volkswagen Van, though, until now. For almost out of the blue, VW has thrown a curve ball into the T6 mix that could herald a new direction for the humble Transporter. If you can stomach the fuel consumption, the tuned 2.0 TSi engine might well be for you. Every now and then a development comes along that makes you question how a product can be used. It’s not always easy to see how…

“a T6 would double as both my daily driver and beach Camper” The definition of insanity is supposedly ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ But what happens to that concept when the final part is flipped to ‘knowing the results are going to be perfect’? The talented folk at Visiontech Automotive have hit on what appears to be the perfect recipe for a high-end Camper conversion, and are therefore, by that definition, consistently turning out insane creations. This latest T6 to emerge from the Essex workshop has put an end to Disco, the former Land Rover of owner, Jon Lopez, that is. Fear not pop pickers, the music of KC and the Sunshine Band did not suddenly vanish due to the installation of a…

Parts pervert Hi VWt, any idea where I can get a reliable source of VW technical drawings for the T4 to T6 Vans? I’ve been looking at so many different websites recently but never quite trust the information I’m looking at. I’m also reluctant to keep ringing my local VW dealer as they never seem that up for scrolling through hundreds of pages of exploded parts diagrams for me. Thanks in advance for any info you might have found out in your endless pursuit of Transporter wisdom Jeremy Cook, via Facebook VWt: As luck would have it Jeremy, we know just the place. Check out the online ETKA resource that is httpsvolkswagen.7zap.com  / We’ve been using it a lot recently for T5.1 parts geeking and the…

There’s nothing worse than the incorrect use of the word different, or unique, especially when describing a Van. We hate it. Our advice? When you want to create something different, maybe even unique, it’s probably best you don’t start out with the second biggest selling commercial vehicle in the United Kingdom and load it up with the same products everyone else is buying. But – and it’s a big but – to create something unique from a vehicle a huge number of other people have, is never going to be easy, and will quite likely challenge even the sturdiest of bank balances. So, as we were busy slogging our way through the rain and mud at Busfest last year, deep in the beautiful Malvern countryside shone a beacon of individuality…

“carpentry is not my strong suit… but that hasn’t stopped me from giving building a furniture run a damn good go” It’s MoT time for #projectshed this month and so, thanks to a continually expanding cracked windscreen, the good fellas at Rob and Jay’s mobile windscreen fitters from Bishops Stortford were called upon to plonk a new ’screen in. £204 and roughly an hour and a half later, it was sorted and I was off to see David Ford at DF Autos in Wimbish for the Van’s annual ticket. Before you ask, I did look into having the windscreen replaced on my insurance, but as their approved fitters couldn’t fit me in for at least a week I opted to stump up the money and just get the job done…

“18 months in development and testing before being released” Let’s get one thing straight. T6s are great, but the standard T6 headlights are absolutely terrible. Factory DRLs improve the situation immeasurably, but they’re an awful lot of money, so that box on the options sheet frequently remains unchecked. Until recently, there hasn’t been a viable aftermarket alternative, but these LED DRL headlights from Transporter HQ change that. At £450 a pair, they offer a much more affordable way to improve your night vision, while still keeping that OEM look to a Van. In fact, the design brief was to make them look as much like the factory LED headlights as possible, without contravening any patents. Available in two colour options, you can choose between black or chrome to suit your…