I love these trip reports!!  Renews Vanagon love; giving me the inspiration to bump for the Subie conversion after 217,000 wonderful carefree miles on my 1.9 waterboxer.  So many interesting places to see and experience, and the best way is in a Vanagon for sure.  Got all you need.  So easy, so simple; yeah, that's the way to see the continent, and even further.  Maybe even do like Mark Drillock and explore Europe too, Vanagon-style.
Spend the bucks, get it super-reliable again, then go!

RichSan Diego

      From: Alistair Bell <albell@SHAW.CA>
 To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM 
 Sent: Monday, July 6, 2015 4:45 PM
 Subject: Trip and tire report
   
Went on a logging road excursion last weekend, blog post here
https://shufti.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/trip-cor-what-a-scorcher/

The new tires and wheels worked out well. 15" et25, 7" wide Mercedes alloys. Yokohama geolander 215/70-15 tires with the sketchy 98 load index. Very much, and I mean it, very much an improved ride on both pavement and rough roads. Traction good, albeit on some of the roads it is like driving on ball bearings and I doubt any tire would be perfect. The rough and steep roads felt much better. The slight gearing hit with the oversized tires was not, and I was surprised, felt on the rough roads but I did notice it on the hilly paved roads. Over all I am quite pleased with the wheel and tire combo.

Alistair