G'day,
A group of friends of mine are currently crossing the Simpson Desert (South Aus/NT). There are 2 Splitties and 5 Bays from central Victoria (most are members of Volksclub Bendigo) and last night they rang by Satphone from the juction of the French line and the Coulson Track, 120ks in from Dalhousie Springs. They reported that all Kombies are performing well and no probs since leaving Bendigo Last Saturday (17th Sept). I will update as I here more.
Cheers, Ian.

Kombis in the desert thats cool

There's another mob from Sydney doing it in buggies.
Randall Jones and party.

G'day,
Yeah the buggies have completed their trip accross the desert and are mostly home by now. Aparently they travelled mostly at night (for some reason), and crossed the desert in 2 days, which is a pretty big effort. I crossed in a Baja in 2000 and took 5 days to do it, but we weren't restricted time wise so we took it easy and had a good look around, but we only travelled between 9.30am and 4.30pm.
Cheers, Ian.

Good to see the humble VW taking on the mega dollar 4x4 crowd. Any pic's.
Rob...

G'day,
Yeah Robo iy blows the 4by mob away when they see a 40 year old VDub doing the same thing they are in their $50,000 outfits, most don't even aknowledge us in our VDubs as we pass, unless there's young kids in their car and then you get a lot of waves etc.
Cheers, Ian.

G'day, Update time.
Had a call from from one of the group to say they were back home.
The trip accross the Simpson went well with all Kombis intact. The '67 Splitty Panel (still with reduction hubs) climbed the "Big Red Challenge" first attempt to the amazement of all the 4by croud in attendance, followed by a "74 Bay and a '63 Splitty Dual Cab on its' 3rd attempt made it over. One 4by owner was heard to say "I knew these things were good offroad but this is amazing", so full points to the Guys for their efforts. The others went down the dune to the lower crossing to complete the trip.
One Bay holed a piston and after pulling the pushrods and plug lead, drove home to cent Vic on 3 cylinders without further problems.
No pics yet.
Cheers, Ian.

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G'day Doublecab,

T3 would do it no probs, but T4 is too wide in the track and rides with one tyre in the wheel ruts and the other up on the top outside the ruts.
We had one member who had a T4 Syncro and came up to the Big Desert (NW VIC) and had trouble with track width and clearance.

The Desert Postman operating out of Copley in NE SA tried the T4 Syncro but went back to the T3 as it was far more capable offroad.

Cheers, Ian.

Hi Ian,
My name is Karl and I met you in Gove a few weeks ago. As you can see I took your advise and joined the forum. Thanks.
Well we got back to townsville 5900kms later (in only 6 days). The kombi kept giving us all kinds of problems. It kept going out of timing, had to set the valve clearances twice on the way home - not good. You would think before taking a 31 year old van on such a trip I would have had the van checked over. Well I went one better and had a reconditioned motor fitted by a VW mechanic here in Townsville. It turns out that the engine wasnt reconditioned at all and the guy was a real crook! Two grand later and I still have a lemon of an engine. I have just bought a 3rd van (wrecked) to get parts off. My wife says 2 vans too many but still nowhere near your own record. I have a good couple of pics of your own van that I took in Yirrkala. Nice! See ya.

G'day Karl,
Welcome to the Forum. It was great to meet up with another Kombi fan up here. We get a lot of comments from people around here, but this is the 4x4 capitol of Aus so not many VWs.
Sorry to hear that you had trouble on the way home and that you got stung with the motor.
3 Kombis now!! you'll have to buy a bigger block soon if you keep it up, I warned you that becomes addictive.
Cheers, Ian.

Yeah thanks Mick. I'll tell you a shocking story. The 76 Kombi I have, I bought from an English tourist who was stranded in Airlie Beach. The van was only running on 2-3 cylinders between Charters Towers and Townsville. He took it in and left it with BJ Automotive. He came back later that day to hear the verdict. BJ told him that if he had a dog that sick he would shoot it! BJ then showed him that when he tried to start it would spark from under the dash. It wasnt worth repairing but he (BJ) would give him $300 for the van. The english tourist (who was reasonably clued up mechanically), looked under the dash - because it was not sparking under there when he had dropped it off. He noticed two wires had been cut and changed around, so in front of BJ he changed them back and the van turned over as normal. Needless to say he took the van away and decided to sit out the remainder of his visit in Airlie beach since the only so called expert on VW's in the area couldnt be trusted he didnt risk taking it anywhere else. These guys are out there and will continue to survive in business at the expense of unknowing trusting tourists, and others new to town and locals who just havent heard. This story is not just a hearsay myth, I have the van mentioned still with the wires taped up where they were cut.