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Date:         Thu, 4 Apr 2002 09:17:31 -0500
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject:      Re: 85 Westy Utility Covers and spring
In-Reply-To:  <674645661441D31197CD0090278AE6EC189C21@NT1>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> What about asking the manufacturer if they would sell JUST the cover with > spring and pin assembly? That would make things better for those of us who > just need that replaced.

Unfortunately that won't happen. My window of opportunity on that is closed. The tooling was subsequently sold to another company that is very greedy, and unlike the previous one, is unwilling to undermine the lucrative sales of complete assemblies by providing the covers alone. (The previous company would have been willing to do so, but just didn't feel that it would work.) So the only choice would be to have an unrelated party make compatable covers.

Cosmetically, the problem is that the later style ('88-up) and replacement tank water inlet doesn't use the same cover. It looks the same cosmetically, but the "cover" doesn't actually open and generally never has to be replaced. In fact it could not be replaced with a replacement cover, so on later Westies, only two of the three covers would be replaced. If the replacements didn't look nearly identical to the originals, this would leave one inlet looking cosmetically different from the other two. So I think for the covers to be universally popular for all years, they would have to look nearly identical to the originals, so that it would not be very noticable if both original and replacement covers were on the same van. That means plastic, I suppose.

I simply don't have the time to try to source such a thing. Also it might take quite a bit of money to have tooling made. That is the biggest problem. To make it economical, thousands might well have to be made to offset the initial setup cost. Actually, that would not be out of the question, if I were to combine the quantity I would need for the Depot, with the quantity that this list would need for a group buy. But I just don't have the time to do the legwork on it to see if it is even an economically viable option.

- Ron Salmon The Bus Depot, Inc. (215) 234-VWVW www.busdepot.com

_____________________________________________ Toll-Free for Orders by Part # 1-866-BUS-DEPOT


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