VW Type 2 camper
Suddenly, there’s no going back for David’s camper
It’s surprising how little you think about being able to reverse a vehicle – until you can’t do it!
It has been a good year for the Volkswagen T2 camper to date, having enjoyed a couple of breaks in Norfolk and some local car meets. However, all that was about to change. At the start of July, I reversed the T2 off the drive as normal and headed off towards Norfolk for a laid-back weekend of camping and music in Bradmoor Woods at the Folk in a Field festival.
After an hour’s drive down the A47, I stopped for fuel – for me and the camper – at St Paul’s Services, near Wisbech, selected reverse gear on the shifter I had fitted six years ago to replace the vague original and... nothing happened. I tried again, but still no dice. There was nothing for it – I had to drive the camper forward into a parking space.
The journey continued with no further problems and we were parked up at the campsite in the middle of a fi eld where forward travel was no problem within an hour. Repeated attempts to engage reverse gear proved to be fruitless, so I switched the engine off and relaxed.
On Monday morning, the shifter eased easily into fi rst but there was still no movement in reverse. The journey home was fine and GVF 530L was soon back on the driveway, albeit now trapping my Beetle in the garage. Fortunately, my friend, Glenn Gibson, who is an Autotune motor vehicle technician, lives just down the road form me, so I sought his advice. My fi rst thought that there might be a problem with the shifter, but with me in the seat and Glenn looking underneath, all seemed to be okay. Investigating further back, though, the rear gearbox coupling looked very slack. Could a £12.50 part really solve the problem? There was only one way to fi nd out, so I ordered the required item online from Just Kampers and it was delivered the next day. The new part had to be fitted in a typically tricky to access area of the camper’s chassis, so needed to be jacked up. Once removed, the old fi tting was indeed well worn, so following some fettling and swearing, the new gearbox coupling was in position.
However, with the jack removed, the engine turned on and reverse gear selected, nothing was happening. After more fruity language, I called Peter Shaw of VW Aircooled Works to pick his brains. A little while later, GVF 530L was heading towards the VWAW workshop at Donington, followed by Glenn’s van so I could get a lift back.
Peter confi rmed that the issue was clearly with the ‘box itself; the selector engages into where reverse should be but just wasn’t there.
You have to remove a Type
2’s engine before you can get the gearbox out, so VWAW has temporarily loaned me a ‘box from another T2 of the same age to keep ‘Geoff ’ moving for the rest of the season. Though this will, of course, mean the time expense of repeating the swap-over of ‘boxes later on.
Meanwhile, the problematic ‘box will be removed, palleted up and sent off for repair. When the work is done, the ‘boxes can be swapped over again and all should be good – hopefully. Watch this space!