Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

This week will see our first night/s in Bob. It’ll be in the back garden and on Helen’s Dad’s drive as test runs but still…!

Also, with the arrival of a new day-to-day car for me we’ll be able to get Bob booked in to have her gearchange sorted properly (and a little more permanently than I can manage).

Second gear is a little notchy at times but things are looking up. After the accelerator pedal pin coming out on Thursday, Friday’s journeys to and from work were utterly uneventful – apart from the fact that they took place in Bob.

We’re taking her out for a trip through the country lanes tomorrow such is my faith in her. Excellent.

I’ve added a new category – gears – because it’s becoming something of a saga in its own right now.

With the Mazda sold we’re back down to two vehicles and I’m using Bob to get to work each day. I set off for work yesterday to find that the gearchange had degenerated again, so before heading home at the end of the day I had a fiddle with it. My efforts didn’t help much and it was a tricky drive home.

This morning however was shocking. I found myself unable to change down at all, so what should have been a 30-40mph down change from 4th to 3rd had to be a 0mph struggle into 1st before working my way back up through the gears again. My fellow work-run motorists loved me. 

Another stop plate adjustment session took place before coming home and although 1st is a bit vague she’s driveable again. I wonder what the gearchange will be like tomorrow…

In other news, I need to top her up with oil for the first time and don’t really have the kit to reach the awkwardly posiitioned oil cap (I’ve sorted it now I think) and the windscreen washer bottle seems to have spontaneously developed a leak. Like they all do I’m sure.

I’m aware it’s been nearly two months since I last updated, but simultaneously a lot has and has not been happening. I’ve been back at work full time, we’ve been abroad on holiday for several weeks, and Bob is at risk of becoming a very expensive garden ornament.

Here’s a Bob update in a series of bullet points :

• I spent the Saturday after this post again playing with the gear change. After a day getting very mucky (again) and a trip to Colchester where Les at Superbeetles lent us a gear stick to try out I finally got it to work. Very smugly we went out for the evening to visit friends and Bob didn’t miss a beat. Fantastic!
• That week I used Bob to get to work every day. The Smart was about to be sold and so I thought it was a good opportunity to start using out VW as a daily driver. As was good for the first couple of days until gradually the gears became harder and harder to find. I presumed the stop plate was gradually slipping, but as Helen was off on holiday at the weekend I was able to use her Citroen and so didn’t worry too much about it.
• We decided whilst on holiday that Italy 2009 was going to be come Possibly-Italy 2010. We simply haven’t had enough times out in Bob to make sure we’re ready for such an epic trip, and besides a rookie-trip to Italy with an 8-months-pregnant Helen is perhaps a little foolhardy!
• On our return from holiday I tried to start Bob up. Nothing – a flat battery. Thankfully I bought a power pack from Halfords and so was able to get her going. I tried again to adjust the gear stick but failed. As I had just bought a cheap MX-5 to use day-to-day I gave up trying to sort out the gear change for the time being.
• Frustrated with having Bob on the drive and not being able to drive her I booked her into Schilward Motors as had been suggested by MOT Services Halstead. I chose them because they’re much nearer to my work than Superbeetles so driving a vehicle with only two-and-a-half gears isn’t such a problem. They couldn’t fit her in until the 11th May though.
• May 5th, Helen’s birthday, and we’re planning to go out for a meal. As a treat I thought I’d have a go at the stop plate again – with just half-an-hour to go before we left the house! I had a theory that last time I’d simply pushed the stop plate too far forward, so I loosened everything off, pulled it back a mm or two and had a drive around the block. Success! All the gears worked – up and down. I did have to use the power pack to start her up though so I left her running for a while to recharge the battery. When the time came to go out we jumped in and…I needed the power pack again. She ran like a dream to the restaurant, and it was lovely to have her sat in the car park knowing she was ours. Following another great meal at The Bulmer Fox we talked of camping out in Bob that night (but deciding that my snoring would keep Alfie awake on a school night – not a good idea!) before heading home. Sympathetic glances were given by fellow diners as they drove away in their new cars watching me have to connect up the power pack again, but we were soon off and home again.
• Bob’s still booked in at the garage next week because although you can now change gear it’s not A1 and I don’t necessarily have enough faith in my mechanical skills to think that it’s a permanent job. Maybe they won’t be able to do anything but at least then we’ll know that what I can do is good enough. We also need to sort out the battery. Although the power pack has already proved invaluable it doesn’t charge batteries so we’ll have to look into that. Having to link up the power pack each time you want Bob to start is a bit of a downer.

The summer weather is coming, Bob is running well (when she’s going) and I’m feeling much more positive about her. I can even bear to look in the classified section of Volksworld : Camper & Bus and see how much prices have fallen since we bought Bob, because it is lovely having her and the possibilites for the future outweigh the problems. Just!

I asked the question of what might be the problem on the Just Kampers forum. It was suggested to me that I would need to adjust the stop plate. So, armed with my workshop manual, some spanners and a pot of multi-purpose grease and set to it.

I have black fingernails from mechanical tinkering and I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job just yet…

Following the advice from Just Kampers and instructions from my workshop manual I took the gearstick off and re-greased it all and tried to adjust the stop plate.

Attempt 1 : The manual was a little ambiguous as to which way you pushed the stop plate against the gear stick so I tried pushing it towards the driver’s side. Tightened it all up and went for a test drive. Exactly the same as before.

Attempt 2 : I decided to try pushing the stop plate the other way even though I wasn’t sure it would work. My thinking was that if it’s in 2nd gear and I push the stop plate towards the passenger side it will restrict access to 3rd & 4th. This was the case. Although I could get all the gears before it was tightened as soon as I did the bolts up I was only able to move between 1st & 2nd. I didn’t bother with a test drive…

Attempt 3 : I put the stop plate back as it was in Attempt 1 but re-checked everything to make sure I was doing it ‘right’. Another test drive suggests that I’ve improved things but…

Reverse – The stick does need to be pushed down to get into reverse when stationary. That’s OK then!

1st – Fine from standing, a little tricky changing down into it.

2nd – Really good when changing up from 1st but again (and this is the major issue really) downshifts from 3rd hit reverse every time, regardless of how careful or delicate I am, or if I double-declutch. The only way into second is to stop, put it into 1st, pull away and move it into 2nd.

3rd & 4th – Not as ‘exact’ as they were originally but working without any problems.

It seems then that 2nd & reverse are still more or less in the same place, even though you should have to push down on the stick to find reverse. There doesn’t seem to be much movement in the stop plate for adjustment, just 2 or 3mm.

Not sure what to do next…

MOT Services Halstead had Bob back and and (bless em) spent most of  a day examining every bit of the gear linkage trying to work out what’s wrong with it and how them fitting one bush could have caused what has happened. 

They’ve put me in touch with a specialist garage (or I could go back to the other one who tried to sort out the engine before) but it’s a fair way off and at the moment I can only find 3rd and 4th gear & reverse, so I wondered if there was anything obvious that could be causing the problem before I attempted to drive the 20-odd miles on all sorts of roads with only two gears

So Bob was back on the drive overnight and I used her to drive to school the next day. Reverse came easy as I backed off the drive, and I discovered why as I drove off. It seems you no longer have to puch the gear stick down to find reverse and so it and second gear are more-or-less in the same place. Nice.

Those who have seen Little Miss Sunshine would have recognised me trying to pull away from junctions in third without holding up the traffic too much or burning out the clutch.

I dropped her back off at the garage on the way home from work and she’s still there.

Ho hum.

Bob’s back. As posted before gearchanges were becoming either difficult or impossible, and so I booked her in again at MOT Services Halstead.

They diagnosed the problem(s) and ordered the parts from VW Heritage, keeping her over the weekend whilst they waited for delivery. Bob now has two new gearbox bushes and a new gear coupling. She’s going to need a new gear stick ball joint at some point too but that can wait for the time being.

Hopefully now we can get a few weeks of Bob-use under our belts without any problems or trips to a garage.

Fingers crossed…

So I drove into work today and had no engine related problems with Bob.

What did happen though was the previously-awkward downchange from 4th gear to 3rd became a currently-impossible downchange. When it played up before holding it in neutral for a while or double-declutching worked but today it just wouldn’t go in gear regardless of what I tried.

Some research on the JustKampers forum came up with some ideas and after speaking to my Dad it seems that we’re going to try changing all the gearbox bushes. I’ll see if MOT Services Halstead are up for doing it and if not we’ll either have to get it back to Stratford and do it ourselves or take it Superbeetles. Whatever, it needs to be done sooner rather than later as the Smart’s up for sale and so I’ll need Bob to get to work until I get another car and I don’t want to drive it too much with the gearbox as it is.

Tomorrow, after five months away, I shall be returning to work. And I’m getting there in Bob.

After all that happened last year and all the issues we’ve had with Bob, that an amazing statement to be able to make.