Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 20:09:39 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: My latest Acquisitions....
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All right Jason !
( got names for them ? )
that air-cooled one looks naked with no lower front grill to me.
I'd put it this way ..
if you were stuck far away from home....
sure , you could get a head off with engine in the van.
Heck, if Ben can deal with a broken off cyl head stud in a wbxr ..he
problaby could do a head in place on a VW Type IV engine. But it wouldn't
be a fun job.
and I havn't done one in a good while..
but I strongly feel, that no matter how much you want to make a 'nice clean
job ' of it ..
Type IV head removal..
at least to me .....it's on the messy/illogical side ..
and I end up cursing the designers..
and ..the alternator installation sure looks to me like they forgot about it
until after the engine design was done..
"oh shoot...we need to put an alternator on somewhere."
and you learn things by taking out the engine ..how good the clutch is etc.
so go ahead..
but no matter what you do ...it's kinda weird I think.
I mean ..come on ..
having a squirel cage blower fan on the alternator , to boost heater air
flow ??
what !????
I had one..
first year, 72..
I totally go rid of the electric heater boost fan ..
changed that over to cooling air feed ..
using 2 inch galvanized house gutter parts...looked factory.
got rid of other junk above the engine too.
But there is not much you can do to make them more organized or easier to
work on in my opinion.
early vans btw..
*well preserved* ones ..
Are going up in value .
seriously ...they are even moving from 'it's an old van with lots of miles
on it'......
to 'wow.....26 years old, original paint ........super well presevered...you
can't touch that.'
yeah...early vans that are *WELL PRESERVED* ( not restored or re-painted )
are becoming classics. ..
on the order say of 23 window Splitties..
and 'westy' ........or any van with a special roof ..
always hold value .
and ....Jason's white westy here.....
as soon as I saw it ....miles were about 124K ..somewhere just over 100K
...I noticed
had not been molested much at all. Both tables, excellent tent, barely any
rust ..
the right front tires ..
and the in-dash front Behr AC ...........and it works ..
wow...this is no kidding, in full working order and fully presentable in
every way ..
easily a 10,000 dollar early Westy.
Many have twice the miles,
are rusted horribly, missing parts , and on and on.
Like this was a real score.
later !
scott
www.turbovans.com
..
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason" <uberhare@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 6:59 PM
Subject: My latest Acquisitions....
> Ok, so I've been busy the last few months hunting down a Westy. Now I've
> ended up with two! We purchased them to do an east coast trip with good
> friends of ours.
>
> The first one is an 83 Westy originally from California. We bought that
> one through Scott (thank you very much for a smooth transaction!) Its a
> nice clean van that just needed a good buffing and waxing. Everything on
> board appears to work, including the Behr in-dash a/c! (Huge bonus!)
> The
> original plan was to share this one with good family friends. Ben drove
> it
> from Oregon back to Ontario back in May. He stopped over at his in-laws
> in
> Vancouver and replaced the heads...would have been straight forward except
> one stud snapped while being torqued. (yes with a torque wrench) Engine
> back apart out of the van, many hours later the broken stud removed! No
> more issues, van cruised nicely the rest of the way home. I am very
> impressed how clean the van is for being all original. I might name it
> "White Elephant" since a rust free white Vanagon normally doesn't exist
> here
> in Southern Ontario! This one will receive a TDI swap when it is taken
> out
> of service for the winter.
>
> The second is an 82 Westy Aircooled. I am not a fan of the aircooled
> vans,
> but this one was priced right and fit the bill... I had never cancelled my
> Kijiji alert for "Westfalia" and this one came to my inbox. It was about
> 4
> hrs from my house, but I just happened to be visiting up at the cottage 15
> minutes away from it. The family selling it was leaving for a 3 year
> posting in Germany and had 2 weeks to sell it. We started thinking how
> nice
> it would be to travel with a 2nd van with both families. Drove it home
> yesterday! It felt a bit underpowered but realized when I got home the
> throttle was out of adjustment. Fixed that. It just needs a heater box
> and the push tube seals replaced on one side before our trip. I've never
> owned or worked on an aircooled Westy - can you pull the head with the
> motor
> still in the van? I've done it many times on the waterboxers. it's not
> as nice as the 83 we got from Scott, but its decent. A good buff and wax
> will have it looking ok. Anyone have a good used driver side heat
> exchanger?
>
> Here's a picture of the 2 vans:
>
> http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6126/5924097239_5cf2e474f8_z.jpg
>
> I've always had passenger vans, but these are my first Westies! We hope
> to
> get some good use and put some miles on them this summer. If anyone on
> the east coast (Nova Scotia) wants to meet up we'll be that way the first
> 2
> weeks of August. Now we just have to argue over who gets to travel with
> a/c! Happy travels,
>
> Jason Ewing
> 82 & 83 Westies
