24% mountain gradients in a T2

[chimneyfish]

Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I still log in to look at the forums and classifieds, I intend to post some more, its just work, a 65 beetle renovation and life in general have gotten in the way.

Anyway, I’m here for your sage advice, as I’m currently in the southern most Bavarian Alps bordering Austria. The first time I traversed the Alps in a T2 (a 1600) was back in 1995, and I’ve done it a handful of times since, but compared to a local, still consider myself a novice. However, I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew this time around, and can now even more see why VW offered a mountain gearbox option.

The last two days I have had to navigate some of the most extreme gradients I can recall in recent memory. I’m talking about 24% mountain gradients, some at distances of 1/4 mile or just over, before they level off for a short stretch and then back to the long plod up hill. I’ve had to do this twice, and will have to do it once more tomorrow. Total journey one-way is about 3 miles (maximum is 24%, there are more manageable stretches of around 15%). I’m not going all the way up the mountain to where I need to be, it’s only to about 3,250ft elevation, but its very steep in places.

I’m not lugging it in 3rd gear, as RPM would be unhealthily high, and the bus would probably eventually roll backwards at how steep these hills are anyway! I’m having to keep it about 1/2 to 3/4 throttle in 2nd gear, or if things get hairy shift down to 1st gear. I pull over into available passing places (bus stops) on short flat stretches to let the p*ssed off German drivers past.

Specs are a Type 2 T2b, Type 4 1800cc engine, dual Solex PDSIT, 091 6 rib transmission. Bus is always fully serviced and retuned up, including a trip to be hooked up to professional analyser, before embarking on these sort of trips. Gearbox oil level fine, engine oil consumption is good at about 0.5 litres (approx 1 US pint) per 1,250 miles.

Apologies, I only have myself to blame for getting myself into these situations. Any tips on driving up (and back down) these Alpine monsters greatly appreciated!
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1965 Type 1 Deluxe (1200cc)
1976 Type 2 T2b Microbus L (1800cc Type 4)
Previously...
1972 T2 Camper (Devon), 1988 Golf, 1972 Type 1, 1984 Polo, 1972 T2 Camper (Danbury)

[timvw7476]

You painted yourself into a corner with a 091 & 1800. Ran both, the original 1974 box, + an even earlier unit (first gear was like a granny 1st) & finally an 091 unit with the 1800. mileage went from 21, to 16-17, to 23+mpg with the 091 2.0L 'highway' gearbox.
091 works beautiful in the Western US with gentle grade highways & most passes. (Except attacking the 'Grapevine', on I-5 in CA) lol.
All you need is one of those earlier non-091s, meant for the 1700 or 1600 buses. Those things were geared for pulling! Or just put 55lbs of air in your tires. FWIW.

[SGKent]

Patience Grasshopper. Patience. If it runs fine on straight and level, and all cylinders are firing, you may end up in 2nd gear at 3/4 throttle. Be sure to smile at the drivers behind you. Here the equal is Sonora Grade, California Highway 108, which is 26%. Climbed it once in my 71 T2 - 1600 and it was a 2nd gear climb. Long and slow.
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“Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” - George Carlin

[busdaddy]

All of the above, unless you have a spare pair of low profile tires to swap on to the back for these situations it's just a case of toughing it out with a slow 2nd or 3rd gear pull and smiling at angry drivers.
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[dodger tom]

you’re doing it all right except for one thing. thinking too much about it.

go where you wanna go. take it easy. let others pass when you can. smile a lot. maybe shrug a little. buy them a beer, if you see them at the next stop.
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1978 Champaign Edition Westfalia
Would never find the time to keep up another classic air-cooled.

[Wildthings]

I started down a long 20%+ grade in Mexico years ago in second gear, not realizing that I would have some curves that I had to take at 5 mph. Dropped about 2000' vertical that way and it was very hairy. Replaced the front pads the next day as they looked toasted. One of the few places I have no desire to go back to.

[airschooled]

Sounds like pretty standard mountain roads for the western US. Your gearing isn't ideal, but the rest of us tough it out in second gear anyway once it gets above 20%.

Unless i've driven the road before, I usually go down a hill in the same gear I came up it in.

Robbie
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[chimneyfish]

Thanks everyone. The 091 is original to the bus, the birth certificate says it originally had a 2000cc GD engine with fuel injection fitted with it in April 1976, so at some time in its life prior to me buying it another engine was swapped in.

I made it through fine today. Hairiest bit on Sunday was having to change down to 1st gear mid slope, where I had to gently pull over to the bank, hand brake on and hill start, I didn’t let it happen again today!

I have stayed in low gear, mainly 2nd for coming down as well. Worst thing earlier today (Monday) was going downhill, with constant thunder storms and persistent torrential heavy rain across the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. All the way down in the wet, 2nd gear, the Firestone Vanhawks gripped the road brilliantly. Stopped at a fuel station at the bottom and could smell a whiff of front disc brakes, despite taking it easy on them to try and avoid excessive fade.

The mountains definitely use up more fuel which is to be expected, but the type 4 has been running beautifully on the autobahns. I’ve been averaging 24 miles per UK Imperial Gallon (so about 20 miles per US gallon) fully laden, with a fair bit of hill climbing. I will calculate exact fuel use when back in the UK, but its in the ball park. I sometimes overthink these old buses and cars, knowing what can go wrong mechanically, so the reassurances are greatly appreciated, when I was younger ignorance was bliss! Maybe next time I will try it in a T3 Synchro, or better still zoom up there in a T7!
_________________
1965 Type 1 Deluxe (1200cc)
1976 Type 2 T2b Microbus L (1800cc Type 4)
Previously...
1972 T2 Camper (Devon), 1988 Golf, 1972 Type 1, 1984 Polo, 1972 T2 Camper (Danbury)

[NASkeet]

It’s always wise to let impatient “boy-racer” & “girl-racer” type drivers overtake, whenever it’s safe to do this. Far too many drivers drive too fast and follow too close, under all road and/or weather conditions. To quote from “Roadcraft – The police drivers’ manual” (I have the 1968 second edition, with 1974 amendments, priced at £0•34, which formed the basis of my voluntary, low-cost, driving-technique advancement course with the Essex Police Driving School in 1978), “any fool can drive fast enough to be dangerous”!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadcraft

https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/project/roadcraft/

https://tsoshop.co.uk/Transport/Police-Foundation/?DI=653249

https://www.roadcraft.co.uk/roadcraft/

On our way to Hungary in the Soviet Bloc, behind the “Iron Curtain” during the summer of 1985, I negotiated the Arlberg Pass (in preference to the Arlberg Road Tunnel) in western Austria. This involved a steep, narrow road with sharp hairpin bends, that necessitated using both sides of the road to get around the sharp bends in the 1973 VW 1600 Type 2 Westfalia Continental whose turning circle was very much larger than my 1974 Triumph Toledo’s relatively small 29¾ feet turning circle (not as small as the 25 feet of the Triumph Herald & Spitfire or London taxi). On that road, trailers & caravans were prohibited and it’s questionable whether A-Class motorhomes or American-style RVs (i.e. recreation vehicles) would have been capable of negotiating the narrow road and its hairpin bends. Any vehicle more than about 20 feet long, would have found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate those bends, even using both sides of the road.

Bend negotiation typically required the use of FIRST gear, and SECOND gear was used for most straight-run gradients, although I did occasionally use THIRD gear for long, straight downhill sections of more modest gradient. On steep gradients, I always adhered to the lorry-driver’s maxim of descending gradients in the same gear as I would ascend, which ensures better, safer control of the vehicle when descending and minimises use of the brakes, which I gently applied intermittently to reduce road-speed and prevent the engine over-revving. In some cases, it was preferable to remain in FIRST gear descending steep gradients, if one had to negotiate downhill hairpin bends, otherwise the vehicle would accelerate unimpeded during the gear-change from SECOND to FIRST.

One should be extremely wary of using the brakes excessively, which could be subject to fade and boiling of hydraulic-fluid, if they overheat. Remember that to maintain constant speed when descending gradients, SOLELY by use of the brakes, would result in ALL of the vehicle’s gravitational potential energy being converted to heat through friction between the brake drums & discs (i.e. rotors in USA parlance!?!) and the brake-shoe linings & disc-brake pads. The greater one’s road-speed and the steeper the gradient, the greater the required rate of frictional-heat dissipation from the brakes! Some commercial vehicles (i.e. large lorries / trucks) have, or at least used to have, an exhaust-brake facility, the exhaust-system noise from which, is quite distinctive, that I heard a few times during my past journeys through mountainous regions of Europe; particularly in Austria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_brake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_brake

Many of the hairpin bends, were “blind-bends” with little or no visibility of on-coming traffic, so it was important to sound one’s horn – “audible warning device” (or preferably a set of supplementary air-horns, of which I have a set, as the factory-standard VW Type 2 horn-system is rather feeble, even when properly maintained) to warn on-coming drivers of one’s approach to the bends. In many European countries, such use of the horn is obligatory, and failure to use it substantially increases the risk of a serious collision, and it could also result in a conviction for various serious driving offences, the consequences of which could be quite onerous!

By 1985, I was using Mobil 1, SAE 5W/50, API SF, fully-synthetic oil in the original VW 1600 Type 1 style, AD-Series, twin-port, air-cooled engine, which resulted in an oil-consumption rate of approximately 1•0 litre per 3,500 ± 500 miles, as compared to circa 1•0 litre per 1,000 miles when using conventional mineral oils of SAE 30, SAE 20W/50 or SAE 10W/40. This relatively high oil-consumption rate, might have been attributable to my failure to aggressively “glaze-bust” the cylinder barrels when I fitted new, alternative multi-piece piston rings in 1983, whilst I had the engine stripped down to cure severe oil leaks.

A gradient of 24% is roughly the same as 1 in 4 (i.e. 25%), for which I would not expect to use THIRD gear in any vehicle; including my 1974 Triumph Toledo 1300 “HL Special” (my most modern vehicle!) or my 1973 VW “1600” Type 2 Westfalia Continental which now has a substituted 1974 VW 1800 Type 2 transaxle & 1911 cm³ displacement (i.e. 66 mm stroke x 96 mm bore), hybridised VW 17/1800 Type 4 style air-cooled engine (i.e. VW 412LE 1679 cm³ displacement engine with “gas-flowed” 1974/75 VW 1800 Type 2 cylinder heads and 96 mm bore, NPR cylinder barrels a flat-crown pistons). In some parts of the United Kingdom, there are several roads with gradients of 1 in 3 (i.e. 33%) and I know of one which has a section with a gradient of circa 1 in 2½ (i.e. 40%).

Many years ago, I was advised by my Swedish university-friend Kjell B. Gestlöv (transmission designer for Scania trucks & buses in Södertälje, Sweden) that heavy, non-aerodynamic vehicles with low-power, low-torque engines, benefit from having a greater number of closely-spaced gear ratios.

Ideally, I would like to substitute a closer-ratio, FIVE-SPEED transaxle from a 1983 onward, two-wheel drive, VW 1900 Transporter T3 (i.e. VW 1900 Vanagon in USA parlance!?!), with 0•82:1 rather than the alternative 0•77:1 fifth-gear ratio whose FIFTH gear’s overall ratio (i.e. gear ratio x final-drive ratio) would be similar to that of a modified 1976~79 VW 2000 Type 2 transaxle with substitute 0•82:1 fourth-gear ratio (in place of the factory-standard 0•88:1 or 0•89:1) and whose FIRST gear’s overall ratio would be similar to that of a factory-standard 1973 VW 1600 Type 2 transaxle.
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Regards.

Nigel A. Skeet

Independent tutor (semi-retired) of mathematics, physics, technology & engineering for secondary, tertiary, further & higher education.

Much modified, RHD 1973 VW "1600" Type 2 Westfalia Continental campervan, with the World's only decent, cross-over-arm, SWF pantograph rear-window wiper

Onetime member, plus former Technical Editor & Editor of Transporter Talk magazine
Volkswagen Type 2 Owners' Club (Great Britain)

http://www.vwt2oc.net

[Manfred58sc]

Having often climbed where few dared here is my recipe . Advance the shit out of the timing before the assent , keep the rpms between 3300 and 3500 in what ever gear you can achieve. Climb all day long. Retime to "normal" specs for the decent.
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Fat chick owner/operator

[airschooled]

[Abscate]

[orwell84]

With an 003 automatic, I just shift into second and keep it around 3500 rpm. Has worked so far.

[NASkeet]

[orwell84]

[Shonandb]

[SGKent]

[orwell84]

I will probably throw a manual in when the old autobox pops. Haven’t seen a master kit available for the 003 auto in a long time. The few times I have driven a standard bus…it seemed pretty easy and forgiving.

[SGKent]

[chimneyfish]

The bad or downright suicidal/homicidal driving I’ve witnessed over the past 3 weeks touring around, I could write a book on it. I’m sure people are getting worse, or maybe I’m just getting older!

One mechanical problem whole trip, I did a 600 mile trek out of Bavaria away from the steep mountain slopes, and 200 yards away from the car park I was going to park up in, the factory welded plate that secures the throttle pedal (late RHD bus type set-up) to the floor came loose. The floor looks solid and immaculate, but 47 years of water dripping from shoes and finding it’s way under there obviously took its toll. I limped to the car park, bought a cheap battery drill and secured it back with two M5 machine screws, nuts and penny washers. I see some sympathetic welding in the buses immediate future. Thank heavens it didn’t fail half way up a mountain. Check your throttle assembly is secure!

I’ve just now done an exact calculation of fuel consumption over 2,230 miles, using 95 through to 100 octane fuel, whatever was available that was suitable, at European “E5” rating (“up to 5% ethanol”, some of the better E5 stuff is actually zero ethanol). I said “fully laden” in a post above, but 3/4 laden at the most is more accurate:

26.43 miles per imperial gallon
22.00 miles per US gallon

I’m happy with that. Not so happy with the price of fuel, the cost is getting prohibitive here in the UK and Europe.

EDIT:

Just now done the calculation from the main steep mountain driving fuel receipt only:

16.67 miles per imperial gallon
13.88 miles per US gallon
_________________
1965 Type 1 Deluxe (1200cc)
1976 Type 2 T2b Microbus L (1800cc Type 4)
Previously...
1972 T2 Camper (Devon), 1988 Golf, 1972 Type 1, 1984 Polo, 1972 T2 Camper (Danbury)