MTB Weekend Camper

[MTBPhil]

Haven't updated this in a while

Had a few issues with the MOT - front bushes on lower arms worn, so I replaced both lower arms with brand new - that was a fun job as the bolts had seized into the alloy subframe so ended up having to replace parts of the subframe too

Also changed both front wheel hubs
Got a coolant leak but I've narrowed that down to a small hose on the passenger side of the head which I'm going to sort

It's got a fresh MOT on it now, happily doing 50-53mpg on long runs up the motorway to work and seems to be in a good place. But....
Alas, after a really fun year out and about biking in this and camping in summer - it's going to go up for sale soon.

I've found a 2012 van with the nicer looking facelift which also has AirCon and DSG.... I have wanted an auto for a while and I really missed air con in summer when out biking in it. I got a bonus at work for Christmas and found the new van just 20 minutes away... so couldn't say no. Collecting it on Sunday!

I'm not 100% sure how much will stay in this, I'm considering moving the touran dash/door cards/stereo etc... over to the new van. Will probably move the curtains too as the new van still has a plastic bulkhead which I'm not a fan of but will probably put into this van to give the new owner a choice.
The leisure battery and electrics setup will be moving over as it's used to charge my bike.

I'm unsure whether to leave the rear all carpeted out as is for sale, or whether to move that over to and just leave the back as a clean fresh start for someone....

The wheels are likely to get swapped onto the new van too as the new van has some flashy 19's on it and I'd prefer the comfort of the 17's.

Anyway.... if anyones interested in a modified 1.9tdi 2005 van, 19" wheels, custom raptor paint, touran front end, sorted engine (see this thread so far), leather interior etc.... drop me a DM - I'm happy to talk to someone interested if they want me to leave stuff in this and I'll re-buy it for the new van.

I'll keep this thread going as the new van will be getting a lot done to it over the next couple of months ready for spring

[Jonhall]

You won’t regret the move to DSG: my Caddy is my second DSG vehicle and I wouldn’t go back!

They can feel a bit jumpy when manoeuvring at slow speed (compared to other autos) but you quickly adapt to it.

DSG service interval is 40k miles for the oil change, worth checking it’s been done on your prospective new van


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MTBPhil]

Yeah he's said the DSG had a service last year - and something about another box bolted to the DSG that has it's own oil aswell

But I'm likely to get the whole van serviced when I get it just for piece of mind
The 6 speed golf manual in my current van is nice on the motorway but for towns I find it annoying in traffic and miss an auto

I'm tempted to look into how much work it would be to retrofit the adaptive cruise control too it too for the long motorway runs

[Jonhall]

I’ve not had the pleasure of using ACC myself, but a friend has it on his ‘20 plate Golf and raves about it…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MTBPhil]

Just a quick teaser picture, not sure if it will work - I've moved away from dropbox



Got the new van delivered late today - 2012, metallic Grey, DSG, Air Con
Had a bit done to it - 50mm lowered, 19" wheels, rear spoiler, Audi Q3 half-leather seats, Golf MK7 GTI mfsw

Started making a loooong list - couldn't get the seats to go far enough back to be comfy as it had a full bulkhead in.
Pulled the bulkhead out earlier so I can actually fit comfortably in it
The rear was carpeted out, but badly. The roof panel was so thin it was hanging down in the middle.
My old van has proper thick marine ply liners
So I ripped that out too.

Not sure what's going to stay on my old van at the moment. I might just move all the ply liners, carpeting, bed etc.. over into the new van and sell mine with a "clean" back for someone to do whatever they want with. I feel like weekend MTB camper is quite a specific thing to sell.

Probably going to keep my 17's and let the 19's go with the old van - they're a bit too uncomfy for me and expensive tyres!

Need to move my stereo as one of the speakers has popped in the new van, and my headunit/reversing camera/dashcam etc...

Trying to decide whether to put myself through the pain of moving the whole Touran dashboard and door cards - but by the time I'm done moving the electrical setup, audio setup, camera setup etc... I might aswell move the dash and door cards.

Might move the auto-wiper/lights setup too. Just a bit worried I'll make the current van so basic it'll never sell lol

We'll see.... either way going to be a lot going on, expect better pics and a ton of activity over the next few weeks.

[MTBPhil]

Not sure where to start with this....
LOOOONG week



I started stripping the stereo out of my old van - head unit, tweeters, door speakers... then got a bit carried away and ended up ripping the entire dashboard out.

Up to that point I wasn't sure if I was going to move the Touran dash over into the new van... because lot of work for not much gain... but when I started removing all the GPS/Wifi antennas, etc... I just decided I might aswell

I then went on to to do the same in the new van



At this point I was starting to question my own sanity - I did all this last February and a year later here I am again only I'm doing it twice now

I then made up new cabling for the tweeters as the new van bizarrely didn't have any. Also ran the wifi antenna, GPS, microphone etc.. for the android head unit.
Whilst the dash was off I decided I might aswell move my W8 light and auto rain/light sensor - so all the wiring for them has been fitted too up to the top of the a-pillar.



Actually tried to make a really tidy job of it this time as I'm planning on hanging onto this van for a while so didn't want any rattles

How I left it last night...



The top part of the Touran dash is in the new van now, both speakers, both tweeters, both Touran door cards, head unit etc....

Today I got my steering wheel module from SpaceWalker - have to say amazing service, sent on UPS and arrived quickly to UK with no drama.
I set about soldering the wires into the SWCM, didn't take any pictures because frankly I made a shit-show of it. Very tiny wires, not much room for soldering, and my soldering iron despite being new and variable temperature just didn't seem to want to do the job. But continuity tests passed, taped the wires all down nicely so hopefully it doesn't fall apart, installed and everything seemed to work.

I have volume control, track skip, full MFD display (which is the major thing I wanted, I wanted to see MPG!), voice commands, mute, and even the DSG paddles on the MK7 GTI wheel control the DSG gearbox

After a test-drive the cruise control wasn't working - but I emailed SpaceWalker who literally replied straight away and I realised I'd used the wrong coding label file. Got the right one, set it to old style ECU-CCS and bingo works perfectly. Can turn cruise control on, cancel it, set to current speed, resume, and bump speed up and down with the ACC buttons.

Got to say I'm really happy with that module, it's taken a van with no luxuries and a stupid temperature display, to showing all the information on the dash, cruise control and the DSG paddles are a nice extra!

I'll get better pictures once she's back together, currently been sat for a week getting rained on and is filthy.


Sad to end on slightly bad news but....... I bought the new van without a test drive as my insurance company were shit (long story). Previous owner drove it around 30mph zones and it seemed fine. On first motorway run the clutches in the DSG box are completely shot - it slips like mad in 4th and 6th. Checked VCDS and sure enough faults for clutches. Even though no error light on dash.

I sort of expected it - the van was £2k less than others I could find of the same age with DSG/Air-Con, and he dropped the price by £500 without much pushing.... so it's sort of just one of those things. I hate people hiding issues when selling a car/van but it seems common.

So she's booked into the workshop on 14th February for a clutch pack and hopefully that will sort it

[3rdLeg]

Nice work man!
Always good to see people getting stuck in themselves and succeeding; looking forward to seeing more!

[foneflex]

Hi Phil, I've just stumbled across you post, great looking van, lots of good ideas for me to make mine a MTB/day camper, can i ask what Velcro clips/straps mounts did you use for your helmets?

[MTBPhil]

Previous owner had just used some double-sided velcro strips screwed to the side panels

I've 3d printed some hooks

[MTBPhil]

Well.. not as much progress as I hoped

Partly because the weather has been a bit too cold for doing long days outside and partly because it went into the garage for 1 day to have the DSG clutches replaced... which turned into a week and a crater in my wallet.

They got the gearbox off and found the mechatronics unit was leaking oil into the box - needed refurbing with new oil seals.
Looks like someone has fitted a "refurbed" one in the past but the seals had split in half DOH!

Then I got a call a day later to say also the notorious 6th/reverse selector arm bearings were falling out and he heavily recommended I changed them for the upgraded post-2016 bushes before it grenaded the gearbox.

So she's now back with new clutches, new oil seals in the mechatronics, AND new slide bushings on the selector arms - basically had a full gearbox and mechatronics overhaul.

Hopefully that's the expensive DSG issues sorted



I have managed to get all the Touran dashboard in, my A1 S-Line seats in, the Touran carpet and Touran door cards. Android headunit, speakers, tweeters (had to make wiring loom up for these as it didn't have tweeter wiring weirdly!)

Ran the wiring looms for the light/rain sensor too but not got round to fitting it to the windscreen, could do with it being a bit warmer for the glue to go off.
Moved my W8 light into the new van and wired in. Also wired in a factory alarm siren though it doesn't work and likely it's suffered the battery failure death as it was only £20 off ebay.

I've ripped all the carpet out the back as it was badly done and halfway through cleaning up all the old spray glue.
I'm also half-way through adding sound deadening and insulation to the rear.

Hopefully it'll warm up a bit in March and I'll get some more progress done.

I've got a new cambelt kit here as I have no record of when it was last done. Going to do that myself. And a full service - then MOT in the next few weeks.

[J999YYL]

Some money put into this van!! Looks a very nice build.

[MTBPhil]

Well it looks like my old van photos have died cos I killed my dropbox account. I'll try to come back and fill those back in when I get some free time.

Also been so busy I kinda forgot to update this so incoming mahooooosive update..



I don't know why but I wanted to remove the old spray glue from the shit carpeting job before I re-carpeted.
Probably didn't need to. might have even made a nice base coat for the new glue... but OCD.......

Pro-tip if you want to do this - just don't.
I think it took about 2 weeks at nights/evenings just coating in glue remover and scrubbing. Awful job!!

A much more satisfying job was using some APC and one of those drill brushes on literally EVERYTHING.
Roof liner, plastics, seats... all came out like new



I then got sort of distracted.. a bit - ordered an alarm and wired it in and programmed into vagcom



It didn't work... but I read that most of them have died from the internal batteries leaking so I went to order a cheap chinese jobby then read that most of those don't work either - so bit the bullet and bought a proper VW one brand new for £150. Really happy to have a proper alarm on the van now.

I also bought an under-seat subwoofer as I had a 10" sub in the old van but it took u p a lot of space.



Bloody thing kicks harder than my old sub and amazingly fit perfectly in the cut-out that's already in the carpet

I did some more general maintenance and tidying up that I won't bore you with pics of - someone had smashed the connector on the electric throttle body and just glued it back on - so I de-pinned that, bought a new connector housing and a 2nd hand touran throttle body - all fixed.
New discs and pads all round - swapped the whiteline rear ARB off the old van onto this. MUCH better handling.

After weeks of scrubbing, with virtually no enthusiasm left, sometimes in the snow. The glue was gone and I binned the crap attempt at a floor and carpet too!

[MTBPhil]

Then I started my first ever attempt at 4d stretch carpeting.

I'm really happy with how it went - it wasn't as bad as the youtube videos make out but does take some care to do well.







The only bits that didn't stick were the deep recesses where I think because the old sound deadening still had old spray glue on - I needed to use a lot more glue and let it go tacky first. But I didn't care much as these were getting covered up with larger full height panels.







Properly happy!

Next thing to tackle was the floor - and at this point I'd lost a bit of energy and decided rather than buying plywood and jigsawing till my arm fell off I'd throw money at it and bought a proper laser cut floor.





I sort of sat thinking for a while about what to cover it with - but as it's always got a very muddy mountain bike in the back I decided a local offcut of vinyl would work well as it's easy to clean and easy to replace. So after screwing the floor down and having a mild panic attack that I'd screwed through the fuel tank! I stuck some vinyl flooring onto it.







I was also going to remake the bed but in the end decided the one from the old van worked fine so swapped it over





You can also see in those pics that I carpeted the rear plastic "trim" in the boot and fitted my DIY bike mount - extruded aluminium with a fork mount and 3d printed end caps

[MTBPhil]

Last bit of carpet to finish things off was above the rear doors



Then went off to do some biking in her




I am very happy with how it all turned out - I wasn't expecting an £1850 bill and a week's work for the DSG gearbox - but it's been smooth as silk since.
Went out today biking in her and having ice cold air con is a god send. So I'm glad I made the upgrade - lot of pain, time and money but the gearbox and air con are worth it. I also think the facelift van looks a million times more modern than the older one.

This time I used a ton of insulation above the roof panel and behind the side panels too and it's toasty warm inside, even in winter. So happy with that!

So that's where I am now.

Fit's 2 bikes easy with room for tools and stuff



Or fits just my bike facing forward and bed extends to a full size single bed, that I chuck an air mattress on and it's spot on for camping.
I have put my roof box and awning on for summer camping but... I kinda think they ruin how nice the van looks. Didn't bother me much with the old one but they'll definitely be coming back off after summer




As for the old van... well....



Still here.... the new van's eaten up so much time I haven't done anything to move it on yet

It's now on 19's as they came with the new van and I prefered the 17's - it has a caddy dash back in as I swapped the touran one into my new van. Audi Q3 half leather seats. Still got the 6 speed golf gearbox, remap, etc..... it's a lot faster than my new van and I do kind of miss the mid 50's mpg but this weekend I've started washing and cleaning it ready for an ebay advert.

If you're interested drop me a message as I need to sell it on - will come with all the stuff above plus the personal plate.
It's a shame as I did a head, headgasket, water pump, cambelt, new lower suspension arms, brakes... mechanically a very good van with 150k on it. But rust is starting to set in on a few places (it is 20 years old!) so gonna sell it as a bit of a project. The back is stripped now as everything other than the floor went in my new van.

Next up for the new van when I get time is to finally fit my rain/light sensor - all the wiring is in I've just been waiting for it to warm up for glueing the mount to the windscreen. Oh and I have just bought a climatic control unit to upgrade my manual air con to that which I'm hoping will be easy as my touran dash came with the temp sensors in the vent pipes so I think it's just a bit of wiring and the control unit and jobs a good 'un!

[Jirka]

Nice work