Busy weekend kinda…

 

Well on Saturday I was supposed to meet up with a friend and help him work on his bus but Mother Nature conspired against us and dropped snow in the Calgary / Cochrane area.  From what I understand Cochrane wasn’t too bad, but I had over 6 inches in my back yard.  Needless to say we put it off for a bit.  He’s in the process of putting in a new engine that will leave me in the dust.  I’ll be struggling to go up a hill without losing speed and he’ll be gearing down and actually ACCELERATING up the hill.  It’s the journey not the destination right?  RIGHT?!? 

He’s  also in the process of selling his other bus.  It’s a 1967 and it’s sweet.  Check it out.  If you’re interested drop him a line. 

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1292790

On Sunday I participated in Calgary’s 45^th annual pathway and River cleanup.  There was a group of divers that went in the river and braved the current pulling up trash from the river.  We had everything from cans and bottles to knives and a little model of a Hindu temple… seriously.   All in all we pulled about 500KG out of the river.  It’s amazing that in this day and age people still think it’s okay to litter.  Smokers are the worst… there were hundreds if not thousands of butts.

The blurb on the diving starts at about 5:16 on the video.  Check it out. 

http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/video/news+hour+may+6/video.html?v=2231586390

I of course had the Green Monster out for this.  Besides being fun to drive it was a great vehicle for getting geared up in scuba gear.  All in all a great day out on the river, even though it felt like being in a washing machine sometimes and my buddy twisted his ankle.  Hopefully Donnie takes it easy this week and gets some frozen peas on it and he’ll be ready to go when Lake Minnewanka opens up and we can camp and dive.  Good times!!!

Fuel leak… again

Well I got the leak at the front end fixed up and yes it cost me.  About $800 all in.  I’ll have to look at the invoice but it was essentially the steering control box and it couldn’t be re-built. 

Friday night I had planned to go camping out to Two Jack Lake as I was going to assist with a scuba class on the weekend.  I figured rather than drive back and forth from Calgary I’d camp and save myself some time and aggravation.  I left work @ 3:30ish on Friday afternoon and was ready to hit the road.  I drove home and started packing up the bus.  Now let me take you back to Wednesday… I was driving past the local A&W and there was a group of older cars there.  I stopped to have a look and they were as interested in the Westy as I was in the old Vette that was there.  One of the guys commented that he smelled gas… not I had just filled up the bus and a little bit of fuel splashed down the side so I thought nothing of it…   Flash forward to Friday again…

As I was packing up the back of the bus guess what I smelled…

So I looked under the bus and didn’t really see anything at first but the foam gasket that surrounds the engine compartment had a discoluoration.  I poked it with my finger and gas started flowing out.  I unpacked the van and started looking around the engine compartment with my flashlight to track down the leak.    Problem found!   It was fairly accessible and it looked like a simple repair.  So armed with a screwdriver and a piece of replacement hose I started the repair.  It took me a couple of tries to secure the hose without it leaking on me but I did it.   My first driveway repair on the Westy!!!  I’ll post pictures later on tonight or tomorrow for those of you that want to take a look and critique my repair job.

So feeling supremely confident and reeking of gas I had a quick shower, packed up the van and headed to the mountains.  I had a great weekend camping and no other problems with the Westy.  Did 4 dives over the Saturday and Sunday and helped certify 3 divers in their Drysuit specialty and 2 divers became Advanced Open water divers.   All in all good times. 

Problems in paradise

 

Good news last night I was at Lake Chaparrel here in Calgary finishing off my Assistant Instructor course for scuba diving.  So that’s done now.  It was a tough course but finally done.  Strangely it felt like a bit of a whirlwind and now all I have to do is get out there and start applying what I have been trained to do.  I managed to nail the skills… 5 out of 5 on one and 4.8 out of 5 on the other.

When I went to leave the lake I loaded all my gear in the Westy and started it up.  It started no problem but it seemed that it was idling very low and it stalled out on me.  It started again no problem but again idled low so I tried tapping the gas pedal to give it a little “Umph” but it stalled again…  grrrrr.  Third time however it started up and idled no problem and no stalls.  Hmmmm.  Not sure what would have caused this.  I’ll probably throw something up on the Samba website or the local VeeDub club and see if there are any suggestions out there. 

I feel like a bit of an idiot having to ask “what’s this for…” or “why is my Westy doing this…” but there is such a wealth of knowledge out there I may as well tap into it right?  Besides we weren’t all born experts.    I’ll update as soon as I have anything. 

Not much happened this weekend in terms of the VW.  Basically because I didn’t drive it. On Saturday I took it down to my IDC (Instructor Development Course) for my scuba diving.   I have been working my ass off this week trying to get all of the assignments done which sadly isn’t leaving me with a lot of free time for playing with the Westfalia. 

I still have to get the oil changed.  Not that the oil is THAT bad but I’d like to get it done.  You know that whole fresh start thing. 

I am keeping it short and sweet today, sorry folks.  I have to finish two assignments for my IDC as well as work today.  As you can understand I have a full plate. 

On positive note before I leave for the day we hit just over 200 page views sometime last week.  Thank-you.  It lets me know that someone is reading it and some of you are actually coming back for more. 

Any questions or comments, fire them in.  I’d love to see em.