We had our second camping trip with Bertie this weekend and enjoyed every minute of it (except for that moment where I thought the coolant alarm had gone off but it was just my phone, scared the life out of me!). It had just come out of the garage after having the timing belt done and the tracking looked at again (it's not pulling left as much as before but it's super sensitive to camber).
I was keeping a very watchful eye on the temperature gauge but it always stayed at the 11 o'clock position so all good there.
Cooked in the van for the first time, even washed the dishes too! We're still learning as we go, for example, we ended up putting some cutlery in a box with some dried food and it wasn't easy to find them once you'd sat down so I'm thinking of getting a little pouch and putting the cutlery into that and hanging that pouch from the very rear seatbelt bolt (it's a rear conversion so there's no seatbelt there anymore). Might see if I can mount a kitchen roll holder somewhere to make that easy to find too.
One small thing which I noticed when driving the van was that there was a ticking sound, like a cable tie hitting a rotating wheel, but not quite as "linear" in its timing. It's coming from the driver's side of the van for certain, not really audible due to engine and wind noise above 40 or 50mph but just about able to hear it below that. I've been reading about tappets and clearances as a possibility but must test to see if the noise happens when idling. If it's a valve clearance thing I'd imagine the ticking noise will appear/disappear with temperature changes.
Anyway, thanks for the all of the advice and help so far...I'm sure I'll be asking for more and will do my best to help other members here too.
Here's a pic of Bertie in Robert's Cove, Cork this weekend:
Spherical Visions
