Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

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.

Once the snow had left us and I was able to drive Bob and concentrate on her more than the conditions I noticed a few things. That as I drive her more the over-cautiousness of last-November has passed. That the feelings of anxiety over our Italian trip are fading. That there’s an increasingly loud and worrying grinding noise coming from the front wheel…

A trip to MOT Services Halstead then, and the noise was diagnosed as a failing front wheel bearing. Their suppliers didn’t have them in stock so I agreed to drive down to Essex Bearings & Transmission in Maldon to pick up the necessary bits.

The work is being done on her tomorrow morning, and then when we get her back I’ll go over her carefully and do that list of all the improvements she’s had done over the past month.

I hope the picture shows how much cleaner Bob is now than she was yesterday (below) because she was washed using the sponge & bucket method and then taken to a jet washer to be finished off and to have her wheel arches/underside washed of as much road salt as possible.

We also did our first shopping trip, and found her much easier to find in Sainsbury’s car park than the Smart.

I will start taking Bob’s new found reliability slightly more for granted soon but at the moment each journey is a marvel!

(That post on what she had done to her during her last garage visit will follow soon – I keep noticing things!)

This evening I’m picking Bob. Adam from The Old Volks Home is meeting me halfway between here and Rugby to swap the 405 and Bob over. I’m really looking forward to having her back and with her fuel tank having been flushed hopefully the sudden stopping will cease.

I’m looking forward to my confidence being restored…

I took Bob back to The Old Volks Home today to, hopefully, sorted out at last. It may be that she needs a new petrol tank, and if that’s the case she’s going to get one. Whatever is takes. She may therefore be with Adam at The Old Volks Home for a while but when she comes back the random cutting out will have come to an end.

The rest of my journey back to Essex was completed in a Peugeot 405 lent to me by The Old Volks Home, which was great because I’d never driven a 405 before and I love driving cars for the first time. It’ll be good to get Bob back though…

After Saturday’s successful (but now seemingly rather lucky) trip from Essex to Warwickshire and the massively improved driving experience from before Christmas I have had a nightmare.

On Sunday evening she stopped on the way back to Stratford from Alcester. Ten minutes and she was off again and thankfully there wasn’t much traffic about. Dad was with me and so was able to have a look at the engine and try to diagnose the problem. Thinking that there was a fuel supply problem we removed the petrol cap for a bit to try and solve possible vacuum issues. It seemed to work.

Monday morning came and I tried to drive her to Stratford Tyres to have the whitewalls removed, the wheels balanced and the tyre pressures checked. I didn’t get very far at all and this time when she did get going the engine dies as soon as asked for enough power to move her. Bunny-hopping (I’m getting good at it!) off the busy Evesham Road I then called Dad who again tried to work out the problem. The fuel filter was dry and the fuel hose blocked, suggesting debris in the petrol tank being the problem. The fuel filter and the fuel hose were replaced by Dad to remove them from being a possible cause.

At Stratford Tyres I had the wheels balanced and the white walls removed. The staff were very helpful and didn’t charge too much either. Bob isn’t maybe quite as pretty as she was with the white walls but she’s still very good looking and has continued to earn lots of admiring looks and comments.

Tuesday was on the whole less eventful, but Bob blotted her copybook on a massive scale returning home from snooker. Popping to Tescos on the way back to Dad’s she stopped again. A day of faultless motoring from Bob was about to cancelled out.
View Larger Map

The map shows the route that should, according to Google Maps, take just 2 minutes but took me over half an hour as Bob cut out, refused to start, started, moved ten metres and cut out, refused to start, etc.  I aimed for Tesco car park as I knew that I could stop out of the way of any traffic and try and sort her out. At the end I was within spitting distance of the first parking bay but sat stationary in a through-fare with Bob refusing to start. To make matters worse I had been drinking Coke all night and was absolutely desperate for the loo! Eventually I jiggled Bob out of the way into a parking bay and went and bought the bottle of milk that I’d been aiming for. On my return from the shop I thought I’d have a go twice around the car park where I was out of harm’s way before attempting to get home. I managed half a ‘lap’. In despair I again called Dad who came out (at just past midnight by now) and managed to make her run enough to get home. The picture bottom-right is of Dad driving her around Tescos car park making sure she was running well enough for the short trip home. For the second time in our life with Bob I was reminded of Back To The Future, this time of the scene where the Iranians drive a VW through a car park and shoot Doc. Except for me it was a little less dramatic. Finally I must say thank you to the owners of the Lexus IS who pulled up and asked if I was OK and if they could help as I hopped my way through Stratford last night. There wasn’t anything they could do but it was nice to be asked.

This morning I ‘phoned Adam at The Old Volks Home and explained all that had happened. Following our chat it’s been agreed that I’m going to be returning Bob to him tomorrow for him to do a long-term fix on her to make sure that this particular problem is removed. A lot of our faith in Bob has been shaken. H is not happy about the thought of driving her like this, A has hardly had the opportunity to ride in her and I…I’m not at this moment prepared even to drive her into town. She’s failed on me enough times now and the ‘novelty’ is wearing off. Adam says he will sort Bob out and I do believe him – I’m looking forward to summer camping trips on the continent even though right now they still seem a long way away.

It was a sunny Sunday morning so Dad and I went out to do a few jobs on Bob. The side door runners were greased up and it now runs far more smoothly, and then it was onto the passenger door mechanism which opened and shut well but was difficult to unlock. The door panel was removed, everything taken out and the slightly worn and stiff lock was greased and checked over. The job of getting it all back in place saw the potential for much colourful language but eventually the job was done and it works better than before, if still not with the key.

Later on we went out for a drive and checked the tyre pressures again as Bob had started wobbling again. Whilst the front ones were fine the back o/s tyre had dropped to the 20s. It was pumped back up and inspected at my brother’s house. The white-wall ‘spats’ had come off and so were half in the wheel-seal and half out. Clearly there was an air leak at the edges. Trying to remove it it ripped, so it’s been cut back and tomorrow I’ll take her to Stratford Tyres to have it taken off completely. I’ve just got to decide now whether to have them all taken off – I probably will as it’ll look odd, but it depends how much they charge!

Alfie & I went and picked up Bob from Superbeetles (rather than Bulli Barn, which is actually a different part of the same company that I’ve never been to…) and found that she is running much better now the choke has been reduced and the mixture from the carb increased, particularly when driving around town. Les from Superbeetles got out his infrared temperature sensor and showed me how the carb was quickly freezing as the fan pulled cold air through the air-cooled engine before the heat inlets had time to warm it up. He suggested that the heat inlets were coked up and/or needed the gaskets changing.

Driving her home from Colchester saw a much smoother drive but the same sort of problem occuring : cutting out at junctions until the carb reached a decent temperature but great after a decent run stopped it from freezing. I ‘phoned Adam from The Old Volks Home who immediately told me to get the heat inlets sorted by Superbeetles under warranty. We have had our problems with Bob since we’ve owned her but The Old Volks Home has been only too happy to make sure that they’re sorted and we’re happy Camper owners.

Bob will be back at Superbeetles next Monday and I shall be driving her around until then showing her off!