Life with Nelson the T6.1 Acura Camper

MorkC68

Senior Member
VIP Member
T6 Guru
We're not strangers to the world of VW campers and the quirks they hold and the curve balls they like to throw at you!

Our first camper was a 1973 Kombi which was full of rot when we bought it back in September 2009 but years of chopping rotten panels and sections out, replacing with fresh steel and he came to look like this:

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the motor was a 1915cc type 4, weight matched con rods with the "v" notch cooling mod, piston and con rods measured so that the ones with corresponding lengths oppose one another, 228mm flywheel and twin Weber 34 ICT's which was rolling road tuned to 96 bhp at the flywheel.

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In the meantime we bought a 1977 Westfalia from Santa Cruz which had original interior furniture, little welding and comprehensive history and used him for a while before taking him off the road in 2016. He has a Subaru conversion, restored furniture, fresh upholstery, 180W solar system and Koni Classic Adjustable dampers & a heavy duty front ARB.

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Fast forward to May 2025 and life would change somewhat. I fell, landed on my right elbow and fractured it in five places, and the road to recovery was hard and living with a T2 camper would not be the same. Maintenance is tricky, especially when working on things like brakes etc but it was manageable.

We had briefly talked about upgrading to a T5 or T6 but that was about as far as we got as we wanted the mortgage out of the way..March 2025..done.

Decision made, lets have a look at T6 / T6.1's so off we went to look at a white T28, September 2020 registered with 22.7k miles from new. We spent a good three hours looking around it, a test drive and looking around him (he grew the name Nelson whilst there).

He had everything we wanted moving forward and we could picture ourselves back in Scotland frequently!

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The deal was done, Nelson was ours towards the end of May. In the wait, he would be serviced fully, habitation checked, water pump and all belts done as per VW guidelines.

We could not wait!
 
I'll use this thread to document our adventures, improvements and so on.

First outing was to Castleton to a gig in The Devils Arse, our friends from local Notts band Ferocious Dog played so it was the perfect opportunity to have a trial run.

The campsite is Holmsfield Farm (or Castleton Meadows) which I would recommend, set in a lovely location overlooking Mam Tor, Win Hill and, I think Lose Hill.

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Michelle knitted some bunting with his name on
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And the T6 forum stickers arrived, to which they was duly applied along with a Ferocious Dog band decal.
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Mods made having had a successful trip.

Upgraded headlight bulbs to the X-treme Vision Pro 150's.

Front and rear mudflaps..which are tomorrow's project.

Main thing was switching the huge Wolfrace Alloys to a set of Claytons, which for me, are a far better choice of wheel and I do like the look.
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And a road trip to Scotland in August / September was planned & booked.
 
We had time off work last week so we planned a few nights somewhere new, searching around on here led us to Burnham Deepdale and Deepdale Camping came with good reviews.

It was a lovely area and we had three lovely days in Norfolk and we found Nelson to be just what we wanted, which is a good thing :) the drive over was very comfortable, the Fiamma wind out awning was a game changer as we are used to a Vango Faro awning.

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The area was beautiful and the North Norfolk Coastal Path was great, we could walk along it to the pub!!
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We did find that whilst travelling, the fixed fridge would work absolutely fine but we had no way of powering our Dometic fridge until parked & on hook-up.

More to follow!
 
I've had mudflaps boxed up quite a while and have never got round to fitting them, until last night.

Fronts fitted:
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And the rears:
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I'm tempted to upgrade the H15 headlight bulbs but that will be another day, when I can get around to it!
 
Camping yet again at the weekend; a local music festival down in Lower Bagthorpe.

Lovely little gathering at a pub called The Dixies Arms, weather was great, music a varied selection and there was six ales on tap as well as eight ciders.


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CAB mentioned the mudflaps and it appears they dont rub the bottom of the cab doors, I will keep a watchful eye on them for a bit in case I missed an area.

Sitting this weekend, no hook up, made us realise we need a solar set up to keep the fridges running okay, especially when we are at music festivals. So, thats a winter project to investigate and install.
 
So following on from the issue of the fridge cutting out due to low voltage limit being hit, we investigated at work yesterday.

One calibrated multimeter and 1/2 hour checking various things gave us:

Leisure battery volt check (after Nelson sitting at work for 4 1/2 hours) gave us approx 11 V across terminals (which corresponded to the panel meter).

Engine running for 10 minutes and the reading was steady at 14.4V. Fridge operating fine.

Engine switched off. Voltage read 12.9V (from memory) with the fridge running for about five minutes then the voltage started to gradually drop, 11.8V, 11.6V....down to 10.9V and the fridge turned off due to low voltage.

Looks like the leisure battery needs replacing!
 
One leisure battery swapped under warranty and hats off to Fuller Leisure, no quibble whatsoever, which we admittedly was sceptical (we've heard it all before!), in fact they sat chatting to us about how we have found Nelson so far and what we have planned coming up!
 
A while back I saw a post on here where some bodyside graphics had been applied to a T6. It looked good and we looked at the different designs available.

We ordered something simple to break the white of the bodyside down a little and at the same time he had his name on the bonnet.

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Another successful weekend done, again with no issues and the camping experience just gets better!

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This time it was a small, local festival called Nah Then, we've been going for five years and love the vibe plus The Black Market Venue take there own brewed beers and run the bar. Cant grumble!

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