I spent a few days last week with my cameras and audio kit in the Faculty of Music at a series of events with Robert Levin.
The three events where recorded for CRASSH and the Academy of Ancient Music. This video is the first to appear from the sessions. Not normally my thing this old-school piano stuff but this is very special.
It’s that time of year again, leaves and stuff, it’s also that time of year and change of season that brings a flurry of Allotment gigs in Cambridge.
The first is the Folk In Autumn session at The Corner House on November 22. Along side Allotment on the evening will be Naomi Randall and all the way from Ipswich, Chris Flory.
We spent the weekend of July 20 in Cornwall at the Port Eliot festival. The drive down on Thursday took around 8 hours from Cambridge, similar amout of time to return.
With the diesel leak fixed by fitting a new pipe direct from VW in Germany it was time to test it on a long trip again. Fuel economy was OK, about £150 for the 800 mile trip.
We saw very few LT vans on the way down and from what we could see ours was the only one in the camper fields, lots of passing interest in the van all the time we where camping in it.
While we had the Westfalia we still got waves from other VW owners, Type 2 and Type 25 alike, having visited a lot of VW festivals over the years the ‘enthusiast’ ownership it certainly growing. We still have a Type 4 Caravelle but I choose that for work rather than travelling.
It’s an interesting thing owning a VW van, I have had one since I was 18 in 1988, the first was a VW Type 2 Devon Moonraker bought for £1000 and included a whole other Type 2 for spares. In 1988 there was still a sense of doing something different by owning a VW camper and travelling all over the place in it, I took mine to Glastonbury and numerous other festivals until I sold it in 1992 to get a 1972 VW Panel Van.
Why did I sell the T25 Westfalia? I wanted to do something different, owning an LT is odd enough, a bright orange one, even better. This LT as far as I have seen is unique and certainly gets looked at, and laughed at.
Do something different, buy a VW camper, but something different to the Type 2s and Type 25s that everyone else trying to do something different has…
Off to France and Germany now for a few weeks… more pics from that soon…
Our second trip to France this year was great, such nice weather in Paris for our stay, a little rain now and then but nice and warm. We camped in the Bois de Boulogne camp site for four days, the van was great, plenty of room for the four of us. With a brief stop over in Amiens on the way down to Paris and a stop in Montruel sur Mer on the way back. A new carbon leisure battery an mains battery charger kept the fridge going all the time and looked after the food and beers.
Driving up the A16 there was a growing smell of diesel in the van, stopping to take a look I found that injector pipe no. 5 had developed a small hole and was leaking fuel. After a brief repair we carried on and eventually arrived in Dover. Time to call the AA for my first relay trip in over 20 years…. It all went very smoothly but lets hope it’s a while before we see the AA man again…
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks… Our T25 Westfalia Joker is now sold. Sold to someone who is going to use it for what it is intended, lots of travelling and camping.
We are all sad to see it go, we had four great years use of it with may European trips, this picture from our trip to Germany last year.
I may post more pictures of it on it’s travels as I find them, such a great van.
I have been posting adverts for the Joker on various web sites over the last few weeks, the ads have been viewed over 4000 times, so it’s clear that there is some interest, but why has there been only a few emails and phone calls?
There have been a few who have been very enthusiastic, either by email or on the phone. Two have even made firm appointments to view the van. After readying the van for the appointments and made the time to be available it is always disappointing when the person fails to show up without and contact to offer an explanation.
So, there are the typical internet dreamers and lurkers who appear to be interested in the van, but perhaps that is all they are.
Looking at the calendar the time for the van to be for sale this year is coming to an end, we have many trips planned and fitting in selling it around everything else may be tricky. I will just have to enjoy it for a little while longer.
The recent success with the LT has made me think about selling the Joker. A couple of weeks ago I took it for an MOT and got 6 months tax for it, so it’s on the road and ready to go. I have been enjoying driving around town, but it really does have to move on.
We have had some great trips in the Joker, this picture from the Alps in Switzerland.
I listed the van on eBay and Gumtree (London). There has been quite a bit of interest in the van and a few time wasters with daft questions.
An interesting incident happened over the last weekend. A really nice couple arrived to take a look a the van, I showed the around, inside and out in my usual honest straight talking way, explaining all of the good and bad about the van that I have maintained and repaired over the four years that I have owned it, my suggestion is that it is good mechanically for a 23 year old van.
They decided to get an inspection from a mechanic that they found locally. I don’t really have a problem with that approach, especially as they said that they knew nothing about the mechanics of such a van. The resulting report detailed a good deal of what I had already pointed out, with a couple of notable exceptions. The report suggested that there where some serious problems with the engine, injector faults, blowing head gasket, low oil pressure etc etc, it made it sound really bad. All of this was news to me.
The couple paid the mechanic for his time and off he went. The report seemed to settle their opinion about the van, that is was potentially unreliable and may be cause for concern in the future. Given that their requirement was for a van that they need not maintain I suggested that this was not the van for them, all T25s need some sort of maintenance.
Thinking about this, there is a lesson in here somewhere. Who actually got anything out of the meeting? They had the opportunity to buy a very good, reliable van but it was clouded by a mechanic with no interest in the van. The mechanic got paid either way, so he was happy.
I still have the van, the engine is still good and it’s still for sale.
Just got back from our first trip to France in the Reimo. It was quite an interesting trip with many short journeys spent wondering if the van would actually make it to the top of the next hill. It always did. After a few slow moments I finally found out how hard I needed to push the van in each gear to get it moving. We made it to Arras….
For this trip I removed the bike carrier, it was just a little low at the back and would have been on the ground on and off the ferry, some adjustment needed there.
The van was really good when we where camping, first few days had some rain and the extra space inside compared with our Westfalia was really useful.
In the roof box we had two tables, four chairs, the Fiamma ramps and some table tennis stuff, so that proved to be a good investment, none of that stuff inside the van.
After a few days of getting used to the van on the flat and on the hills it was obvious that it was going to be useable rather than just slow. We went from Dover to Cambridge in under three hours, mostly at around 55 – 60mph and the van gave us about 24mpg even though we had crappy supermarket diesel in it, probably go further on some decent BP stuff.
Where are we going next….?
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted any progress on the LT, there has been a lot.
A couple of weeks ago I got the registration number through from the DVLA and had the three number plates made up. It’s come back as B registration, I am happy with that. It’s taxed for 6 months, lets see how far we can go. I think it’s done 248,000kms so far on the engine.
The interior is almost complete, the rear kitchen section has the fridge, cooker and sink installed and all working, leisure battery is installed with the new split charge unit.
I managed to get some left hand drive LT carpet from Caravantechnik Dobrinski in Germany, they look great and reduce the engine noise a little too.
We have been on a few short trips around Suffolk and Cambridgeshire but nothing more than a few miles at a time, I was slightly concerned that with no turbo and an old engine 45mph might be the maximum, if so the van would be almost useless. I got Dad to take a look at the injector pump and linkage, after some minor adjustments we can now to 60mph quite easily, happy to run along the road between 55mph and 60mph without any problems, acceleration is better, but I am used a 1.6TD Joker and a 2.4 T4, so some turbo and lighter weight van, anyway, the speed is fine.
The first longish run has been to Cromer in Norfolk this weekend, we went along quite nicely in the traffic and didn’t hold anyone up for long. We are off to France and Belgium next week….
In March 2010 a new office was delivered direct from Lugarde in the Netherlands to Hobart Road. The driver stopped his truck on Mill Road and then stopped the traffic while he unloaded the pallet with his forklift. The pallet was placed outside my house.
A few days later three office workers arrived to build the office, it took them about 6 hours, here is the CCTV footage of the build, speeded up…
The video was recorded on my Panasonic TM300 camera in AVCHD, speeded up in Final Cut Pro.
While this is not really a computer item it is computer related as it is my main place of work. It’s the best place to work, no suits and no project workers in here, just lots of busy computer jobs going on and many of my other interests too.