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casimoto
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Joined: June 24, 2009
Posts: 15
Location: Monarch Beach, California
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stevegibb
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Joined: December 18, 2006
Posts: 107
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campism
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Joined: September 07, 2007
Posts: 4491
Location: Richmond VA
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 Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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From the just-arrived December 2013 issue of Car and Driver's regular back page feature called "what I'd do differently..." and its interview this month with Corvette guru Reeves Callaway, the C/D question is: "You've turbocharged Alfas, Holdens, and Land Rovers. Is there a marque that proved to be a big mistake?"
Callaway: "Oh, sure, the turbo system we made for the VW Vanagon. Never turbocharge something that will be driven all day long at wide-open throttle. Never."
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'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic |
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photogdave
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Joined: April 05, 2004
Posts: 3052
Location: Vancouver Island, B.C.
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juanb
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Joined: December 03, 2009
Posts: 535
Location: San Francisco, CA
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| Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 8:00 pm Post subject: Re: two articles in NYT on last Kombi made in Brazil and Cou |
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We camped next to them for two nights here in Cusco. There's also a couple with a CHC Syncro. Both of them have Subaru engines, so we were the only real VW there 
We made a group photo today. Sorry for the Instagram link:
http://instagram.com/p/gg3kUKOgQ7/
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1989 Westy AT, 2.2 GoWesty.
We drove it to Argentina: http://www.vanenvan.com |
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mr. c
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Joined: November 14, 2007
Posts: 153
Location: Black Hills, SD
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| Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 10:14 am Post subject: |
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| campism wrote: |
From the just-arrived December 2013 issue of Car and Driver's regular back page feature called "what I'd do differently..." and its interview this month with Corvette guru Reeves Callaway, the C/D question is: "You've turbocharged Alfas, Holdens, and Land Rovers. Is there a marque that proved to be a big mistake?"
Callaway: "Oh, sure, the turbo system we made for the VW Vanagon. Never turbocharge something that will be driven all day long at wide-open throttle. Never." |
Just hopped on here to post this. Made me smile.
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Abe: 1987 Syncro Full Camper, TiiCo engine conversion, A3 pulley kit |
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syncromike
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Joined: November 14, 2011
Posts: 660
Location: Boise, ID
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| Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 10:37 am Post subject: |
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| mr. c wrote: |
| campism wrote: |
From the just-arrived December 2013 issue of Car and Driver's regular back page feature called "what I'd do differently..." and its interview this month with Corvette guru Reeves Callaway, the C/D question is: "You've turbocharged Alfas, Holdens, and Land Rovers. Is there a marque that proved to be a big mistake?"
Callaway: "Oh, sure, the turbo system we made for the VW Vanagon. Never turbocharge something that will be driven all day long at wide-open throttle. Never." |
Just hopped on here to post this. Made me smile. |
LOL - putting it like that it makes total sense.
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'91 Syncro w/ Country Homes PopTop |
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78busboy
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Joined: May 25, 2010
Posts: 36
Location: New York
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carterzest
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Joined: January 22, 2008
Posts: 3842
Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 10:19 am Post subject: |
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I believe that would be Otmar, the man with the stretch vanagon.
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Happiness=Portland, Oregon in the rearview mirror! |
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kamzcab86
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Joined: July 26, 2008
Posts: 7918
Location: Arizona
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carterzest
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Joined: January 22, 2008
Posts: 3842
Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2013 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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I have been grooving on this little dream Syncro Honeymoon Treffen for the past two days in between work.....
Up in Zermat, he shows the cog wheel train track on the alpine train that, when I was on my bike tour through Europe in 86, I took my bike up. Instead of taking the train back down, I elected to use the service road. Bad idea. Lets just say that my brakes overheated and failed, then I surfed down the mountainside riding my Centurion Lemans over 1500 feet before I came to a stop. I was nursing road rash for the next 2 weeks  http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/72207-Europe-by-Camper
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Happiness=Portland, Oregon in the rearview mirror! |
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Otmar
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Joined: May 06, 2006
Posts: 71
Location: Corvallis, Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| carterzest wrote: |
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I believe that would be Otmar, the man with the stretch vanagon. |
That's interesting, they quoted a post I made in the TeslaMotorsClub forum for that. I've bought a different Tesla and the latest news piece is here:
http://www.plugincars.com/oregon-man-will-meld-tesla-model-s-and-vw-stretch-vanagon-129043.html
I hear InsideEVs is also planning an article, possibly on Monday. And I hear the a NYT blog picked it up but I have not seen that.
Have fun!
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-Otmar
Tesfalia: https://twitter.com/tesfalia
The '87 Westie for the mean time,
& Dad's old 1965 Transporter. |
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carterzest
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Joined: January 22, 2008
Posts: 3842
Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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Otmar
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Joined: May 06, 2006
Posts: 71
Location: Corvallis, Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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I missed it, wow! 
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-Otmar
Tesfalia: https://twitter.com/tesfalia
The '87 Westie for the mean time,
& Dad's old 1965 Transporter. |
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carterzest
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Joined: January 22, 2008
Posts: 3842
Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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| Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 5:56 am Post subject: |
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Andamos de Vagos: High Altitude Adventures
Quito, the highest capital in the world at nearly 10,000ft, was our first big city in South America and the first capital we visited on our trip. We normally steer clear of big cities since they can be a mess to drive in and in general we prefer to explore the outdoors, but cities contain loads of history and show us a part of the country that we otherwise wouldn’t experience.
Linda and Aron have been traveling from San Diego, California through Central and South America on their way to Ushuaia in their 1986 VW van. You can follow their adventures at: Andamos de Vagos
http://www.expeditionportal.com/adventures/2575-andamos-de-vagos-high-altitude-adventures.html
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Happiness=Portland, Oregon in the rearview mirror! |
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kamzcab86
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Joined: July 26, 2008
Posts: 7918
Location: Arizona
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| Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 2:38 pm Post subject: |
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http://curiouslylocal.com/2011/01/tim-guiles-conversations-in-a-tiny-house/
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Tim Guiles: Conversations in a Tiny House
by George Packard on January 18, 2011
Seven or eight year ago Joan bought a 1981 VW Vanagon Westfalia. This is the self-propelled cabin that housed generations of footloose people from the 1950s through the 1990s, and those that are still running and rolling (the vans, not the people) are still just about the sweetest, if not exactly the most reliable, mobile homes ever built. It’s easy to call Joan’s bus a home. It’s got two double beds, a couch, closets, a sink with running water, a refrigerator, a two-burner gas stove, two easy-chairs, a tiny balcony, a stereo system, mood lighting, a pantry, a bookcase, a dining table and a desk, and picture windows on all four sides.
There’s room for a couple of people to get into a clinch and dance slow, and a mirror to fix your makeup afterwards. So what if it doesn’t have a toilet or a shower. Neither of those items was ever high on my list of what it takes to make four walls and a roof a home.
Not long after Joan began spending quite a bit of time in her Westy she started talking about building a very little house, with the same interior as the van, but tall enough so that you wouldn’t have to pop the top to stand up. Then came the year of looking at garden sheds whenever we passed them. Tiny houses, Joan called them. And then Joan discovered Tiny Houses, the movement, the real thing, people who were building, and living in, wee tiny houses from about 80 square feet on up to 250 square foot mansions. Joan’s mania came into full bloom, and for the past several years she’s kept track of the explosion of interest in Tiny Houses, an explosion driven in part by the fact that little bitty small and smaller than small houses are very inexpensive to build, buy and maintain, very livable, and usually very, very appealing.
In January Joan got in touch with Tim Guiles of YesWeeCabins.com over in Vermont, liked what she heard, and so we grabbed the camera and went to pay a visit.
In 2008 Tim built two tiny houses based on Jay Shafer’s “WeeBee” design (Tumbleweed Houses); one for himself and one for his son. He’d lived on a sailboat and had a graduate degree in environmental engineering, so wasn’t a newcomer to downsized living or smart, low-impact design. But even so, he was enthralled with the two versions of the “WeeBee” he built and in 2009, one year later, he formed a company, Yes Wee Cabins. He hired an architect to help him with the design of his first product, an 8′x18′ tiny house on a steel car trailer called “Elegant Simplicity.” It’s a particularly well-designed space, a tiny house that feels, well, not too big and not too small. It feels, in fact, just right. Uh, just right as long as you don’t try to put your grand piano inside. Tim is an accomplished professional pianist (that’s him playing Grieg in the opening of this blog’s mini-documentary). And he keeps his piano in another (bigger) little house on his land. Tiny house living does not mean a retreat to a spartan, one fork, one knife and a change of underwear existence. But it does mean you must think more clearly and carefully about the physical objects you own, and where you want to keep them. If, in fact, you do want to keep them all. (I’ve read reports of some prideful tiny housers who keep an actual count of their objects and take rather insufferable “smaller-square-feet-than-thou” attitudes.)
Tim and his partner, Kate, are now living in one of his tiny houses; he has sold another, and he is completing a third. We spent a couple of hours filming and talking with Tim in that tiny house, perched on the brow of a high field on his Vermont land.
About a day later I began to think about it, seriously. I couldn’t help myself. Lessee, I thought, a tiny house for Joan and me, and another as a guest house or perhaps a retreat to solitude for either of us, when the tiny house really got too tiny, side by side on a nice piece of land. Sell the current place, come out ahead…hmmm. Hmmmm.
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~Kamz 
1986 Cabriolet: www.Cabby-Info.com
 1990 Vanagon Westfalia: Old Blue's Blog
2016 Golf GTI S
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - 孔子 |
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carterzest
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Joined: January 22, 2008
Posts: 3842
Location: Eagle, ID/Sun Valley, ID
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| Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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15 months ago Foster Huntington drove west. He quit his schmancy job as a designer at Ralph Lauren in New York, sold most of his stuff, and bought a 1987 VW Vanagon Syncro. He’d just scored a book deal with Harper Collins, based on his blog, The Burning House, a photographic tick list of what people would take with them if their house was on fire. He had, as he says, “enough money to chill for a year,” and when he burned out of New York he didn’t take much besides his camera.
He’s spent the last year and change driving across the left half of the country, crisscrossing from Durango to Baja to Bend, taking pictures and blogging for himself at A Restless Transplant, as well as for brands like Patagonia. He’s become, essentially, a professional vagabond, and he’s learned a few things along the way:
http://www.arestlesstransplant.com/
http://van-life.net/
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Happiness=Portland, Oregon in the rearview mirror! |
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photogdave
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Joined: April 05, 2004
Posts: 3052
Location: Vancouver Island, B.C.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| carterzest wrote: |
15 months ago Foster Huntington drove west. He quit his schmancy job as a designer at Ralph Lauren in New York, sold most of his stuff, and bought a 1987 VW Vanagon Syncro. He’d just scored a book deal with Harper Collins, based on his blog, The Burning House, a photographic tick list of what people would take with them if their house was on fire. He had, as he says, “enough money to chill for a year,” and when he burned out of New York he didn’t take much besides his camera.
He’s spent the last year and change driving across the left half of the country, crisscrossing from Durango to Baja to Bend, taking pictures and blogging for himself at A Restless Transplant, as well as for brands like Patagonia. He’s become, essentially, a professional vagabond, and he’s learned a few things along the way:
http://www.arestlesstransplant.com/
http://van-life.net/ |
Traded his Syncro for a Taco:
http://www.expeditionportal.com/other/2850-a-restl...e-pod.html
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89 Syncro GL Westfalia 2.1 WBX/WBXaustSS
My Westy Movies:
photogdave On Vimeo
photogdave On YouTube
Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery! |
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danfromsyr
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Joined: March 01, 2004
Posts: 15144
Location: Syracuse, NY
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| Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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I like how they used a dented tin top for the Love of driving ad.
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| Abscate wrote: |
| These are the reasons we have words like “wanker” |
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WedgeAntillies
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