Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 20:04:36 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: this is how bad it gets folks , on $ 9K 86 Westy for sale
In-Reply-To: <000c01c8b48f$a38fea60$0201a8c0@tomsp4>
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Bottom line of this post - Be Careful !! when you go to buy a Vanagon or
Westy.
There's a local 86 Champaign Gold nice looking Westy for sale, they were
asking $ 9,000. Not something I need , so never checked out.
Today I see they've lowered it to $ 7,500 so I'm thinking maybe I make some
sales commission deal with them on it - sell it for them.
I look it over, I start it and watch the engine run, then I drive it.
First thing I notice is the alternator is about the fall off. It is 9 on a
scale of 10 for 'bracket is already broken, it could bust off the studs in
the engine too any second" .
They have no idea. They had a local VW shop check it out for them , mostly
an air-cooled guy, but I see vanagons outside his shop sometimes. Nice guy,
I've met him, does VW repair full time, a regular full on professional VW
shop. He missed that by a country mile. My daughter when she was 10 could
have spotted it.
If you push your hand on it moves 3/8ths of an inch. Watching it idle, is
vibrating and dancing madly.
But that's not even the beginning of it, remember this a clean looking, and
quite straight except for two spot on it , and LOOKS like a $ 9K westy.
So I look some more.
Windshield is cracked.
Both tables and their support legs are gone.
The top is unusually hard to push up , but seems both cables are in place in
the support rod thing.
The tent is perfect, and the screen.
I go to check the brake fluid, top of instrument cluster just will not come
off without breaking something probably. So I can't check the brake fluid.
The 2.1 engine shakes badly at idle too.
So I drive it.
Very stumbly under 2,000 rpm, after that revs out nicely.
But the Transmission - it's noisy 8 on a scale of 10 in all forward
gears !
I goes down the road pretty good though, except for the noisy trans, and not
knowing about the alternator about to blow off there, all seems fine once
moving, and above 2,000 rpm - like you wouldn't know anything was that bad
at all, just going 40 to 50 in it.
It has worn out rear studded tires ( now illegal to operate until next
November. )
It has car tires on the front - they said the local major tire store chain
didn't tell them vanagons take vanagon-rated tires.
And I don' think the head gaskets had every been in the 122,000 miles (
Kilometer speedo though - 205 K it had on it. ) .
Where to start ?
The busted stuff is the trans an alternator.
The engine needs something, somewhere between some serious tune work and a
full head and head gasket job.
The missing tables and legs, those are hard to fine I think.
If someone brought it to me and said they had $ 5,000 dollars to spend - if
I did the heads and the other really bad stuff, I wouldn't be ripping them
off.
So it was a $ 7,500 to $ 9,000 dollar nice looking westy, that I could do $
5,000 in repairs on !
Not counting the missing tables and cracked windshield, and who knows about
the brakes and front end.it did stop well though,
And drove straight.
And it had a way cool horseshoe mounted on the right rear of the westy top,
for good luck. Well, at least they didn't break down it anywhere evidently.
They are moving to the whole other end of the country soon too, and don't
plan on taking this with them.
But man....BE CAREFULL ....people think their Westy's are worth $ 9,000 ,
and they are over $ 5,000 down easily from being mostly up to real par.
Now if someone buys that van...say for $ 6K....something will fail, and they
get hit up in a shop for repairs.
And then the next thing will fail, like the trans...and it will just be one
big repair after another, until they have to put thousands into it,
And another big expense happens - so they dump it cheap, and take a near
full loss on their purchase price and all the repair money they put into it.
The might recover some of that, but someone could thousands into it as one
thing after another breaks, and just take thousands of dollars loss in a
year or two., I'm thinking some nice young woman or something, not some guy
who works on them himself.
And....most importantly, you can't REALLY REALLY count on shops.
Mostly they'll get stuff fixed usually, but they'll miss things, they'll
use cheap parts, do useless inspections, whatever ...I am just shaking my
head.
So BE CAFEFULL ....people think their vans are fine...and there ARE fully
serviced, lots of money invested into them Westy's, yes. There is the
occasional 20 year old car or van that has been actually serviced ( like CV
joints serviced, trans oil changed , brake fluid change etc. ) - they do
exist.
But 60 % or more of them are just driven until someone can finally tell
something needs something, by which things are way more worn out than they
ever needed to get. If you ACTUALLY S E R V I C E D a vanagon, all moving
parts and all systems......one would stay in perfect working order for 20+
years. That's just fluids, adjustments, and wear items, like brake pads,
tires, filters, spark plugs etc.
Just be careful purchasing, that's the main thing I'm saying - , VERY
careful. And unfortunately, having a shop check it out is better than
nothing, but sometimes, not even worth anything - like the VW shop that
missed that SO obvious alternator about to break off there. If the mounting
studs break off in the block, it's a nightmare of drilling and taping - and
SO AVOIDABLE.
So be REAL careful folks.
Nice looking westy too., real clean, except for two small dents.
I'll warn you this too - if it looks real sharp, often it's been mechanical
neglectedy. Seen that many times.
Whew.
Scott
www.turbovans.com <http://www.turbovans.com/>
