On Sun, 7 Jan 1996, Angela & Will wrote:

> We are looking for something that will show the differences of the V.W. 
> campers....

Pop tops that hinge at the front do have a cool kind of look, but there 
are a couple of problems you should know about:

The "upstairs" bunk is only a single-person cot, whereas later westies 
(75(?) on?) have pop tops that hinge at the rear and have a full double 
bunk up top.

Many people report problems with lifting or rattling of the pop-top while 
driving, especially at highway speeds.  A number of fixes for this have 
been described on the list, with varying success and degrees of 
difficulty, so you may want to search the archives for this.  Rear-hinged 
pop-tops do not appear to have this problem.

It may be easier to mount and remove heavy cargo from the roof luggage 
carrier area on rear-hinged pop-tops since you can stand on the front 
door sills to stand up high for tying things down, etc.  I don't know if 
it's quite so easy to do on front-hinged pop-tops, where the luggage 
carrier is at the rear.  (I know we shouldn't be putting 400 lbs on the 
roof, but even a 6 gallon gas can is plenty heavy in my books).

Tobin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                  Only Somewhat          =============  
(604) 689-2660                    Occupationally       /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca      Challenged!        O|             | putta
                                                       '-()-------()-' 
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)