Anybody experience with high altitude driving (>4000 m) with a t6.1, 4motion,149 pk, 110 kW?

T

toeter nitoe

Member
In November we'll be container shipping our VW California 2022, t6.1, 4motion, 149 pk to South America for a 12 month round trip. We are planning to cross the Andes mountains several times. Some of the passes in Peru, Chili and Bolivia will be over 4000m. Has anybody experience with driving a t6.1 at those altitudes? When we travelled the Tibetan plateau with several passes over 5000m with our 4,5L V8 Landcruiser we experienced significant loss of power above 4000m.
I am also wondering how the T6.1 will deal with the lower quality diesel. All advise is welcome.

Toeter Nitoe
 
I've no direct experience. However, turbocharged engines don't suffer as much as normally aspirated engines at lower air pressures. Essentially the turbo can spin faster to make up for the loss, up to a point of course.
 
First of all, Wow! That is called Adventure.
I have done 3000mt with the 110Kw. Not an issue. The issue is how steep you will travel. Over 20% it was straggling. At 30% you could hear the engine putting all in, with oil temperature up to 135 Celsius and grinding noise off the DSG box. It ain’t Landcruiser and it ain’t V8.
I would worry more about ground clearance and have a winch installed. Good luck and hope you’ll report here every now and then. Can’t wait to dream with your photos .
 
Hi - sorry no experience of driving a T6 at altitude, however I have done a trip across Boliva overland using buses and Landcruisers. Also did Chile and some Argentina where we had a hire car.

Apologies in advance if you know of all this.

My memory of Bolivia was some of the roads were not roads at all, just open desert with what must be a line on the map. Having sat in a Landcruiser amazon (not the ones we have here, more basic ones, 4 speed non turbo i think) for 6+ hrs bouncing across a desert- , they are incredibly tough. Not just the vehicle but the tires and wheels as well.

Even in Argentina we took some marked roads which after about 100kms turned to sand, the hire car just made it through but we were scraping the bottom a lot, not something you want to be doing in a camper.

In short, I think you will have far more power than most of the locals do at that altitude, and all their vehicles still move, I would make sure your road choice is good.

Not sure a winch would be a lot of use out there as often I can't see what you would connect it too. Maybe there is something that you can anchor into sand.

Maybe a water filter for the diesel? Have no idea on that sorry.
 
IMHO, you would be far better off with another Lancruiser. I've spent a lot of time in some pretty inhospitable parts of the world (not South America though) where roads were rough or non-existent and tarmac generally scarce and where I wouldn't dream of taking a VW van - that's before I even start to factor in the altitude. I love my camper and the freedom that it offers but I wouldn't want my life to depend on it's durability - Landcruisers, yes and maybe a few other mostly Japanese made 4x4s but not a VW. Just my opinion but I do admire your ambition.
 
The Bear78 said:
I've no direct experience. However, turbocharged engines don't suffer as much as normally aspirated engines at lower air pressures. Essentially the turbo can spin faster to make up for the loss, up to a point of course.
Click to expand...
Thanks, exactly the info I was after.
 
A couple of comments in response to the concerns whether a VW California T6.1 is a suitable car for the challenging road conditions in South America. After the Landcruiser experience from Melbourne to London we chose the VW California 4motion with rear differential as our road trip vehicle for good reasons.
- on our 9 month MTL trip we did some famous challenging roads (Pamir highway in Tajikistan, G219 in China, Samdrup Jongkar to Trashigang in Bhutan,...). A short video of this trip is on youtube
. 45500 out of the 46000 km were sealed roads or good quality dirt roads that you can do with any standard car. A couple of times we got into trouble and needed the full off road capabilities of the Landcruiser. In each of these cases we had chosen the more challenging option over the safer i.e. cross the river instead of taking the bridge or take an off road track just for fun instead of the main road.
- The VW California will give us a lot more flexibility and comfort. With the Landcruiser we had to sleep in hotels and eat in restaurants. The tents and outdoor cooking gear we had with us were only used when camping was fun in the Australian outback. Too often we had to sleep in uncomfortable positions in the car or in shabby hotels.
- In the past twelve months we did test trips with the VW California around the North Cape and the Baltics, Morocco and the Balkans before deciding which off road modifications we would need before the South America trip. I only withheld all terrain tires and 6 mm alu skid plates to protect engine, gearbox and differential. For the camping bit I switched the butane to a propane gas installation and installed solar panels.
- We follow the government travel advise and skip Colombia and Venezuela for safety reasons.
- We won't take the BR319 across the Amazon region. That road is even a "no go" for the unimogs and the likes in the wet season. As an alternative we'll put the car on cargo boats to sail down the Amazon river from Peru to Manaus in Brasil.
- Thousands of random checks on Google street view of our intentional itinerary gives me the confidence that the VW R6.1 can make it.
 
You've obviously have some experience with this sort of stuff and done your risk assessments so crack on and enjoy it. I'm not sure if he's still around but there used to be a guy on here who IIRC did UK to Mongolia in his T6 4M and he might pop up to offer some advice. That said, I still don't think I'd stake my life on the reliability of a modern VW Transporter.
 
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