Vanagon RV prepared for winter

I don't use the vanagon during winter time, as I own a second car that's much more reliable. Because of that I needed to drive the RV (camper) to a parking place where it would be safe, where I wouldn't risk that something will get stolen.

Did I mention that someone stole my CB antenna, one of the mirrors and the plastic cap that ends the front bumper?

So I started the vanagon, drove it to the parking place, poured all the water stored in all tanks out (both the water in freshwater tank and all the potable water that I carry as well). And it finished my winter preparations.

Read the rest of Vanagon RV prepared for winter.

Summer holiday plans

We finally decided on our summer vacation plans, and I decided to share those plans with you today. :)

In two weeks, on July 26-31st, I am going to stay 100 km (60 miles) from my home on a strawbale building workshop. I am going to learn there how to build a loadbearing strawbale construction with green roof. I want to use that knowledge later to build my own garage from the straw bales and clay. I could rent a room there, but since I have a camper/RV I don't need to rent rooms or sleep in tents anymore. ;)

On August 7th we're going to our friends' wedding near Opole in Lower Silesia, and after the wedding we're going to explore that region a bit more than we did last year. We want to stay for a couple days in Wrocław, and return home on monday 16th or on tuesday 17th of August.

In the middle of September I'm going to stay on my lot in the camper as this is the time I want to be actually building my garage there. I believe this would take me about 2 weeks, and I would camp in my RV for total of more than 4 weeks this year. ;)

I will keep you updated if anything changes or if I have any interesting photos or news from the trips.

Plans for summer holiday

June is almost gone, soon people will start going for their summer holiday. Maybe we should also make some plans for our vacation?

Since 2006 my friend Tomek and I want to go for a camping trip around Baltic Sea. But every year something stops us. Last year our son was born, this year his dauther was born, which makes it difficult for both our families.

The idea was great. We wanted to drive around the Baltic Sea during three or four weeks, with one small trick. We didn't want to visit Russia, so we would use a ferry from Estonia to Finland. Our trip would look similar to the following:

Read the rest of Plans for summer holiday.

Camper vs Frost

As it was expected, the temperature on sunday was around -15°C (5°F). I wanted to try if my camper would start and if it would, let it run idle for a while, as I drove it last time about one month ago.

My camper has glow plugs indicator light broken, so I have to use another way to determine when the glow plugs are turned off. I turn on a light above the driver's door, and when I turn the glow plugs on, the light dims a bit. When it becomes bright again, I know that it's the time to use the starter.

Read the rest of Camper vs Frost.

Things I hate on polish camping sites

This text was posted on the polish version of this blog on August 29th.

Since I remember, almost every holiday I spent with my parents consisted of a camping journey. Because of that, I visited many campsites, both in Poland and abroad, in Germany, Denmark, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Polish campgrounds, compared to the ones I saw abroad, don't look well. And since I visited this year another five polish campsites, I want to pour here all my feelings about them.

This is the full and complete list of all the things and occasions I dislike about polish campsites.

Read the rest of Things I hate on polish camping sites.

Holiday 2009/2 -- summary

This is the summary of the second part of our camping holiday we had this year, at the end of august. I know I still have to write about the first part of the holiday, and I promise to do it in the near future.


Our first destination was Poznań, from there we wanted to go south.

Read the rest of Holiday 2009/2 -- summary.

First night in camper this season

At first I wanted to give this post a title "First night in camper this summer", but ten I realized we still have spring in Poland -- the summer will start in next week. The weather shows also we don't have summer yet.

On the last (long) weekend we planned to spend a night in the camper, on my piece of land. The idea was to go there on the friday afternoon and stay there till sunday evening. On thursday I finished connecting solar panels and gel batteries (I'll write it in detail in a couple of days, at the moment you can only check the photos in the gallery) to have more electricity.

The weather on friday was nice. It rained a bit in the evening, just for a couple of minutes, and the sunset was almost cloud-free.

From Volkswagen Transporter T3

We didn't have any specific plans for that evening, so after we ate supper (shown on the photo), we went to sleep.

The night was chilly, but we were prepared. As we expected a temperature drop to 12°C (54°F), we prepared warm clothes for night.

At 4 AM it started to rain. It didn't stop until 11 AM. After we woke up we decided to take all the stuff back and leave -- we did so soon after eating breakfast.

It wasn't the best time to start the season. But hey, every other weekend from now on has to be better, right?

First drive on biodiesel

On Friday for the first time I bought larger volume of biodiesel. I bought it before twice, but only in small volumes – just couple of liters. First time during our very first camping trip, back in 2006. I found a petrol station that sold biodiesel and decided to try this fuel. Then I had no luck in finding biodiesel supply. And in may 2007 the engine broke down when all the water in cooling system was lost. The engine was not fixed until may next year.

Not so long ago on some of the gas stations named "Bliska" ("Close one" in English) they started selling biodiesel. One of the stations near place I live had this fuel – lately for 2.99 PLN per liter ($3.55 / gal), compared to 3.55 PLN per liter of petrodiesel. On Friday I drove by the station and bough almost 54 liters of biodiesel to almost empty fuel tank. Buying this cheaper petrodiesel replacement gave me over 9 liters for free.

Just after buying this fuel we had to drive some 80 km (50 miles). I didn’t notice any difference in engine’s performance. The van drove as usual. We’ll see the mileage. The odometer is broken again, but I will try to note all the trips using GPS.

I just have to do two things:

• buy fuel filter, as the biodiesel is a good solvent and will quickly dissolve all the impurities in the fuel tank and fuel lines,
• check if the fuel lines are in good shape, as the biodiesel also dissolves some plastics.

You can read more about biodiesel on my site about Alternative Car Fuels.

Tomek's T3 Syncro

Last sunday we went with Tomek to Alwernia to buy a T3 (Vanagon) Syncro bus for him. The decision was made briefly, on previous evening. He then called the guy who posted an ad on the internet and they decided to meet on sunday. On sunday evening the red T3 Syncro was bought.

Yesterday Tomek and his fiancee Magda visited us with their bus. It was the first time the two T3's stood near, so we made their first photo together.

From Volkswagen Transporter T3

At the first glance you can see that the red Vanagon is a Syncro, one that has 4 Wheel Drive. It's suspension is higher and the space between the front wheel and the body is significantly larger.



Besides the 4WD and 5 speed gearbox (4 standard gears from 1 to 4 plus G gear -- something similar to very short first gear) in the same setup I have in my gearbox (my 1st gear is his G, my 2nd is his 1st and so on) the van has a couple of cool things.

First of all, the grill with rectangular headlights, taken from my red multivan I bought two years ago for the engine and gearbox. It also has:

• meter with clock (broken),
• sun roof,
• foldable triangular windows,
• heated driver's seat!

On the same evening we went to a place where Tomek could use his 4 wheel drive. Magda made some photos, I recorded a couple of videos, they'll be posted here in future.

Winter trip to Łódź

We had to go to Łódź, a large city about 100 km from Żyrardów. So we went there. I posted a Google Map at the bottom of this post so you could better understand what I am writing about.

We left Żyrardów couple of minutes after 4 PM. It started snowing a little, we quickly found ourselves on the DK70 from Huta Zawadzka to Skierniewice. The asphalt was dry and the snow left small wet trails on the road. As we passed Skierniewice (DW705) the road was wet, with small portions of snow blown by the wind from the adjacent fields. On the DK72 from Jeżów the snow was all over the asphalt. When we arrived in Łódź, the road had only two narrow black stripes of asphalt free from snow. And in the Łódź itself, the roads were covered completely with snow.

We did what we had to do in Łódź, we left at 7:20 PM back to Żyrardów.

On the road that leads to Rawa Mazowiecka there's the M1 shopping centre. I found there Neste A24 gas station and bought there 19,78 litres (5,2 gal) of diesel fuel. And I wrote down the odometer. I just couldn't believe that I drove only 100 km (60 miles) and used almost 20 litres of fuel (that would give me fuel consumption of something close to 12 MPG). Couple kilometers further the mystery was revealed -- the odometer stopped working some time ago.

The road back was similar -- snow all over the road, two black stripes, no snow at all. It was snowing all the time, we drove the 95 km (59 miles) for almost 3 hours.

That part of the trip was not free of surprises. I had warm air blown on the windscreen, but the windscreen wipers collected snow that turned to ice. I didn't bother until as the windscreen was still clean as the snow somehow didn't melt on it. But when I finally needed the wipers and turned them on, only one moved. The other was frozen to the windscreen. I stopped and removed the ice, but less than 10 km later the wipers were frozen again.


Show larger map

I got stuck in the snow

Nothing what I wouldn't expect. I still have summer tires (or are they year-round? I'm not sure) and there was snow everywhere.

I took my wife Ania to visit my piece of land. It's got very peculiar shape -- 17 meters (56 ft) wide, 430 meters (1/4 mile) long. The camping place is in the middle of the estate. Every time we go there, we drive to that camping place and camp there. This was the idea today, as well -- to go there and do the usual stuff, i.e. check if everything is in the right place. Everything = trees, bush, etc. ;) I was going to turn around there as I do usually.

But I couldn't do it this time. The camping place is not perfectly flat, and I had some trouble with tires losing their grip on the wet grass. This time it was even worse.

Luckilly I had a shovel in the camper (I always carry a folded one, but this time I had an ordinary shovel as well), I managed to free the camper from that place.

Here's a photo of the mess I left. Of course I had to drive back the 200 meters using only mirrors. :(

From Volkswagen Transporter T3

First summer holidays ideas

Do you remember the idea of making a trip around the Baltic Sea I mentioned over two years ago? This idea came up again. ;) I spoke with Tomek the other day and we thought that driving around the sea with two campers is a great way to spend summer holidays.

With two campers as Tomek is about to buy his own camper built on VW T3 (T25 / Vanagon). :)

The idea to drive over 7,000 km is a bit tricky. It's not like there are no roads and no repairs shops, but it'd be really expensive if something would go wrong and would need repairing. To save the money we'd have to take as much stuff as possible, with the three week supply of food being the last thing to worry about. An axle or two, two spare wheels each, fuel hoses, some wires, a small genset and a welding machine. And many nuts and bolts of various shapes and sizes. ;)

We decided to plan the trip for 17-19 days and spend an entire 3 weeks in the trip. So we would have two or more extra days in case anything went wrong. Of course we'll prepare some backup plans so we could get home sooner by a ferry of some sort.

The trip would be a bit more difficult because at the end of the february my wife should give a birth to my daughter (son?). The kid will of course come with us, but we'll have to take his needs into account. ;)

The quest for the lost motorway

I live in Żyrardów -- a town located about 25 miles west from Warsaw. Near my town one can find small parts of an old (lost) motorway -- Olimpijka. It was supposed to be built for 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow and to connect Moscow and Berlin. But only small part was finished, only about 50 km, now a part of the A2 highway. The rest of this highway at the moment consists of some bridges, partially built overpasses and 250 yards of tarmac. I always liked such places, so we tried to find as many as possible.

We started over a year ago, in april/may 2007. The first thing we found was that tarmac, followed with mud road cut in a forest and a overpass.



The road in the forest doesn't look spectacular.



I also made a movie of the tarmac. Here it is:



We found two more interesting spots on last sunday. I should probably say that we found them earlier on satellite photos and simply drove there using the GPS coordinates.

From Volkswagen Transporter T3

This was supposed to be an overpass of the highway above planned railway track. Eventually the highway was not built, nor was the track.

We also visited a concrete bridge built over a small creak. Nothing very spectacular.



You can find more photos in my picasa web album.

If you'd like to visit those places, I can provide you with the GPS coordinates. Just write a comment here. :)

Holidays in Kolobrzeg - photo summary

I posted here some info on our summer holidays near Kołobrzeg. Now it's a good time to summarize the entire trip. I always liked photos and made some, so I'll post selected photos as a good summary.

From Volkswagen Tr...

You can see here the camper's cupboards filled with food and clothes. We hardly managed to put everything inside. :)


I like this closet, 'cause it allows the clothes to hang almost freely. And it is really huge (compared to space in my VW T3). I think I'll add a mirror on the inside of the door.


Bikes attached to bike mount. If you'd like to buy such bike mount, contact me, I have one spare. :)


This 12V->230V electricity inverter is an important part of my camper's electrical equipment. But on this photo it was used by my dad to charge his cellphone from his camper's battery.


The bed is large.


The first evening.


The first evening (cont).


Mig-21's we saw on our way to Borne Sulinowo, on an airfield close to Nadarzyce.


In the Borne Sulinowo. These buildings were part of russian military base.


Second day of our trip, road somewhere between Borne Sulinowo and Kołobrzeg. It's a result of asking GPS software to find the shortest route. As you can see, the road was very narrow. I was glad we didn't have to pass any other cars... :)


That's me, removing the back cover of my fridge.


Faucet.


The back of the fridge. You can see how precise the removal of cupboard's back was. You can also see my camping battery and solar charger.

repairs on the campsite (2)

When I wrote the last post, I thought I'll have every important appliance in the camper working. But things changed since the day before yesterday.

Fridge

The absorption fridge works only on gas. It doesn't work on 12 nor 230 volt electricity. I have no idea why. I removed the back cover of the fridge cupboard only to see that the power is delivered where it should be. The 12 volt heater conducts current, but doesn't work. I don't know why, I have no equipment to see what's wrong. I tried to see if the 230 volt heater works, but only got electrocuted. For the lack of tools I tried to check that using standard lightbulb.

Pump and faucet

Both worked yesterday. When I wanted to put the faucet together, I thought it'd check the last time if everything works. I forgot to put inside the part that closes the water flow, so the water fountain made everything wet. Including the switch that had to be cleaned when the faucet didn't work. I thought it just needed to dry and will work. I was mistaken. The next day the switch worked great, but the pump did not. So not every important appliance does work...
The photo shows me tightening the screws that hold the couch's hinge.

We're leaving tomorrow. I had enough of cold sea (today the water temperature was 11'C - 52'F), messy bathrooms and stupid rules on this campsite. More details on the latter - in one of future updates.

Fixing the oil leak

As I mentioned the last time I wrote here, the camper needed to have its oil changed and oil leak fixed.

On the june 26th I wanted to drive it to Warsaw to leave it to Tomek for this repair. I woke up an hour earlier than I usually do and found out that the camper simply refused to drive. It refused to start the engine. The starter was dead. Later the same day my wife pulled the camper with our lanos and this way we started the engine. Tomek thought that an old car battery was broken and didn't give enough current to the starter. He advised me to pull the camper, drive around for a while and recharge the battery and to try starting the engine after that.

Of course it didn't work. We replaced the battery with a one that we removed from lanos (one of those batteries has negative terminal on the left side while the other has that terminal on the right side which made it difficult to switch them between cars) and it didn't work either. The next morning Ania pulled me and the camper again and I drove safely to Warsaw.

I left the camper on friday, june 27th and don't have it back yet. I am a bit worried that Tomek will be able to prepare it for my summer camping trips. I hope he does. If this will be the second summer in a row when I can't drive my T3, I will sell this damn van!

Tomek went to Germany to get his own camper. His is built on some Mercedes 208 or something like that. Slow, large but equipped with some very cool stuff (like solar panels on the roof). He left my camper with one of our colleagues, I hope this guy will fix my camper.

If not, I'm prepared to drive for summer vacation with oil leaks. As you can see, I am desperate...

Getting camper prepared for summer trips

Since it's already summer on the northern hemisphere, it's time to get camper ready for any summer trips. Since it was broken last year, we missed our opportunity to go somewhere with camper and had to use my daewoo lanos and sleep in a tent instead. My Vanagon camper is at this moment operational, but not yet prepared.

First of all, we need to change the engine oil. The engine is at it's break-in (it was put together not more than 500 km / 300 miles ago), so the oil needs to be changed.

Second important thing (I'd say it's the most important on the to-do list) is to find out why the engine leaks oil. I have to determine at what rate the oil is being lost. I can go somewhere with leaking engine, but I have to be sure when to pour some extra oil in the engine. I also need to know that this leak won't become greater after some time... We guess that oil leaks from the turbine.

Those are the two most important things. But there are some other things that need to be done or should be done. Or even could be done.

The less important things are:

• install some new speakers in the camper's doors,
• put together the rest of extra wiring for leisure electric devices,
• get a new camping battery, preferably a gel type battery,
• check if the camping 230V electrical wiring works fine (I bought today on the internet an interface that can be used to connect the camping plug to standard socket that can be found on polish campsites).

We plan on going to Kołobrzeg somewhere around july 24th. On 25th-27th there's Sunrise Festival - a well known polish house and trance music festival. We plan to go see Armin van Buuren and Markus Schulz on 25th. After that we'll probably stay there for a couple more days, to sit on the beach and sunbathe (we could even go swimming!), or go somewhere else and stick around there. We'll probably take our bikes along (good thing I have an original bike rack for Vanagons (actually I have two of them -- interested in getting one?)) or do something else for fun.

On this weekend I plan to visit my parents in their summer retreat, and work a little on the camper. On thursday I am going to meet Tomek and take a look into the engine. We'll see what we'll come up with.

Camping one night in camper

We planned to sleep one night in our camper in a place 20 km (12 miles) from Żyrardów, on my piece of land. We have national holiday tomorrow, so I don't have to go to work.

The idea was simple: to go there, grill something to eat, sleep, wake up, do something and come back. But two difficulties arised when we thought about it in detail:

• we don't know where the quilt and blankets we had in camper are -- we used it when we went to holiday last year (T3 had to be left behind) and now we don't know where they are,
• it's raining tomorrow and the temperature at night is going to be low -- I don't want to freeze my butt off just to sleep one night away from home.

I have to complain...

I am not satisfied with today at all. So I'm going to complain here, maybe I'll feel a bit better. ;)

Somewhere around the 12 PM we went to Jeruzal, where I own a piece of land I want to build a house on. Nothing worth mentioning. We visited my future brother-in-law and then to my future parents-in-law. As last time -- to eat and to work on my camper.

I planned for today the following:

• install the CB-radio speaker,
• install the lighter plug sockets (the one I mentioned in april),
• check the tire pressure,
• check why the camping water pump doesn't work.
  

During this trip my gearbox lever broke. Before I finally found out how this mechanism works I wasted more than 20 minutes. I thought that the lever disconnected itself from the horizontal rod that changes the gears in the gearbox. I lowered the box that holds the spare wheel, didn't see a thing, went back inside the camper and finally was enlightened! It is held by some spherical hinge: a ring with spherical inner surface is fitted to the floor, two halves of a sphere (and a spring between them) are attached to the lever.The upper sphere half had to be pushed against the spring to touch the lower half, then both of them had to be pushed inside the ring.

When I arrived at my destination, I started to work on the speaker. The amount of work is difficult to describe. First I had to find a hole to put the cable through. Then find a good spot to attach the speaker itself, using three bolts. I drilled 3 holes, screwed on one bolt, the second broke. I decided to use 2 bolts instead of 3, enlarged the third hole and broke another bolt while trying to screw it on! So I had to make another 2 holes, this time big enough. I broke only one drill... The cable was put through the hole next to gearbox lever.

The speaker does work very nice, especially when I turn up the microphone gain knob.

The lighter plug sockets were attached almost immediately. I cut the plug, removed the cables from solar charge controller, connected the cables with the ones from the socket, attached again to the controller. I had in mind connecting a long cable that'll be later used to power additional stuff in the back of the camper, but left it alone for today.

The work with the pump was even easier, 'cause it wasn't broken. When I turned the faucet knob, the water flushed from below the faucet. So I thought that I have to find this leak and seal it with something. I decided to remove the entire sink / stove plate from the drawer, to take a look from below. I removed 8 bolts that held the sink / stove. I couldn't lift it. So I removed two nuts that attached the gas valves to the metal plate, bolted to the drawer, and eventually the metal plate itself. Nothing changed. I tried to disconnect the metal pipe that fed gas to the valves, but unsuccesfully. Then I took a good look inside and found out that the faucet itself prevented the sink / stove from being moved! So I tried to disconnect the metal element that secured the water hose on the faucet. When I removed it I still couldn't remove the hose.
And then I saw where the water came from. The faucet's arm was made a hollow pipe and one of the holes was closed with some plug. This plug was missing. I made a temporary plug out of pencil rubber.
I didn't have to waste an hour to see where this water comes from...

And of course I forgot to check tire pressure.

Photos will be posted later.

The last days of april

I was hoping to go on some camper trip on our long may weekend, that starts the day after tomorrow. In Poland we have national holidays on 1st and 3rd of may, so this year with one day of leave absence we get four days of free time. I thought we'd go to Slovakia or some nice place in Poland.

My camper is not fixed yet. I wrote 'bout it in march. Last time I wrote that I was told to have it back by the end of last week, as you can guess it wasn't ready then.

I visited the repair shop where the camper is repaired today. I tried to call the owner couple times today, but his cellphone was off. When I finally reached him, I just left work and went to see him in his workplace (three tram stops from where I work). We spoke for a minute or two, he told me that some small adjustments need to be made:

• clutch adjustment,
  
• gearbox lever adjustment,
  
• fixing glow plugs that don't work on their own (whatever it might mean).

When I was going to see him I thought that I won't leave Warsaw until the camper is ready. I live in Żyrardów, 45 km from Warsaw and go from home to work by train. When I leave Warsaw, I don't want to return there until the next day. But when I spoke to him my enthusiasm weakened. So I decided to visit him tomorrow to pick the camper. He told me that it'll be ready by the end of today... I hope so.

We won't go anywhere far with the camper, even if I'll get it tomorrow. Why? I am affraid that something will go wrong soon after I pick it up. If it was repaired for almost a year (to be honest most of the time it spent waiting for it's turn...), surely something will be wrong. I just hope I am wrong about this...

Here's a photo, made yesterday by Tomek, who sent it to me via MMS.

From Volkswagen Tr...