This is the end... My noisy old friend, the end.
After 5 years of (fairly) stalwart service, the dog van has taken its last journey to the great campsite in the sky.
Ironically this year I was going to finally sort out some of the major faults that persisted, and I had booked some garage time for some work on the gearbox. But on a drive to work one evening the oil light refused to stop flashing.
A brief history of this. The oil pressure light had a habit of showing off when the engine was hot and idling, but would extinguish above 2000rpm. I had the pressure checked at a garage and this was exported ok, it was low when idling but when pulling away and above 2000 rpm it was correct as per VW spec.
But on this journey it refused to extinguish.
Looking underneath I found a fine sheen of engine oil all over the underside of the engine. I'm guessing that a gasket or plug popped.
At this point I thought enough was enough. I was expecting a bill of between £700 - £1500 for the gearbox work and now I'm looking at a knackered engine...again.
So taking stock I decided now was the time to change vehicles, and looking through autotrader I found a nice looking Land Rover Freelander. Set up a time to see it on Good Friday and before I knew it I had 3 cars parked outside my house again (one being my wife's Beetle).
I've started a new blog about the Freelander, I get the impression it may become a bit of a saga. The new blog is imaginatively called "The Dog Van II".
Back to the original van, I spent a hectic few days stripping out things I can reuse / sell and called cartakeback to have it towed away. They only paid me in magic beans but to be honest I just wanted it gone. It was a sad sight seeing it on the back of the tow truck, but compared to the Freelander - god it sounded rough. I know diesels are noisy, clattering engines but this sounded like someone had thrown half a dozen penny washers in each cylinder, and didn't bother editing the head!
It probably didn't help that the tow man knocked the sump into the tow frame while he was loading it, but at least it was going to be scrapped anyway.
It was an odd feeling seeing the van going like this, for all its faults it never failed to get me to my destination, even when a coolant hose split 50 miles from home it took a little lateral thinking to avoid the tow truck.
But now it's gone.
