SoCal adventures with Fritz

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the miz
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SoCal adventures with Fritz

Post by the miz » Wed Mar 30, 2016 5:25 pm

The Camping Bug had bitten my kids hard, but it was still the dead of winter in Minnesota. "When will Vana be fixed", they asked, "...uh, I don't know for sure..." is all I could muster. I was bummed, my bus was broken...with no immediate fix in sight...and there was still snow on the ground; ugh, all that we could do at this point was dream about epic camping trips that we may *never* take. Wistfully, I sat in front of the fireplace googling things like "Westfalia Rental"...and that's when it hit me: just because it's winter and the bus is busted, doesn't mean we can't have a fantastic camping experience someplace where it is not winter in someone else's bus!
Not yet entirely convinced that this was a good idea myself, I proposed it to my wife; surprisingly, she was into the idea...which is amazing, given our recent experiences with Vana. So, I wiped out my Skymiles account on 4 round trip tickets to Orange County, CA...secured the rental of an '85 Westfalia (from a place not too far from the John Wayne Airport) and started planning an itinerary for the kids' Spring Break.
St. Patrick's Day finally rolled around...we were almost packed and excited to head to the airport that evening. The flight was uneventful and we enjoyed a night of hotel living before picking up the bus the next morning.
This is Fritz:
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He is an '85 Vanagon GL Campmobile with 1.9 WBX and 3 speed automatic transmission.
He lives at a rental agency that has several bay window busses, Vanagons and Eurovans with various levels of camping trim for rent.
They're adding new ones to their fleet somewhat continually, here are some current restoration projects:
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Allow me a moment to quickly give my opinion of the '85 WBX Automatic Westfalia:
I was not impressed...the 82 HP 1.9 WBX engine was not the improvement over the 1970cc Type 4 air cooled engine that I had expected.
3 speed automatic?! Please...how did this thing ever fly in Germany?! 2nd gear is absolutely gutless...and 3rd gear picks your pocket while running at 4000 rpm on the freeway...uh oh...is that a slight incline? ...the transmission won't downshift to 2nd until you have slowed below 40 mph...wow, that transmission needed at least one more gear...somewhere.
Westfalia, on the other hand, seems to have figured out a few things between '82 and '85...there were some notable improvements in the conversion that we all appreciated...sorry, I digress...

So it was a sunny SoCal Friday and I was behind the wheel of a bus...about to head out on the camping trip of a lifetime...this was big fun!
The kids were excited as we piled in and made a brief stop at Trader Joe's for some supplies before hitting the highway...it was like 11 am...so I figured we'd be OK on traffic...as we headed out for I-15...I guess I never counted on multicarrolloverexplosion accidents! Wow...we had the full California Freeway experience...the 4 hour drive to Death Valley turned into a 7.5 hour ordeal.
Oh well...as the sun started to set and the cool of the desert evening was setting in, we were limping over the ~5000' pass which crosses the Panamint range in 1st and 2nd gear at 15 mph. I was thinking: "I guess this is just how it is in a Vanagon Westfalia"...until Fritz's temperature warning light started to flicker. As we pulled over to cool off, I thought: "man, I miss Vana...she might be slow, but at least she keeps her cool".
Of course, downhill was no problem...once we were rolling again, with plenty of wind to keep the coolant temps down, we headed straight to Furnace Creek CG. It was now dark, but we had the light of a waxing moon to enjoy our dinner of jerky and string cheese by.
I should mention that Furnace Creek CG certainly seemed to be the nicest campground in Death Valley...I would probably go as far to say it was really a nice campground by National Park Service standards.
Morning dawned:
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...and we were exicted to start our day in Death Valley after a quick breakfast. Although it had probably cooled into the low 60s over night...as soon as the sun was up, it warmed up rapidly.
We set off to do a few short day hikes...at Gold Canyon and Natural Bridge.
We stopped and checked out the Devil's Golf Course too:
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...and then drove down to Badwater Basin:
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...both provided a "teachable moment" to explain to the kids how evaporation works; I had the ready (and tangible) example of sweaty shirts form the morning's hike that were now dry...and had some salt residue left behind.

It had gotten quite hot by this point in the day and we decided it was time to "make some wind" by driving up to Stovepipe Wells, where we'd pick up some cold beverages before playing in a dune field for the remainder of the afternoon. On the way up there we passed this place:
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"I wish we were staying there...", my wife said..."I bet they have air conditioning". I told her that it looked like the kind of place where you could: "...check out any time you want but you can never leave". :sunny:

An afternoon of playing in sand dunes when it was 80 in the shade and 100 in the sun wore everyone out. We headed back below sea level to Furnace Creek...to stop at the general store for some firewood and some turkey dogs to roast over our campfire. It cooled off nicely after the sun went down.
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We were treated to a picturesque sunset over Tucki Mountain:
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The next day we broke camp and headed south. After a quick stop at Zabriskie Point we headed off to Joshua Tree NP by way of the Mojave National Preserve. Mojave Nat. Preserve is stunningly beautiful...and pret' near empty. Evidently they have a few campgrounds in there...maybe I'll find out what they're like next time. This time, it was just a nice, quiet, scenic, non-Interstate road to drive down. After exiting the preserve we briefly rode on Route 66:
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...the last time I had been on 66 was when my wife and I drove Vana to her new home in MN from Phoenix a few years back.
We got to Joshua Tree NP in the mid afternoon and took some time to explore. One day is not enough time for Joshua Tree...it is full of cool stuff like...
Cholla Cacti:
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and Skull Rock:
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...also it was springtime in the desert, so a lot of things were in bloom:
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After a few hours of nature walks and scrambling around on various and sundry rock formations, we headed back to our campground at Black Rock for the evening:
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It was a pretty nice campground...but kind of far outside of the park...with no direct access back to the park. It kind of lacked the charm of the campgrounds in the park which were nestled among impressive rock formations...but it was reservable...and we were at the height of spring break...so no other campsites were available in the park.
We were afforded another beautiful sunset:
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The wind had picked up quite a bit and it was significantly cooler in J Tree than it had been in Death Valley...so we all retired to the bus for a spaghetti supper.

The relative charm of Black Rock CG notwithstanding, it still had a pretty nice view, as far as we were concerned:
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We broke camp, headed to Hidden Valley for some more rock scrambling and a nature walk before driving through the park one last time. Today was the day we were headed to the beach...the kids' excitement was palpable...as much as they would have liked to stay and climb on the rocks in J-Tree...neither had ever been in salt water before.
We had a pretty heinous drive as we left J-Tree and got onto I-10, a 50 mph (no joke!) cross-headwind was pounding us as we got on the uphill Interstate. We were barely managing 40 mph, when a semi full of straw bales seemed to understand our plight and graciously pulled in front of us so we could draft him and manage 55, until he had to pull off for a weigh station. Luckily, as the valley widened, the wind speed waned; by the time we got off of I 10 and on to CA 60, the wind was manageable and the terrain was really greening up. The drive to the coast was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated...certainly not as bad as the drive away from the coast, a few days earlier, had been. We arrived at San Elijo State Beach in the mid afternoon...and kind of discovered why the site we had reserved was still available when we had reserved it: it barely looked like a site and was immediately next to the sea containers the lifeguards use as their daytime office. The good news was that as the tide came in...it was only 50' to the water...so that made for an easy trip to the beach for the kids. Salty, dusty and tired of making our own dinner, we got cleaned up and headed of for some of the best fish tacos I've had at the Fish House in Encinitas. We missed the sunset that evening...it had gotten a bit cloudy and had really cooled off, we headed back to camp and roasted some marshmallows over the campfire for dessert.
The next day the kids were really amped to get on the beach...while my wife and I had our coffee on the beach at San Elijo, this kids chased the waves (and vise versa)...it seemed like it would be a good place to spend the morning...until a bloodied, dead sea lion washed up a few yards from where the kids were playing...we decided to go find a new beach.
We drove up to North Carlsbad, where my family would spend the day while I went to visit Adrian and Vana's engine at his shop in Vista. It didn't take as long as I thought...I was back in time for lunch on the beach...In and Out Burger was their request.
We spent the rest of the day hanging around Carlsbad and watched the sunset on the beach...
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It was time to head back to our new campsite at S. Carlsbad...but Fritz had other ideas. I wanted my wife to have a turn at driving...she'd enjoyed driving a bit in Death Valley...and I though mellow ~5 mile trip down the 101 would be another good opportunity. Fritz turned over...but then died shortly there after...odd, I thought...it seemed like the engine was flooded. We sat for quite a while and then tried again...same issue. After another 30 minutes and a few more tries, he caught and stayed running. We made it back to the campground, but well after dark and without firewood...it was bedtime...there was a bit of disappointment in the ranks. My wife blamed herself for having flooded the engine...I suspectedthat there was more to the problem than that.
Mother Nature's white noise machine played the "pounding-surf" track all night long; this was a vast improvement over the periodic trains that ran a few yards to the east of San Elijo. the soothing coastal sounds were easier to appreciate the next morning when coupled with their visual component:
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This was the last full day of our trip and we had a lot planned: shopping in Carlsbad, a visit to the Oceanside Pier and a rendezvous at San Clemente State Beach with some family friends who also happened to be in the area on spring break. Fritz turned over tentatively and then died; basically the same scenario from the night before repeated itself..."it seems like a cold start issue, I thought to myself"..."...maybe we just have a bad tank of gas?". Fritz finally stayed running and we went on our way, fueled up with some fresh gas from a reputable-looking gas station in Carlsbad, did our shopping, continued on to Oceanside and spent about an hour out on the pier...all problem free. I thought: "must have been the gas" as we headed up the 101 out of Oceanside. My wife had mostly been navigating the whole trip...she is really good at this...whether we are in California...or Austria...she is a top-notch navigator..."do I have to get on I-5", I whined,"...I want to stay on the 101!". "The 101 disappears until the other side of Camp Pendleton" she told me...so I relented and we took the 5. We turned onto the entrance ramp and started accelerateing as normal, I merged into the right lane and stepped on the accelerator...complete loss of power...we were slowing down rapidly...the engine...was...dead...s@$t! "Maybe it wasn't the gas?", I hazarded.
There we sat...on the shoulder of I-5...within sight of the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton...trying to get Fritz to start and keep running. No luck. I unpacked the back and opened the engine bay. My VW engine "familiarity" being with my carbureted, air cooled engine, I looked in the bay and thought "yup...there's a lot of stuff in there...and it all looks like it is in the right place". I called Fritz's owner and described the problem..."it's like it's flooding" I told him,"...it feels like a fuel issue...like a cold start problem that is persisting in warm start conditions". "It sounds like a vacuum leak" he told me, "...did you check the vacuum lines?" he asked. "I will", I said, "what about the AFM", I asked, tepidly "...I have friends with FI buses...and they have issues with the AFM from time to time???"..."that's not it", he said, "...sounds like a vacuum leak". I called him back after I'd checked everything that I could identify as a vacuum line to tell him nothing was disconnected. In the meanwhile...trying to continually restart and keep the engine running to trouble shoot had caused the battery to die. I called him back and told him that I had lost my enthusiasm for trouble shooting this problem on the shoulder of I-5 and asked where I should have Fritz towed to. We settled on the Trestles State Beach parking lot "near the Carl's Jr.". I was immediately on the phone with AAA...my family (especially my wife) was nonplussed that this is how their day on the beach with friends was turning out. "Well, AAA is having a hard time figuring out where we are", I told them, "and they can only find a tow truck that will seat 2 not 4". Things were not looking good. While I was dealing with AAA on the phone, a friendly CalTrans worker showed up and tried to help...but we both acknowledged that our problem was more than he could handle. Fortunately, my wife had the presence of mind to call our friends, to coordinate an I-5 roadside rescue for her and the kids...I would stay with Fritz and try to get this sorted out....this turned out be a good thing...their day on the beach was ultimately salvaged. They were picked up just as the tow truck showed up; "I've got to stop having these experiences on my road trips..." I thought to myself:
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Once at the Trestles parking lot, I was happy to be in a more conducive environment for VW trouble shooting...but disappointed that I had used up my last complimentary 200 mile tow for the membership year on a 20 mile tow...for a bus that wasn't even mine...hopefully I won't need a tow before mid June. Alas...no battery to start the bus, so no active troubleshooting to be done, I looked at the engine for a while anyway... to no avail. I'd asked Fritz's owner to bring a second bus...just in case we couldn't solve Fritz's problem in a timely fashion...so I busied myself cleaning up sand and packing together a week's worth of camping gear, clothing and souvenirs that we'd spread about Fritz, as though he was our own bus.
Fritz's owner showed up about an hour or so later...in an '82 with a Subaru conversion...a twinge of jealousy enveloped me...what if we had been given this bus from the start???...what would the trip have been like? Oh well...too late now.
We jump started Fritz...and the problem persisted...got him started again and all of the vacuum connections were re-checked...and were in order, so, clearly, that wasn't it. Next he took the cover off of the airflow meter...made some adjustments...that didn't do it...changed the idle mixture...better, but still not right...the engine died again as he tried to rev it up.
I went back up front to restart Fritz, I stayed put, in case he died again...I saw his owner staring into the engine bay...then he reached in and did something...and the problem seemed fixed...the engine was running strong now and could be revved up to 4000 rpm- no problem. I went back to see what he had done, he pointed at this bluish plug on the driver's side of the engine..."it's a bit corroded...or it backed out a bit...so I unplugged it and plugged it back in and that seems to have done it..." I agreed that the engine sounded as though it was back to normal. "What is that?" I asked...
I bet everyone reading this knows what it is...right??? ...wait for it...it was none other than:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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"...huh, I said...what's that do?" He replied "this is the equivalent to temp sensor 2 on your air cooled engine, you know what it does"..."nope", I said, "...my engine is carbureted...I have a temp sensor 2...but it is just plugging a hole...it is like a vestigial organ"..."oh, ok" ,he said, "...well this thing was basically sending the wrong message to the FI system's brain...telling the brain that the engine was a different temperature than it actually was and so the engine was flooding itself in an erroneous response". "Huh", I said "I would have never known to check that" (especially because there was no Bentley in this bus!). "Why don't you take it for a quick spin, before I leave to verify that it is running strong", he said, I agreed and did so; Fritz was running better than he had the whole time I had driven him.
I sent Fritz's owner back into the jaws of I 5 rush hour traffic and swung by Pedro's Tacos to pick up some California Burritos for dinner before meeting my family back at our campsite in San Clemente State Beach CG. The burritos were fantastic...it was a nice evening...
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I'd missed out on a day at the beach with my family...but they were happy...and we were having a relaxing last evening and were confident that we'd make it back in time to drop Fritz off and get back to the airport. It was the last night of the trip and another great night for a campfire and s'mores...we were treated to another great sunset and then to the rising of the full moon:
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At least it was an adventure...and a learning experience.
...what's more: a few days later, I asked my wife if she'd do a trip like this again and she said "yes".
...all's well that ends well, I guess...

-miz
1982 Westy- Vana White

71whitewesty
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Re: SoCal adventures with Fritz

Post by 71whitewesty » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:42 pm

Looks and sounds like a great trip other than the Fritz issues, although they always add to the experience. Just out of curiosity, did the rental outfit reimburse you for any of the troubles? Either way if the family is ready to do it again, mission accomplished. Good job!

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chachi
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Re: SoCal adventures with Fritz

Post by chachi » Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:36 pm

while the breakdowns are sometimes part of the adventure, i've always wondered how a company like this deals with them. as we all know, they are not always the most reliable rigs. an outfit in colorado is going to be renting buses so i asked what engines they have in them. type IV 2.0's they said. well ok, but do you build them? i asked. no, we don't do any mechanical work, they responded. seems crazy to be renting 40 year old vehicles that you don't maintain. not only is the buisness out the money to the mechanic (hopefully they're good but how do you know if you don't "do" mechanicals?) but you can't promise even the level of support seen here. will your mechanic run out to Steamboat and help those nice folks just trying to enjoy their vacation?

all the same, it seems like you guys had a good trip. you seem like you had the right temperment for the breakdown situation. good on ya! my wife is usually much calmer than me when this stuff happens.
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the miz
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Re: SoCal adventures with Fritz

Post by the miz » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:30 pm

71whitewesty wrote:Looks and sounds like a great trip other than the Fritz issues, although they always add to the experience. Just out of curiosity, did the rental outfit reimburse you for any of the troubles? Either way if the family is ready to do it again, mission accomplished. Good job!
...yeah...it was a great trip...of course the break downs are no fun...but I leaned something new about VW engines...so that was cool...and like you noted, the family would do it again...which is bonus!

...with regard to reimbursement for the break down. Yes, I was reimbursed, kind of... we went ~350 mi. over the initially established mileage, allotment...which would have been billed at $0.39/mile...this charge was waived for our troubles/lost time. I was happy enough with that.

miz
1982 Westy- Vana White

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Re: SoCal adventures with Fritz

Post by the miz » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:42 pm

chachi wrote:no, we don't do any mechanical work, they responded. seems crazy to be renting 40 year old vehicles that you don't maintain. not only is the buisness out the money to the mechanic (hopefully they're good but how do you know if you don't "do" mechanicals?) but you can't promise even the level of support seen here. will your mechanic run out to Steamboat and help those nice folks just trying to enjoy their vacation?

That is completely crazy! The outfit that I rented from does PMs and maintenance...and as I proved, will come out for roadside support. I can't imagine someone who has no experience with one of these vehicles renting one that is not maintained by a qualified mechanic and offers no roadside support...this sounds like it might be a short lived venture.
chachi wrote: all the same, it seems like you guys had a good trip. you seem like you had the right temperment for the breakdown situation. good on ya! my wife is usually much calmer than me when this stuff happens.
Thanks...yeah...all good inthe end...maybe it was better that someone else's bus broke down for once...and not mine...it wasn't ultimately my fault that way :drunken:
1982 Westy- Vana White

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