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Rocky Mountain Westy Samba Member
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Joined: April 17, 2008 Posts: 1031 Location: Fort Collins Colorado
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syncrodoka Samba Member
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Joined: December 27, 2005 Posts: 12007 Location: Santa Cruz, CA
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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Enjoy your event. Post some pictures please.
Last edited by syncrodoka on Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Jake de Villiers Samba Member
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Joined: October 24, 2007 Posts: 5911 Location: Tsawwassen, BC
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syncrodoka Samba Member
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Joined: December 27, 2005 Posts: 12007 Location: Santa Cruz, CA
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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Enjoy your event. Post some pictures please.
Last edited by syncrodoka on Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mblotz Samba Member
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Joined: February 25, 2004 Posts: 296 Location: D-town, at base of the rocky's
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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syncrodoka wrote: |
http://www.cofrontrangers.org/
Is that what you are hoping for? I had to google the term Front Rangers and this came up.
I actually thought that it said FORD rangers
Enjoy your event. |
now that is funny. Colorado Front Ranger is "usually" associated with the population of CO that lives on the front range of the rocky mountains. |
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Rhinoculips Samba Member
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Joined: August 08, 2005 Posts: 918 Location: Keystone, Colorado
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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I am hoping to attend, but life has been crazy and it seems to only get crazier. _________________ “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” - Edward Abbey
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insyncro Banned
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Joined: March 07, 2002 Posts: 15086 Location: New York
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Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 7:02 am Post subject: |
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Have fun, wish I was able to attend.
Too much goin on here in NY.
dylan |
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Rocky Mountain Westy Samba Member
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Joined: April 17, 2008 Posts: 1031 Location: Fort Collins Colorado
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Farfrumwork Samba Member
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Joined: October 10, 2008 Posts: 692 Location: Mile High
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Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 7:47 am Post subject: |
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haha - well if it WERE a FORD event, then mblotz could attend... (maybe we can get blotzie to go anyway..)
We hope to be there, sounds cool.
I want to show off my 1/2-syncro that RMW helped make possible. Low and locked ![Dancing](images/smiles/eusa_dance.gif) _________________ sold -> '85 Wolfsburg Syncro / 'Built' DOHC EJ25 (a great machine!)
'07 Legacy spec.B, road tuned stgII
'17 4x4 Sprinter, stone grey, SMB pop-top, on 33"s
"Blood stains, speed kills - Fast cars, cheap thrills - Rich girls, fine wine - I've lost my sense, I've lost control, I've lost my mind" |
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Rocky Mountain Westy Samba Member
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Joined: April 17, 2008 Posts: 1031 Location: Fort Collins Colorado
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2011 8:06 am Post subject: |
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Happy Weekend,
So we will be putting on demonstrations at our open house. You will be able to see our CNC Plasma Cutter Table in action. We will also be doing some tube bending with our mandrel tubing bender. You will be able to see our manufacturing process of how we make our bumpers and exhaust systems.
Plus we will be burying you with good food, live music and a drive in movie.
It is gonna be fun, come out and see us. _________________ Rocky Mountain Westy Inc.
www.rockymountainwesty.com
970-310-3441
[email protected]
The Splitzgauer build (when I have time to work on it and update the thread)
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=497133 |
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FNGRUVN Samba Member
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Joined: October 27, 2007 Posts: 2237 Location: Fort Collins, CO
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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Why don't you show the folks how easy it is to bend up a set of exhaust pipes for a 3.0 Subie. ![Laughing](images/smiles/icon_lol.gif) _________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin |
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carterzest Samba Member
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Joined: January 22, 2008 Posts: 3842 Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2011 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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Jake de Villiers wrote: |
syncrodoka wrote: |
http://www.cofrontrangers.org/
Is that what you are hoping for? I had to google the term Front Rangers and this came up.
I actually thought that it said FORD rangers
Enjoy your event. |
LOL! |
Busted on the not-so-ninja edit
Wishing I could make it out to your Open House. I surely would not be coming home with the same bumpers and perhaps, even a tire and gas can carrier We will be speaking in the coming months. We met at Syncro Solstice. _________________ Happiness=Portland, Oregon in the rearview mirror! |
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connorsvw2 Samba Member
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Joined: August 16, 2008 Posts: 347 Location: Denver, CO
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Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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I won't be able to come for the Friday, but might be able to come up Saturday AM-afternoon from Denver. _________________ '85 Westy Wolfsburg camper/2002 2.5 Subaru since 2003.
'85 GTI 1.8L 1-owner 8v-gave up on 9A 2.0L 16v transplant. Keeping her stock!
'99 Passat 1.8T Variant-AKA "The Money Pit". Still limping along...
'09 Subaru Outback XT 5-speed, 245 hp rocket (wife's car) |
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Vanagonner Samba Member
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Joined: September 15, 2009 Posts: 506 Location: Broomfield Colorado
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 11:53 am Post subject: |
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Today! _________________ Sage
'82 Westy 1.6 D
the mighty n/a |
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Syncronicity Samba Member
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Joined: March 09, 2009 Posts: 839 Location: Glenwood Springs, CO
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Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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We "back rangers" cant make this weekend. River training that can't be rescheduled. Have fun. Wish we could make it. _________________ Tom, Juanita, Iggy & Abbey the Dirty Desert Dogs
2.1 L 87 Syncro
KD0ALU
________oo_oo
/ /__/___[_____\
I I======[]IIIII[]
()_)------()_)----)_) |
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msinabottle Samba Member
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Joined: September 20, 2005 Posts: 3492 Location: Denver Area, Colorado
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 9:55 pm Post subject: Winston and Rob visit RMW (VERBOSE) |
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It came, it was, it was wonderful! Let me thank Mike, his mother, brother, and staff for a very pleasant weekend, last week, his hospitality and his generosity in staging what proved to be a well-attended, worthwhile event.
Now... I took MANY photos. Many good photos. I wished to use them in this post. I have spent two miserable hours trying to share them. It has been a disaster. Microsoft Skydrive will only let me embed or download photos. The Samba will not let me embed them. I tried uploading selected pictures to the Samba. They are 52 pixels over the 1600x1600 pixel limit. I tried downsizing one by 52 pixels. The file size doubled. I am furious. I could wish that Everett could see his way through to just limiting the maximum FILE size of an image. I am well, well under that.
I will write a full post when I can think and stop swearing. In the meantime, you can SEE the photos and DOWNLOAD the photos at this link:
http://tinyurl.com/69gswkc
--
Okay, after calming down a bit... and I had some way to go... Let us try again in the happy knowledge that Photobucket now has unlimited storage space, although they still set bandwidth limits. I'll leave the ENTIRE set of pictures for this post up on SkyDrive, and put the ones for this post on Photobucket.
All right, I loaded up Winston pretty lightly, it was to be just a weekend after all, and fueled him up. Since the Agilis and my smaller TIRES, larger rims, my MPG seems to have gone down and stabilized at 22MPG. I liked getting 24, but I probably wasn't. Sure did love, ever more, the later model of Emergency Brake handle the Brothers Blazer had installed, and Winston's never braked better in the time I've owned him.
The drive up that Friday afternoon went fairly well, once I got clear of Denver, although Friday driving in Denver is legendary for all the wrong reasons and I-25 Southbound looked pretty much stop-and-go from Ft. Collins to Denver...
It was a bit better northbound. Vanagons tend to love congested highways, nobody notices OUR top speed when no one can go any faster than we can flat out.
Rocky Mountain Westy was as nice as it had been two years before, I let Mike himself park Winston where you can see him in that picture--I was tired and if someone was going to smash vans together, it wasn't going to be me. I told Mike how interested I was in the new exhaust... He looked thoughtful... then bundled me into a 1.9 WITH the exhaust that they were testing for a ride.
The sound is WONDERFUL. Acceleration from a start and uphill seemed faster, Mike pointed out his own observations... I can't say anything specific, but it seemed to be a definite upgrade, and I'm still interested in putting one on Winston when funds allow. I will remind all doubters that neither Mike nor Chris/tencentlife have expressed the slightest fear of a dynometer, so in time we SHOULD have verifiable before/after ratings.
Thanks again to Mike for taking the time to demonstrate the fascinating product--I have some interest in it because about 4 years ago at VW's on the Green I suggested that Mike get in touch with Chris, with whom I'd corresponded on a 1.9 version. So, yes... I AM TAKING CREDIT FOR IT ALL!
Okay, I'm whining for just a little credit. Other people were there or trickling in, and I want to thank all the wonderful Out-of-State people who showed up that weekend. You were interesting, it was wonderful seeing you and your beautiful vans, and you added a lot to the event! One fellow couldn't bring his van, but he brought his son and an interesting product idea for the luggage rack that I'm not going to ruin for him by describing. I hope it works and I can buy one! I gave a great idea for yet another accessory to Mike, in which he expressed interest, and I'm not going to give any details of THAT any time soon to give Mike a chance to see if he can build it. He can build... A LOT. Behold, the Plasma Table!
While we watched, his pleasant and careful machinist made a small hand tool out of 1/4" steel plate--effortlessly. He also demonstrated, as much as possible, the mandrel bender! Ecce:
I admit to observing with impure thoughts Mike's new tube front bumpers with the integral brush bar, and the under-seat safes, and the storage bin that fits behind the battery compartment on the passenger's side...
The things we saw... Mechanically, as spectacular as anything was the beautiful white Westy with the recently-rebuilt transmission and the BOSTIG TURBO-CHARGED ZETEC!
Note the 'Ford' hitch cover and the 45W solar array. It took me 'til Saturday to realize that the fellow DRIVING that beauty... Very quickly... down from Washington... was none other than Daryl of AA Transaxle--as kind and nice a gentleman as he is a skilled mechanic. He was very good company and a lot of fun to talk to. Mike thought so! Here they are, talking:
Of course I buttonholed him and asked what he considered the best Gearbox Oil for Winston. Don't bother Daryl... Don't start the traditional spitting contest... But I believed him when he said it was Swepco 210 which you can get from:
http://www.pelicanparts.com/
That's the plan for Winston, if I can't find a local source for the stuff.
So... VERY good barbecue, and chicken tacos, and hotdogs, and free soda, and a slide show of pictures, and nice conversation with a large number of people whose names I won't remember... There was a raffle, I won an Otter Box, otter not included... And we ate, marveled at the machinery, I got bitten by mosquitoes, who home in on me for miles around--Winston makes a great anti-mosquito fortress--and thanked Mike's nice Mom for superlative cooking.
Sooo... I slept in Winston in Mike's parking lot along with two very nice men over in their own Westy. One of them who had been to the South Pole was erudite, prone to sarcasm, and tended toward a literal interpretation of remarks... A merry wight...
from South Dakota who had come down for the event, and they were driving a very nice van, to which of them it belonged I am now unsure. Here it is:
They're on the Samba, so if either of you want revenge or credit, you know where to find me. I certainly knew FNGRUVN, Rick, well enough, he took me for a ride in his beautiful Air Cooled van, and drove it like a NASCAR racer when we zoomed up the Cache La Poudre canyon to our lovely camp sites at Mountain Park Campground. That is the only time in MY LIFE I have seen a Vanagon force another vehicle into the 'Slow Vehicle Turn Off.' Winston kept up with Schultzie, but that Air Cooled Vanagon didn't exactly crawl. The van behind ME had Mike and Chris's exhaust, so Winston and I hit the turns pretty fast.
Mike was SPOTTING us all the $15/night to camp at that beautiful campground, where Daryl had passed Friday night. It was NICE. Water spigot, very clean and lit toilet, even change-operated showers. Right next to the river, and beautiful and pleasant in every particular, except for the bees and wasps--which were all over the place as they tanked up on food and Rick's pancake syrup in anticipation of cold weather.
I did all right with Winston's front window magnetic screens in place. There was much admiring of other people's Vanagons, and I got a lot of questions as to how I did this or that, and if there was any place someone could go to find out HOW I did something...
Well, if you're reading this, you're in the right place, Campers. Rick's Bus Depot side-awning was VERY popular, nearly everyone who saw it wanted one.
People went hiking and fishing, more and more Vanagons pulled up and we had our own little VW community out in the Mummy Range of Colorado going.
A beautiful Eurovan weekender rolled in, and a Syncro that the friendly couple driving had taken up some... Truly horrible... passes. Successfully. Just.
There was much food--I had my usual Puffed Wheat and bagel for my two breakfasts, Dinner Saturday was two microwaved burritos smothered in Stagg chili. Rick, as evening loomed, brought out a bottle of Maker's Mark and shared it with me, one of the nice gentlemen from South Dakota, and this delightful couple, Frank and his lady seen here next to their RMW exhaust-equipped 1.9 Vanagon!
And it turned out that they were both accomplished musicians in a style called 'Old Time,' examples of which you can hear in the 'O Brother, Where art Thou?' soundtrack. Thanks to Rick's Maker's Mark, we got... a VERY nice little concert by firelight as the moon rose over the mountains. Some idiot or other also sang a bit before he staggered off to a drunken night's stupor in Winston.
It got down to 46 degrees... We'd BAKED in Denver all August. Oh, that felt nice.
Morning, we walked about, talked still more Vanagons, thought a bit of 9/11, the tenth anniversary of which it was... I spent some time thinking about a fish-chewed corpse on the floor of the Indian Ocean... Finally, sadly, it was pull-out...
I enjoyed a very nice drive back to Denver, although Winston had to go and left a big puddle over a rest area's parking lot...
(I drained his water tank, clean drinking water, to save gas mileage)
If Mike was out to make a lot of us think about some of the amazing products they're fabricating up there in Ft. Collins--he succeeded. If he wanted to show a good time to about 20 or more Vanagons-full of people, he succeeded! And after a spitload of obstacles, I sat down and started writing up and illustrating the whole thing... and succeeded!
Best! _________________ 'Winston,' '84 1.9 WBX Westy
Vanagon Poet Laureate: "I have suffered in
many ways, but never, never, never in silence." |
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epaddler Samba Member
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Joined: July 18, 2010 Posts: 222 Location: Slippery Rock
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dhaavers Samba Member
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Joined: March 19, 2010 Posts: 7757 Location: NE MN (tinyurl.com/dhaaverslocation)
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 4:54 am Post subject: |
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VERY nice writeup & photos!
I love knowing that some of you all are real people...
![Wink](images/smiles/icon_wink.gif) _________________ 86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS> |
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FNGRUVN Samba Member
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Joined: October 27, 2007 Posts: 2237 Location: Fort Collins, CO
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:16 am Post subject: |
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Hey Rob, thanks for taking the time to post all this up. Nice job as always.
It was a perfect weekend for a group campout. The weather couldn't have been better and the full moon was a nice touch. The campground was the cleanest campground I'd ever seen and the fish were biting(in more ways than one ).
The Makers Mark brought out the best in Rob, Fred, and Cathay(?). They entertained us in the moonlight. I must say, Rob is quite the singer/entertainer and Fred has that perfect "Old Timey" sound.
It was nice to meet new people and put a face with the name. Anthony and Annie, the ones with the tin-top Syncro, were really nice and fun to be around. Daryl(AA Transaxle) is just as pleasant in person as he is on-line. It's always cool to meet one of the Vanagon gurus.
A big thanks to Rocky Mountain Mike and his crew. This annual event gets better every year. Looking forward to next year. _________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin |
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Syncronicity Samba Member
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Joined: March 09, 2009 Posts: 839 Location: Glenwood Springs, CO
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Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:17 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the pictures and write up. Looks like you had great weather and a great time. i will watch my schedule closer next year, as to not interfere with this outing. _________________ Tom, Juanita, Iggy & Abbey the Dirty Desert Dogs
2.1 L 87 Syncro
KD0ALU
________oo_oo
/ /__/___[_____\
I I======[]IIIII[]
()_)------()_)----)_) |
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