Rally's it's not a datsun and travels thread

[LeviGideon]

I just travel in my 210 wagon nowadays. Never gives me much trouble other than a vacuum hose coming loose every once in a while. As for the long cruise, I've been doing it my whole life, no worries. :thumbup:

But I've always thought a mid-90's Subaru Outback would make for a good little traveling car.

We had a 88 Mazda 626 4 door that we used to travel in, too. You could take the headrests off and lay everything flush. Back seat leans forward too for easy trunk access/leg room. Best of all, it got around 40mpg. I think it came in a wagon too, so if you could find one of those it would all lay flat and be fairly roomy to sleep in.

Guess it's all about how you can make things work the best.

[RAlly_DatoB210]

Anyone have any vehicles for sale? Just needs to serve it's purpose of staying Alive for 20k miles and being able to sleep in it. I don't need it for atleast a year but can start buying it whenever. I bank a solid 1k a month into this and have stuff to trade too. Could be a good deal for someone

[bonvo]

dude your right on the money with the subi wagon 30 mpg and plenty of room to sleep it get a power inverter or possibly a small generator and you rready to rock

[RAlly_DatoB210]

dude your right on the money with the subi wagon 30 mpg and plenty of room to sleep it get a power inverter or possibly a small generator and you rready to rock

Speaking of subi wagons you are just who I wanted to chime in lol

Do you like yours? Like how reliable do you rate it? Like live out of for over a year comfy or should I get a loyal or gl? I like the look of yours the best though like the brat too but that's Nother story

[RAlly_DatoB210]

This thread is getting a bump. Today my girlfriend and I acquired a 1969 vw camper van. Thanks to the previous owner delivering from Portland and my parents help with the sale as well this ended up in the driveway.

 

 

Looks like I'll make the next in one year I want to be doing _____ plan again.

 

Moved to Maui and lived here over a year

 

Saving enough to take a road trip for a year

 

Haven't thought up the next one but I think we are going to make it a yearly tradition to take on the goal of doing something different every year.

[Dguy210]

This thread is getting a bump. Today my girlfriend and I acquired a 1969 vw camper van. Thanks to the previous owner delivering from Portland and my parents help with the sale as well this ended up in the driveway.

 

 

Looks like I'll make the next in one year I want to be doing _____ plan again.

 

Moved to Maui and lived here over a year

 

Saving enough to take a road trip for a year

 

Haven't thought up the next one but I think we are going to make it a yearly tradition to take on the goal of doing something different every year.

 

Looking good :thumbup:

 

Do you know what company did the conversion, doesn't look like a Westfalia.  I see what looks like a 120v hookup, does this have the sink and cabinets inside also?

 

We used to have a '72 with the pop-top, very comfortable to camp in, totally crap engine access though.

[graveltrapp]

Here is  my inspiration to get a Forester next as well.

[graveltrapp]

I did a cross country trip in the 66 micro bus I had in college, Left the Florida Panhandle cruised across country hit a number of Dead shows in California cruised up to Seattle and back to Florida. Three months total. We really have a beautiful and diverse country that a lot of people will never take the time to see. Sad really. The only mechanical I had was the alternator going out in St Louis and having to advance the distributor coming across the Continental Divide, the thinner air at the altitude reduced the engine ability to make good power. Watch your valve adjustments as well. Keep them up frequently. (very easy and quick on old vw's) Have fun and get your kicks on Route 66...

[graveltrapp]

Of course there is always the hitchhikers!

[RAlly_DatoB210]

Not sure who did the conversion it's not westfalia I believe they all had the wedge shaped pop top. Riviera made the strait lift scisor and I have no idea who made this one. It has a lot of the camper stuff but it could just be some back yard built collection of different campers. It's got classic plates and is registered as a regular vehicle not an rv. It is missing the propane and water tanks but that's fine I never used them anyway. Has an icebox/ sink unit from another van too but it's not installed. I planned on adding all of that stuff myself anyways and an external propane shower. We will be adding a camp washing machine and toilet as well as improvised shower. It's going to be all custom interior bits and should be relatively simple. For a sink all I am using is a foot pump drawing out of a water can and a stainless steel cooking bowl with a drain directly to under the van mounted above the ice box. No gray water tanks to worry about and gets around rv classification. Already has the folding bed and cabinets the loft bed and front Cot as well. As for a shower I plan on getting the propane and electric pump style camp shower and just making a box to hold another couple of removable water tanks. Will make filling easy. For the shower curtain it will be a hula hoop cut in half on a hinge or just have PVC joints on the side to plug the hoop into and just use a normal shower curtain. Probably going to make a simple platform to stand on so no muddy feet etc. Going to add in more cabinets for storage but that's about the basic interior mods we are planning on making. As for the exterior I want to paint it like a cut open half a watermelon and do the roof like the inside of watermelon with seeds etc. Doubt I can talk The girlfriend into anything like that though. Lol

 

And we always pick up hitch hikers as it is but none of them look like that lol. Thanks for the helpful pointers too

[yenpit]

Nice Bus!!  There are lots of them here in the Denver area, often in the junkyards, so let me know if you get stuck on a needed part.  Last Spring, my buddy bought a Westfalia ('78 I think....??) in KY, so we drove down, picked it up & drove it back to Michigan.  He did a l'il work to it, then loaded up his 14 yr old son, a bunch of camping gear, and headed out on a 61hr 3800 mile road trip (no hotels), up thru northern MI, across WI, MN, WY etc etc, on to Yellowstone, Mt Rushmore, then back across the country to MI.  They had the time of their lives! 

[RAlly_DatoB210]

That sounds like a blast! I can't wait to take it out and see how it does.

We are trying to figure paint for it now what colors etc.

 

Think we have decided on going with either

 

That weird walmart butterscotch pudding orange?

 

Or that mossy green 70's pea soup Color.

 

Or or eye melting baby shit yellow?

 

Any suggestions?

[RAlly_DatoB210]

So I decided I'll just log all the work on the van in this thread as well. I'll be back on the 25th of march in Washington and can start in on it then but in the meantime I've been making odds and ends for it. Here is a shift knob I am mid way through making...

 

 

I used kiawe a Hawaiian hardwood, terra cotta clay with a bunch of my girlfriends dream catcher pieces smashed into the handle. Carved out the little diamond shapes and wanted to inlay some rocks with a red border so it's at least sorta tribalish. All I need to do is tap the bottom seal it all and attach the head piece but then...

 

 

So that's just a mock up but my room mate pointed out that it looked like I just made I STD infected wooden dick. So now I think it's back to the drawing books. Any thoughts? Keep it or smash it and start over?

 

Then after paint

[SaltyMuffinMaker]

Bro, going across the country was something I wanted to do out of high school. Then the idea re emerged when I had a 02 Tacoma and I was going to drive to the East Coast and back, eventually pick up a rust free a/c 79-85 toyota 4wd.

 

PM me if you ever make it to the Big Isle.

[RAlly_DatoB210]

For sure man. We will most likely island hop a bit after we get back. Don't really know the route we are going to take yet though. After the road trip we are going to come back to Maui for sure for 3 months (already paid rent and am maybe leaving a moped as well) and the plan is to hit up the other islands as well. I am friends with two pilots and can get inter island flights for 30 bucks any island if they have room on the little 7 passenger planes. Likewise if you make it to Maui in the next month or sometime next winter get in contact with me I should be here. Then off to Thailand or Poland next. I figure why not retire and do all the fun shit now while I still can, when I'm older I can work til I'm dead. Beats doing sudoku in a recliner after a life of work and no play lol

[RAlly_DatoB210]

Well I'm back in Washington. Thought I'd update this. I'm going to use this thread as a log just so I can have something to look back on and if anyone wanted to follow the progress. The van if fun as shit to drive. A quirky boat that won't hit 55 and corners like an ox on roller skates is the best way I can describe the experienced for those who haven't driven an old vw bus.

 

Not much new progress but here are some pictures. Only thing completed today was get a brake light working and the turn signal switch unfrozen. Also changed title into my name.

 

 

And I got this bitchin Brush axe to use out camping. Shorter than I was picturing but a new favorite machete already. Was using using a machete daily at my last job and can say that Not a fan of Gerber gator, the camilus carnivore was a solid tool and had a good feel/ chop but since it was composite I managed to break off the end on a Hawaiian hardwood branch so ultimately was not impressed. Our landscaping company had cortana sp? Machetes but they were flimsy and had way to much flex and richochet potential. And don't even both with a walmart Coleman one unless you want to get hurt. I have seen the handle break in someone hand and the blade bounce into their arm because of shitty Chinese manufacturing.

 

Here is my woodmans pal military premium model 284.

 

Solid as a rock full tang blade leather Grip and weighs about as much as a hatchet. I didn't try the vine hook yet but I was able to chop clean through a 2in diameter branch like it was butter and it chops wood on par with an axe.

 

There is probably a more obscure part of ratsun for this thread so mods feel free to relocate (and don't say to the samba this will get datsun content as well... Somehow)

[RAlly_DatoB210]

here is a quick update so far on what has happened to the van.

girlfriend added a fresh coat of hippie steeze to the roof it will eventually cover the entire inside roof.

 

 

found this picture in her photobucket and i thought i would introduce ourselves. 

 

 

thats how we used to go camping. load up the moped and go for a four hour buzz to the back side of the island. could do the entire loop for less than a tank of gas (5 bucks is how many chugs around the block in volksconfugen? :P).

 

 

 

 

here is the first fill up before heading out on the maiden voyage to the wynooche dam. runs great and just getting its first oil change and valve adjust. let the knuckles bleed lol

 

at 

pulled over to check out a waterfall before trying to head to the upper satsop lakes

 

 

i gotta say it was colder than cold. i think we are both used to falls you can swim in not the cold as cooler melt falls of the olympics. lol

 

the bus trucks along pretty good in snow but as soon as it started getting into some deeper drifts we had to turn around

 

 

turned around and went to the dam for a picnic and had the place almost entirely to ourselves

 

 

thats all for so far. installed a new stereo and 2 speakers in the back still need to run wires though. i just got my pacer flexy flares in the mail yesterday and havent put them on yet. ordered some new sliding door seals and hatch from gowesty and going to start tearing into the parts bus when it gets trailer over. if anyone is interested in getting smoking deals on a vw hightop late bay project let me know. figured i would post a presale here before the non datsuns for sale thread.

 

 

a little more back story behind who we are and what we are setting out to do:

my girlfriend Michelle is the sanity behind the operation and is also the resident artist on board. i get to play the role of chauffeur, grease monkey and bad idea specialist. we started out with one simple idea, and that was what would we like to do in our lives if we didnt let anything stop us. i took a senior trip to maui and at first the goal became save up as much as we could and move there in a year. a year to the day later we were getting off a plane and into our first volkswagen bus.

 and it was all made possible thanks to minimum wage pizza delivery jobs and a little side income here or there from craigslist or one of michelles many business ventures. after a year of living in hawaii we decided why stop there? lets set out to see the world and see if we can make it possible with a little work. saving money was pretty easy for us even living in maui (its surprisingly way cheaper than living on the mainland when you start to factor in all the expenses you can cut out that you simply dont need living in maui. no need for a car cuts out a few hundred dollars a month in gas, food is expensive sure but kamaina price gets just about anything cheaper than rack rate. where else do you get a discount just for living in a place? rent is on par with what we paid in washington cheaper still if you dont mind renting out a spare room and cutting all the bills in half. no heat bill etc) so before we knew what happened a year had gone by and we cashed our savings in for some plane tickets and another volkswagen bus.

cue present day

now the goal is just keep traveling and see the whole world. believe me i would have done it in a datsun but caballs dont grow on trees and id rather not burst into flames in a vannette lol. so we will be following the music festival circuit this summer selling arts and crafts and plan on working a winter in either aspen Colorado or stateline nevada and snowboarding all winter while saving up  to keep the van rolling. after we see all the US states we want to visit and parts of canada we are going to try and run through south america with a stop in coasta rica for a year to focus on art. then ship the van to europe stay in poland for a few months working jobs and seeing michelles family, head through africa and the middle east. its all tentative so things may change but if we say thats whats happening we are the type to stick to it and get it done. we debated sellling the van and using the money to spend some time in thailand and other parts of Asia before finishing up with a honda ct110 ride across Australia but thats any number of years away. kind of a brief shake down of our adventure. thank you for your support

Evan and Michelle

[RAlly_DatoB210]

Website bump

http://www.neverstoprolling.com/

Haven't been on ratsun for a while and I don't even use the samba but here is our travels so far and a running blog with tidbits here and there of what's been going on. The page will be used for any future travels as well. Check it out if you want and hope you like it. Sorry no datsuns in sight...

Evan