Praise the lowered

Here's a clip of the van lowered 40mm using H&R springs:

Khyam impressions in the rain...

Just back from the second holiday of the year with the Khyam Motordome awning. Cornwall this time around treated us to more 'normal' conditions after June's rain-less week, this time we had a few downpours and gusty moments, thankfully only during the night.

The awning stayed pretty water-tight, rain tends to pool a bit on top of the section that connects to the van - you need to be careful when disconnecting not to give yourself an unsuspected cold shower! Other than that, everything inside the tent remained bone-dry.

It felt pretty stable during the winds too, at no point did I feel like waking up and hanging on for dear-life!

The addition of a proper shaped Khyam Groundsheet combined with the Khyam Carpet made for a comfortable end-of-summer break.

As much as I love sleeping under canvas, I miss having a bed in the van - there's not much scope for a lie-in when the sun's up a nature is in full song, so our plans to fit a bed in the van are being brought forward.

Gimme shelter

For the forthcoming weekend away at the Run to the Hills show I thought it would be a good opportunity to get the old canopy out.

Bought from Bluebird Customs, the canopy was originally used on our old T3 camper, it was just the right length. The overall length of the T5 roof line is a bit shorter than that of the T3 so there's a little overhang front and back.

It looks okay though. And for a short weekend where it's too much hassle to take the big Khyam, this should do the trick!

Oh, the van's finally lowered too - did you notice?

T5 and a half

Here's the 2010 facelift of our favourite VW van.

I'm hoping it's a grower because right now the jury's out on the new nose. It's understandably very 'scirroco-esque' in-line with Volkswagen's range, especially the next Polo:


The whole 'Facelift' thing is a tricky one to get right. In the case of the next-gen T5 it feels a little 'bolted-on', it's a shame some of the lines didn't flow further down the sides of the van. Expense in re-tooling is clearly the issue.

As our current T5 will be a 'keeper' for quite some time I'm hoping that the original T5 will be remembered as one of the last 'good-looking' Transporters. Only time will tell...

Show report: Tatton Park

A great show for the discerning rim-perv!

For quite a few years now the VW-Northwest show at Tatton Park has become increasingly bias towards the water-cooled end of the VW spectrum.

As a one-time air-cooled vee-dubber I used to sneer at the Golf-boys with their shonky 'modified' cars and rattly bass bins...

But all this has changed.

The water-cooled scene has been maturing nicely and there seems to a higher benchmark of vehicle quality. Restorations and body-finishes that would rival even the finest classic v-dub, subtle styling cues, none of the brash, in-your-face nineties stuff. This is carefully considered, passionate and high quality work.

T5s were in limited numbers - there were a few around. T4s seem to be everywhere in the car park - where do they all come from?

All-in-all a great show, the weather helped too. As one-day shows go it's up there with the best.

Look out for future blog posts where I try and decide which wheels are going to look best on the van - Tatton certainly provided lots of fuel for thought!

Time to Escape...

Here's a cool little 'making-of' video from Volkswagen's summer campaign; VW Escape