Spencer,
  Forget about making it go faster, it's a VW bus. You 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Spencer Allen
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2016 1:09 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: [VANAGON] westys & climbing mountain roads

Hi all. Sitting here in frigged Chicago and dreaming of a summer road trip to Colorado in my 85 AUTO westy I shiver thinking about that little 1.9 fighting it's way up those BIG mountain roads at serious altitude. While on the interstates this past HOT summer climbing up some mountains in Tenn and Virginia I was barely keeping up with trucks in the slow lanes. By the time I reached the top my speed was topping out at around 40 mph with a loud knocking noise coming from the engine. Also the temp gauge was in the red. Can only imagine what the auto trans fluid temp was. Flatlands, can cruise all day at 65-75. Any of you mountain folk got words of wisdom on getting up those roads without stacking up traffic a mile behind a "damn VW bus" ( BTDT.). Never too soon here to think about summer. Have a great winter everyone.
Spencer