Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

We’ve been looking for baths for quite a while now. The plan is to build on the success of our first bath (from our bathroom refit) in growing vegetables – we want to use them as ready-made raised beds. Good second-hand baths get sold on eBay for lots of money & bad second-hand baths get thrown in skips. Eventually, after many requests on Freecycle, one turned up! At last a second bath for the garden!

A bath is too big to fit in the back of the Picasso so it would have to be Bob making the 60-mile round trip, just a day after being put back on the road. As has been so often the case during our time with Bob she didn’t miss a beat…bath picked up and delivered back home without any problems. Good old Bob, you can have a carrot when they’ve grown…

Bob & Mandy (for that’s what I call her in my head – take this to be an official announcement!) meet for the first time!

Alfie & I (assisted by Dad via live ‘phone link-up) got Bob going after 6 months of hibernation. I believe we flooded her at first but she got going soon enough and drove (almost) flawlessly round the estate whilst being moved between our front and rear gardens. Almost flawlessly because she’s never liked low revs & first gear when she’s cold and after 6 months asleep it was more obvious than ever. She didn’t cut out though and the brakes were fine. In hi-tech news you may notice the solar battery trickle-charger in the side window – works a treat!

I’m going to take her out for a small drive today where I’ll do the tyre pressures and fill her with fuel, and then tomorrow it’s off on a longer run to pick up a bath for the garden. She’ll probably need a clean too.

This is the first time I’ve ever woken something from hibernation and years of watching the Blue Peter tortoise in my youth make me want to go and rub a damp cotton bud over Bob’s lights. Maybe I’ll just polish the chrome eyelids instead…

Bob will soon be back on the road! Bring on April 1st!

Last weekend we again camped on H‘s dad’s front drive. We’re building up to a camp site slowly!

Also there were H‘s sister’s family and their T4 Caravelle which they use to travel across Europe (England > Spain > Romania > Hungary > England) during June and July. They very cleverly filled the area behind the second row of seats with custom made boxes as part of a false floor so that, if needed, all four of them could sleep in it. Puts the small trips we’ve made in Bob so far into perspective!

But yesterday we went to Southwold in her and we’ll soon be off camping in Devon and in Norfolk. To celebrate our excitement at this I’ve added a new page called Our Travels upon which I shall record all the places we have visited in Bob. In its own way it’s all very exciting!

With summer here (and the school holidays upon us) plans are afoot for using Bob as much as possible. The battery problems have been sorted by the fitment of a new battery which so far, touch wood, is proving to be trouble free.

As a result we’ve started using Bob rather than the Citroen or Rover. Yesterday it was to take A to archery, today it was raspberry picking.

We’ve got two camping trips lined up – to Devon and Norfolk – and because we didn’t sort out the ferry tickets in time France will be happening later. Before that we’re taking Bob to Dad’s for a once-over service, to fix the leaking washer bottle & realign the passenger door in readiness for campsite activity.

My bought Bob to use for camping and hopefully we’ll have a few (good!) stories to tell come the end of the hols…

One day shy of six months after Bob arrived and she’s finally being used as nature intended. A & his friend G are out in the back garden having a sleep-over. H & I shall be trying it out on Saturday and you never know – we might even go to a campsite one day!

This week will see our first night/s in Bob. It’ll be in the back garden and on H‘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’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 H 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 H 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, H‘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…