They say ignorance is bliss so Stan must be in Nirvana. The water-cooled are head and shoulders above the air-cooled in many respects. Most air-cooled Vanagons suffered expensive engine failures are much lower miles than water boxer do. ------------------- Clip ----------------------- Mark, I'm in Dallas, TX . Nirvana is in California, somewhere near Miramar; I'm told. I never had any problems with 2000 mile trips to Albuquerque or 4000 mile trips to Ft Lauderdale in my 83 Air Cooled Westy. I don't count the many 800-1200 mile trips to Birmingham or New Orleans since they too were uneventful road trips. I went in the Spring months and even without A/C the trips went off as totally uneventful and nothing special to remember. All of my long trips were pretty much straight through without scenic camping to kill a few extra days. With the addition of an oil cooler and a decent set of gauges to monitor my engine temps and functions I managed to run higher speeds without the 'dropping the valve seats' ever happening in over 200 K miles. I pretty much figured I'd be the only one to recommend Air over Water. There is no doubt that each type of engine has its advantages, but it all comes down to getting a decent van in the beginning and patience along with careful shopping will get you a good van of either variety. Given that I have some rudimentary mechanical skills I'd buy a Westy / Vanagon with a dead engine and start out with a known entity rather than purchasing a big stack of recent repair bills as a guarantee that the work was done correctly. Stan Wilder ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! |
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