Volks

I did not reply to this threath before because I did
not drive the van in windy conditions, until
yesterday. It was a crazy windy day here in Montreal.
So here it goes...

Last week, I went to Chris Turner's place to get a
complete westafia roof cut at the window pillars,
installed on a thule roof rack (the ones tall enough
for a passenger van, not the super tall ones for
westalia roofs). I want to thank Chris and fellow list
member Kim Brennan to have helped me and my 3 friends
installing that heavy top on my van. Yup! 6 people!

I did not want to do this trip alone, as I did last
year to get the carat interior (I love this interior
so much) that I got from Chris. Damn it's long driving
12 hours alone. So this year I've combined a trip to
www.woodwardcamp.com in Pensylvalia, just 3 hours from
Chris's place, for some "extreme" fun with 3 friends.

Anyway, The trip back home went perfect. No wind. I
even went to 140Km/h on a down slope. Just perfect. No
wind noise, no shaking. But of course that was on a
straight line! No sharp turns allowed! Most of the
time I was at 110Km/h at 4000RPM. Oh! I forgot to say
that I have a paulchen hatch bike rack for 2 bikes,
but... there was actually 4 bikes! Yup! 4 bikes. 4
people. 3 coolers. gear. tv-vrc combo... and a
pop-top! I guess my D-load tires inflated at 55PSI
helped A LOT.

I used 5 ratchet straps for the pop-top and 2 of the
bikes. The first one was at the front, attaching the
front roof rack section to the thule rack. The second
one was at the rear attached under the fiberglass
roof, but attaching to the metal roof frame to the
thule roof rack. At this point, I realised I had to
attache this thing better. So I went for a third one
attached after the front roof rack on the metal frame,
to the inside of the van from the front doors. Not at
the doors, so I can open them. Fourth and fifth  was
in case of emergency braking. They were attached from
the rear tow loops to the middle of the donor pop-top.
The bikes were attached with 2 straps from the rear
thule rack to the tow loops, so the hatch door wont
rip off from the van with all this weight. And 4
vice-grips, one at each end of the horizontal thule
bars, so the pop-top wont slip to the sides. Dont
worry, those vise grips were taped so it wont open at
a bump.

There was a line up at the border on Hwy 87. 3 lines
waiting, and EVERYBODY was looking at my van wondering
how come there was an 8 inch gap between my roof and
the fiberglass roof. What about those bikes... The
custom agent did not see a thing! She asked me for how
much I have spent in the US. I replied 150$. Is that
your bikes? Yup! Are you a team? Yup! Ok you can go...
It was THAT easy! I had a back-up plan, I got a
written receipt from Chris.

Here is some info of what I'm gonna do:

http://members.shaw.ca/stuartblack/vwprojec.htm

http://members.citynet.net/bloss/vw/poptop/index.html

Oh yeah, I was going to forget the reason I was
writing this message. The wind thing. Well it was a
different story yesterday. The sideways wind was
pushing me to the other lane so fast that it was
really dangerous. I could not go over 100Km/h. I guess
an empty van does not help either. The top was heavier
than the bottom this time. Not good.

Sorry for the long post, I got carried out, but there
is some valuable information that could be interesting
to some listees of what is involved in this king of
situation.

Pedro dos Santos
91 vanagon with carat interior... futur mutan
multivan?
85 ddcab project

www.mononc-en-folie.com
www.krusherbmx.com

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