Date:         Wed, 25 Apr 2001 11:21:35 EDT
Reply-To:     CMathis227@aol.com
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Chuck Mathis <CMathis227@aol.com>
Subject:      Re: Potential Owner
Content-Type:  text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I gotta admit I was horrified at some of the stuff I saw when I first joined this list -- two months after I bought the van.  After a few months I figured out that most of the major crisis problems were coming from folks that have vans that have been driven hard for many years or from people who are extremely anal about maintenance and repair.  Most of the problems I have run into have been aggravating but not impossible to take care of in my driveway with a minimium of tools and advice from the list.  Get a Bentley, a multimeter, a passel of metric wrenches, and one of Darrell's Digitools (yes they work on the 1.9L Digijet, too) and you should be set.  Go through hoses and wiring very thouroughly right at the start and you can save yourself a lot of grief.

Chuck
'85 Wolfsburg Westy -- 'Roland the Road Buffalo'

In a message dated Wed, 25 Apr 2001 10:36:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, John Brush <jbrush@aros.net> writes:

<< > Tom Conover wrote:
>
> Hello I have just joined the list and am considering a purchase of a
> 84 Westy with 90k on it that had heads resealed 30k ago. Must admit I
> am a little nervous about taking the plunge as I have read quite a bit
> about folks that have spent thousands just maintaining their vehicles.
> I am mechanically inclined but not in the best situation to twist
> wrenches all the time for the immediate future as I am in an apartment
> and they have no (shade tress). Any encouraging words of wisdom from
> you current owners out there would appreciated. Wanabe in Ohio, Tom

Hi Tom.

I own an 81 Air Cooled van and I do not spend thousands of dollars to
maintain it :-) I don't believe these machines take any more money to
run than other automobiles. What you will see if you hang around in this
great community, is that folks who have problems and need repairs are
the ones that post for the help or ideas, which is what this forum is
good at. The numbers will be skewed because those of us who don't have
the problems are mostly just observers keeping an eye out and hoping to
learn something that may be useful one day. I think we are in the
majority :-)

Regards from Utah,

John
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