Missoulaneous VWs

 49=Park County (Livingston)

Watch for Wildlife

 Seen not too far outside of town a few days ago, right about here.

Unlike deer, Bighorn Sheep don't seem to care too much about cars and aren't particularly enthusiastic about getting out of the way.

Myths & Rants, Part the Second, Wherein One of Ludwig's Drivers Attempts to Demolish a Bit of Conventional Wisdom about Air-Cooled Volkswagens: The Bus with the Porsche Engine

Myth: Yeah, I used to have one of those VW buses with the Porsche engine in it.

Rant: Probably every bus owner has heard this line at least once, usually from some stooge who comes strolling up to them in the parking lot at KMart. But sadly, it just ain't so.

this one's a fuelie

Variations on the 1700/1800/2000 cc engine--commonly though somewhat mistakenly often referred to (including by yours truly) as the "Type IV" engine--were installed in...

...the VW 411,

...the VW 412 (and what a lovely pair of monsters those two make), 

...the Porsche 914-4 (tellingly, sold under the marque VW-Porsche everywhere except North America), 

...the 1976 Porsche 912E, and, of course... 

...1972-1979 VW Type IIs (buses) bound for the USA, like this one. (And, I should add, 1980-1983.5 Vanagons.) 

The temptation to mention these lofty Porsches as they relate to the lowly VW bus is too much for some to resist, so the connection gets strengthened and offered as some esoteric, wildly counterintuitive fact. Those perpetuating this myth are typically the same kind of people who insist that we only use 10% of our brains. 

that's not to say there aren't a few genuine Stuttgarter powerplants hidden under Wolfsburger clothing; don't try this at home

The boring old truth is that the blame for the 1700/1800/2000 engine belongs to VW. Sure, the VW and Porsche engineering camps were plenty incestuous in the 1960s (when the engine was designed), and Porsche helped VW with it just like they helped VW with everything, and vice versa. But you don't think a Beetle has a Porsche engine in it simply because a Beetle's engine and a 356's engine were dreamed up by the same guy and look a lot alike, right? Right.
Porsche significantly tweaked the 1700/1800/2000, mostly in the cylinder heads and cam I'm told, before installing it in either of their cars in any case. Those details were incorporated to push a slick little 2,100 lb. 914-4 down the road, and aren't at all appropriate for moving 4,600 lbs. of bus around. You know, in case you were gonna try it. 

Grilled Cheese

"It's Ludwig!" she exclaimed.

Happy Birthday, Type III!

The Type III turned fifty this year.

I have no idea what any of these people are saying, other than I'm sure they're talking about how Type IIIs are easily the best Volkswagens ever made for civilian use.

Myths & Rants, Part the First: In Which One of Ludwig's Drivers Attempts to Demolish a Bit of Conventional Wisdom about Air-Cooled Volkswagens

Myth: They're cold! 

Rant: Yes, they sure can be. But it wasn't always so.

Being air-cooled, old VWs don't have a reservoir of very hot water to draw from when it comes time to warm up the cabin. So what die Ingenieure did was build a box around a big chunk of the exhaust system. That box's purpose is to get the air it held really hot (courtesy of the exhaust piping) and send it into the cabin on demand. They're called 'heat exchangers' or 'heater boxes'. 

image cribbed from ratwell.com

Off the showroom floor, there was nothing wrong with this system. I spent a few Nebraska Winters driving around a friend's very nice 1971 Beetle and can attest that I was often turning the heater down. The earlier Type III's heaters worked so well that VW had to replace some of its plastic components with metal ones, as the plastic parts were getting melted by the heater.

image cribbed from some other place

So what went wrong? There're a few problems. One, if there are any leaks in the ductwork between the heat exchangers and the cabin, heat pours out like crazy before it gets to the cabin. Unfortunately, some of the ducting (in Beetles, Type IIIs, and Karmann Ghias at least) is routed through areas which are very much prone to rust. Two, if the car itself isn't sealed well, say because of rotten 40 year-old door seals or poorly fitting two month-old aftermarket door seals, heat is lost that way too (my buddy's '71 was about watertight). Most cars probably have a combination of these two problems. Compounding things, the problem is often magnified by greater expectations. That is, if you're the kind of lazy person who expects  to be able to adjust your car's heater to the degree, and by each area of the cabin, then you're not going to be satisfied by anything an old VW can offer you in the way of heat, or likely anything else. Get a Chrysler, and good riddance.

image cribbed from some other guy

In water-cooled cars, if you have a leak in the heating system you lose coolant and the car alerts you to this, one way or another, because a coolant leak will eventually kill it. In an air-cooled car, if you have a leak in the heating system you just have an anemic heater. Multiply this by millions of old Volkswagens rusting and leaking their way through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and you've got the making of a piece of common 'knowledge' on your hands. But the fact is that a properly maintained ACVW heating system works just fine.

Rerun (from May 07)

Another rerun. Augggh!
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The Winter camping season extends well into Spring in Montana, so we thought we'd try some camping up on Flathead Lake, the largest natural body of fresh water in the US West of the Mississippi.

The Mission Mountains pop into view along US 93 Northbound. The snow was pretty fresh.

Melissa liked the way the snow filled the crack in this mountain near St. Ignatius. Look at that giant drift of snow coming rightward off the peak.

When we got to our intended campground, we were ready for another weekend of free camping. What I'd failed to take into account is that the campgrounds around the lake are state parks, not the national forest campgrounds we'd been visiting gratis. The state charges year-round [at least they do at the heavily-used parks around Flathead Lake], and we didn't relish the thought of shelling out $30 for a spot, so we wandered Northward into the forestland that forms the Southwestern buttress of Glacier National Park.
A trip up a steadily-worsening mountain road near Creston convinced us to turn back and find a more suitable place to stay. We decided to head down Hwy 83 for the fun of it, and it was on the way home if we decided to just give up. Outside of Swan Lake our map showed a campground so we headed up the forest road.

These mule deer were guarding the entrance to the road. There were at least seven of them. Melissa says she likes mule deer more than whitetail deer, but to me they're all the same.

The road eventually petered out into a trail, and no campgroud was in sight. The natural conclusion was that the map was in error, so we headed back down the mountain.

This little stream came down along the forest road.

We got back on the highway and down the road just a bit was the campground. Being a Forest Service area, it was free. We were two of four people camping in the entire place. We have been assured that once Summer arrives this will not be the case.

Melissa really liked this ground squirrel.

We selected our site for two reasons: it was far from the other campers, and there was a huge pile of wood just laying there. We got a nice fire going, and this time didn't even use accelerants. Melissa built the little starter teepee and I splintered up the free wood. I had to resist the urge to chastise Melissa for putting ketchup on a hot dog, but since it's a fake hot dog anyway I decided I could stand it.

Come Summertime we'll be able to pop the top and I won't have to hunch over like this.

We heard some noise in the night and Melissa convinced herself that it was a bear, probably a Grizzly, coming to eat us and the rest of her fake hot dogs. The next morning we saw a big fresh pile of deer pellets in the road and an answer to what had made all the noise.

Approaching Ludwig, I noticed something dangling below him. I figured it was some brush or a thick twig so I went underneath to remove it. I saw that actually part of the heating system had rattled loose and had been riding on the axle, rubbing a shiny spot onto it and tearing the CV joint boot.

I wired it free of the axle and made a mental note to order a new boot when we got home (Bus Depot again--I love those guys.) This shot was taken by Melissa without even looking. Pretty good. Notice the Koni shock absorber; we're really trying to get our money's worth out of them.

After breaking camp we headed on down 83 toward Missoula. The highway lies smack in between the Mission Mountains to the West and the Swan Range of the Rockies to the East. Melissa said it reminded her of Alaska (and the Yukon and British Columbia, I assume) more than anything she'd seen since. She says that the Alcan Highway is much like the picture below, except the trees are bigger and closer to the road. And the road doesn't have lines and is generally suckier.

Montana Hwy 83 Southbound

The trees opened up in spots and gave us nice panoramic views of the mountains. We pulled over at one point to get some pictures and I saw immediately that it was kismet:

One of Melissa's favorite things

Melissa shot this video so the viewer could take in the scene. Listen to how nicely Ludwig is running in the background. Sounds like a sewing machine.

I like this picture because it looks like Melissa is hovering above Ludwig's bumper. Note the deer carcass in the lower right corner.

We kept on down the road to Holland Lake, which I'd wanted to visit earlier in the year but the campground was under a couple feet of snow. I knew that there was a hike that led to a waterfall, so we thought we'd stop for lunch and a walk through the woods.

The lake is sublime. It's that weird blue-green color that's associated with lakes that suspend a lot of rock flour. I want to canoe to that island in the middle ground sometime.

As we walked along, we became cognizant of a steady dull roar. Some other hikers headed the opposite way confirmed that it was the falls. Around a bend we could see the falls in the distance.

Holland Falls, the white smear at center

We got to the falls and were duly impressed. We each went up to it, seperately, so we could take pictures of one another. I was surprised at how windy it was right next to the falls. It was also really cold and loud.

Melissa took this video of me by the falls, and then panned around to the lake and Mission Mountains way across the valley. This is all about two hours from our doorstep.

We hiked back down to Ludwig and cooked up some sandwiches. The drive home was pleasant and Ludwig even got to pass someone. We reflected upon the trip and concluded that it was one of our favorites so far. Then we realized it had all been an accident; had the plan gone off as we'd intended, we'd've been on the other side of the Missions. In this spirit, I dedicate this trip to the memory of Kurt Vonnegut, who once wrote that "peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

Rerun (from March 2007)

Busy busy busy. Original posting should resume before long. Mea maxima culpa. 

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I (Mitch) have every other weekend off, and I'm trying to get us in the habit of taking a little trip on these weekends whenever we can. The inaugural trip was a jaunt down Rock Creek, a blue-ribbon trout stream less than an hour east of Missoula. And who doesn't love driving on a one-and-a-half lane icy road that drops directly off into a frozen creek on one side and is also littered with rocks?

That's me on the ice showing Melissa that it's plenty thick to walk on by jumping up and down on it. I'm told four inches of ice is enough for a person, and a foot is enough for a truck. This ice was at least eight inches thick. [I've since learned--not the hard way, thankfully--that river ice is a different creature than lake ice and that it's not such a hot idea to walk on river ice, at least if the water underneath is deep (it wasn't here).]

A little way up the road from our camp at The Dalles is the trailhead for the Welcome Creek trail, a 5-mile hike into the Welcome Creek Wilderness.
Our first day we just scrambled around the suspension bridge across Rock Creek and then back to camp. The rocks in the background are the feet of the Sapphire Mountains.

Her fears assuaged, Melissa does a dance on the ice.

There wasn't much snow in camp or on the roads, just ice; all that white is ice. Our fire ring was completely filled with a giant cylinder of ice. We tried building a fire on top of the grate, but the embers just fell through.  So we put a bunch of wet boughs between the grate and the ice and later had a nice fire and grilled hot dogs on it. Note Ludwig's brand-new chains, on this, their maiden voyage.

Walking around the campground (which we had to ourselves) we found this deer skeleton. A little way away we found its fur and a leg, complete with hoof. I wonder if it got hit by a car, wandered into the campground injured, and was ambushed by coyotes. Or maybe it got shot, ran off, died, and was picked apart by crows. In any case, Melissa took about 40million pictures of it, but I'll spare you the totality of her weird obsession and just post this one.

Melissa isn't grossed-out enough to not enjoy her morning tea.

After tea we walked to the trailhead. We'd rented snowshoes because we weren't sure what conditions to expect on the trail. I hadn't planned very well, as we had nothing to carry the snowshoes in when we weren't wearing them. Fortunately, they fit nicely inside our camp chair bags. This narrow bridge spans Welcome Creek just upstream of where it empties into Rock Creek.

At one point beavers dammed the creek with a damned dam, and the resulting pond put the trail under a couple feet of water. We had to go up the side of the mountain and around this obstacle. The side of the mountain was a rock field covered by snow, so on went the snowshoes.

Melissa was a natural snowshoer.

I wasn't.

The actual trail was covered in ice, not snow, so the snowshoes weren't really needed on it, and we were worried about bunging them up on rocks and such. But without them, my boots didn't have near the traction they needed so I could negotiate the ice, especially on the steeper stretches. After falling and breaking my wristwatch, I decided I'd had enough and we turned around. We plan on buying some shoe chains for future hikes like this. The above shot is Melissa below a ginormous lodgepole pine or a ponderosa pine, I don't know which. [Update: I know the difference now, and that tree is a ponderosa).]

Back at the trailhead parking lot, we decided to boil up the rest of our hotdogs. Past instances of boiling water inside Ludwig in wintertime had proven problematic, so we set up our portable camp table and cooked outside. It was pretty warm the whole weekend, probably no colder than 30 degrees or so. A guy in a VW Vanagon Synchro Westfalia (a 4-wheel drive camper) stopped by and talked to us, and implied that we were crazy for taking a VW as old as ours on this road. I directed his attention to the chains. With them, we didn't think the road was all that bad, frankly. 

This didn't turn out to be as spectacular as I'd hoped. On the way home, Melissa filmed me blasting Ludwig through some deepish puddles on the icy road.

VWs of Copper Country

We spotted this Baja while trick-or-treating. Assuming it's local, that makes for 13 in the ADLC.

Fall, and Introducing Smurfette

Smurfette (formerly and briefly known as 'New Blue') came from Missoula and visited us for a trip to Lost Creek.

We looked at the waterfall and took a short hike.

I like it when plants grow straight out of rocks.

That ridgeline waaaaaaaaaaay back there is the Great Divide.

Smurfette's trip here was her first of any distance under her new ownership. Congratulations, N, M, A, and R!