Pre-California

As we will be moving to California shortly, we thought it best to experience one more Oregon camping excursion. With that in mind we visited 2 Oregon state parks close to Portland. After a long week at work we decided to visit Silver Falls state park first:
We arrived during nightfall and found an open site that was close to all the amenities:

My wife took some excellent photos of the camper but unfortunately it was raining and the house battery was completely dead so it was off to Salem Oregon to look for another battery and campsite to stay for the night:
We decided to change parks to see if there was less rain - here is my wife's collage of our trip between campgrounds:

The next day was spent at Champoeg state park which has great facilities and wonderful camping attractions:

This experience represents the first time we used our amazing "BusDepot" side awning, courtesy of our parents Christmas present, which worked excellent and added 3 times the usable covered space!
After a quick learning experience we put the awning together in approx 15 minutes but should have it down to 5 minutes next time.
We had an issue with the Kinetik house battery not charging properly so utilized a spare riding lawn mower battery that I had to power the the "house" electronics - here are a few shots of our camper during the night. This also marks the first camping experience with our new 3 window canvas tent and sleeping in the upper bunk provided an extra 2" or so which made a big difference in comfort when sleeping

Time to enjoy the nature provided at this great campsite.......We first biked to the visitor center to enlighten ourselves about the area:

We learned that Oregon was almost part of Canada (Britain and Hudson's Bay company - Go Canada!) until 1848 when Oregon was finally made into an United States Territory and finally a US state in 1859. Above are some original Hudson's Bay blankets and myself towering over some tiny original settlers!!!Our final day we enjoyed some of the excellent biking trails and met some "friends" along the way

Another great camping experience. We received a few positive comments on our "Westfalia" and new awning from the fellow campers which made us appreciate what a special vehicle we have and called it yet another successful weekend

The day finally arrived and I was able to proceed with one of my final interior transformations. After doing my research, I decided to purchase some black alcantara suede type racing seats for the front as well as a new 9 piece charcoal grey carpet kit.
Here is a shot of the front as it was when we purchased our Westy

 

As you can see the original theme is brown on brown and my overall goal was to slowly transform into grey/black. The 30+ year old seats were like sitting on concrete blocks and the carpet was not only extremely stained but didn't smell the greatest.
With that thinking in mind, I decided to take my chances on some brand new seats purchased via eBay for $233 including shipping. The seats not only matched my color scheme but are extremely comfortable. The most difficult part of the seat install was making custom seat brackets that would fit properly on the existing swivel seat brackets. After several trips to Home Depot and approx $50 I had created a secure bracket that works great with the sliders provided with the seats. I also had my first experience with an angle grinder to cut the metal to size and smooth out the corners which was great fun.

Having the old seats out gave me an opportunity to clean the swivel seat bases and shine them up. Here is a before and after:

Then it was time to do a test run to make sure my new brackets fit properly and securely

Once the charcoal grey 9 piece carpet kit, ordered from Sewfine Products, arrived via UPS I couldn't wait to get it installed. Huge props to my wife for the tremendous help with installation of the new carpet. Here are the installation shots:

Removing the old carpet was very easy as the 30 year old glue had lost all it's adhesive properties. The original underpad was pretty gross but the underlying metal was in great shape after all the dirt was cleaned away.

I also purchased new insulation and 3 cans of spray carpet adhesive which worked great. Sewfine did a great job of cutting the individual pieces as well as providing detailed on-line installation pictures.

Here is the final product!! I think it looks great and fits well with the overall theme I have been attempting to achieve. There is no more musty smell and I couldn't be happier with the fit and finish of the new carpet. The seats are larger than the stock originals as well as 1-2 inches higher at the base. A smaller steering wheel might be in the future as the leg-room between the seat base is more restrictive now but more than acceptable as they are 100 times more comfortable.

 

My wife and I are extremely happy with what we have accomplished in 9 months personalizing our camper and look forward to many more years of enhancement and exploration in our future.

Time to refurbish the Pop-Top

The winter months are far from ideal for camping in Oregon so we took one of the few sunny days to perform some upgrades. One of the disadvantages of living in Oregon is the issues with mold and being parked outside, the camper was not immune to this problem. After reading many solutions to the problem thanks to the Vanagon e-mail list and The Samba I decided to go all out and replace the canvas tent and refurbish the fiberglass pop-top.

The previous owner attempted to paint the roof but judging by the white paint that came off during each car wash I thought I would give it a try myself. Here are some before pictures of the roof and luggage rack:

The old canvas was in surprisingly good condition after 30+ years of use but it was the old "one-window" design and the zippers didn't work.
First up was removing the luggage rack:

As you can see the metal hooks on the luggage rack were all rusted and the paint faded. I also discovered old wasp's nests under each of the drain holes. The metal roof underneath had no rust at all but it was very dirty with alot of build-up.

Here are some of the after shots:

A little NuFinish does wonders on 30 year old paint. I used a palm sander with 150 grit sand paper on the fiberglass and used one coat of Kilz premium primer followed by a coat of Behr Premium satin exterior paint. I think it looks great but only time will tell how well it stands up.

While I had the luggage rack off I decided to do some upgrades, below you can see the "new" tie-down hooks as well as drain hole screens:

The hardest step for the luggage rack was actually drilling out the old metal hardware due to them being riveted in. Once they were out, everything was sanded down and sprayed with Rustoleum and re-attached with stainless nuts and bolts. I also thought I would try something to minimize the issue of leaves and other build-up that accumulated under the rack and installed some convex metal screens. I purchased these garden hose replacement screens and glued them in from the bottom. I still think these will clog up but thought it was worth a try.

Unscrewing the bottom part of the canvas tent was straight forward but got a little cramped at the back. It also made me think how much harder it will be to re-install. Here are some shots of the front and rear canvas being removed.

I ordered a new 3 window canvas tent for the pop-top and all new seals from Bus Depot for the entire roof and the timing was pretty much perfect as the parts I ordered arrived on a sunny day. It is suggested that the roof be removed with a minimum of 3 people but I wasn't going to tell that to my wife. With her strength the two of us managed to take the whole roof off, go down a flight of stairs and place it on our front porch so I could work on it.
Here is the Vanagon with a nice open "sunroof", I don't think it looks nearly as good without the roof:

With the roof off it was time to get to the real work....first up was removing the mold issues. I had previously tried a non-toxic mold spray earlier that worked somewhat but left a terrible white film on everything so at this point I decided to use bleach. An empty spray bottle filled with 1 part bleach, 6 parts water and a little bit of laundry detergent was used in combination with a scrub brush. It did an amazing job and looked almost new while giving a nice fresh scent at the same time. I wanted to neutralize the bleach afterwards so used a 6-1 ratio of water and vinegar and sprayed it on afterwards
Here is the finished inside roof:

The older camper versions had a stapled canvas roof top and here is a shot of the plastic strips and staples (200+) that had to be removed.

A good before shot showing the condition of the roof:

Again, it was sanded with the palm sander, primed and painted with a soft roller.

My goal was to have the new canvas installed and put back on the camper before nightfall so I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying process. At this point I could turn the roof over and staple in the top half of the canvas tent:

I bought a heavy duty Stanley staple gun which worked great but noticed that it was cracking the plastic strips. I then used the hair dryer again to warm the strips before stapling which worked great. As you can see it was dark outside at this point so I called upon the "She-Hulk" wife and we managed to get the roof back on for the evening:

I can't believe the amount of work we accomplished in one day!!!
And here it is the next morning! I have yet to get the corners screwed in and am confident that will straighten out the remaining wrinkles and tighten things up but had to stop due to the rain. All new seals installed as well as a new WESTFALIA sticker for the rear make this roof better than new.

Initially I was very hesitant to tackle this project alone and contacted a few vendors regarding other options and installation prices but couldn't justify the parts and labor costs. Overall, I am extremely happy with the end result as well as the quality products and prices from Bus Depot. We are ready and looking forward to our next camping adventure.

And here she is all complete. My fingers are raw after getting the four corners in and yes...the rear corners were extremely difficult. I think it fits perfect, the grey color gives it a more updated look and the extra side windows let in so much more sunlight.

What do you do when you have six days off in a row? Go on a camping trip to California of course. We started our journey on a Wednesday evening in Portland to eventually end up in San Jose. Our first night began in the dark so we stayed at a simple rest stop along the I-5. Nothing exciting and no pictures but it was comfortable and free. With the extra time and decent weather, we decided to head down the coast for part of the trip. After hitting Grants Pass we headed to the coast and down HWY 101 but it eventually went back inland due to the mountains. We wanted to spend the night by the ocean so took an extremely curvy road onto HWY 1 and stayed at the Westport beach KOA. We wouldn't normally stay at a KOA but it was getting dark and it was right by the beach.

We also managed to drop by to see our buddies Paul and Babe again along the way

 

This marks the first time we slept in the upper bunk which worked out great. We usually store our luggage and other things upstairs and sleep on the lower bunk but decided to try it out for this trip and it was surprisingly comfortable. Here's a shot of the new (and messy) master suite

This turned out to be quite a nice KOA mainly due to it's proximity to the ocean and we were fortunate that they only charged us a tent rate of $25 for the night which is quite a bit less than the $50 rates they wanted for a full RV site.

Time to hit the road and make way for our next pit stop in San Francisco.

A shot of some of the curvy roads we encountered

But then the skies turned gloomy and this is what we encountered by the time we hit San Fran. Our plan was to stop at the Golden Gate bridge but decided to wait until our trip home.

Eventually we hit our destination and of course the niece and nephew wanted to check out the camper

 

After a great visit with the in-laws it was time to head back home - we had some luck with great weather so stopped by for some sightseeing

 



I discovered the new Hankook tires emitted much less road noise than the old ones which allowed us to talk at highway speeds without yelling. I'll have to look into if there is anything that might be causing our poor fuel economy as one tank averaged only 14.2 mpg - I thought my normal 16-17 mpg was bad enough. The camper ran perfectly otherwise and overall this was a very successful trip.