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

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