Date:         Tue, 3 Dec 2013 22:01:02 -0800
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson928@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      rising cost of Vanagon parts...
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   If you simply must have a stock or factory original looking
vanagon, I guess you will just have to keep upping your parts budget
but if you just want function with perhaps a bit easier access and
better performance, making your own stuff is not especially difficult.
The list was looking for instrument pods    which are said to be
getting expensive and brittle..   I know it sounds weird but you can
easily make a very good instrument panel, one that has much better
access to the wiring and connectors, one with accurate and dependable
gauges that are arranged to YOUR liking...Yeah, it won't look stock.
But stock isn't necessarily the best arrangement, the most dependable,
the most accurate....stock is just what the bean counters and the
engineers decided would make the most money for the company...

   Individual analog (my preference) or digital gauges can be
installed into a dash panel (or two) of your own design...fairly
simple to do.   They do it all the time in racecars.   I took an
almost 50lb pod out of my racecar and replaced it with 16lbs of my own
design...an aluminum plate and some autometer instruments that
actually gave me numbers, not incremental lines and bars and warning
lights...I arranged the dials so that at operating temperature and
speed all the needles pointed to 12 O Clock....A quick scan was all it
took to see any readout that wasn't right.....A bank or two of toggle
switches  and you are there...   I used the back of a dish pan that I
laid up some carbon fiber over then removed the pan (a mold) for the
cowl to cover the wires on the rear of the panel and two large Dzus
fasteners so I could pull the whole panel right out without a tool
even....

   Every time I go into my dash pod on the vanagon I swear at all the
fiddly little brittle plastic tabs and tiny connectors and I always
vow to make one that a human hand can work with....but then it goes
back together(eventually and with crossed fingers that I got all the
wires in right)   and I finds someplace fun to go off to in my Vanagon
and I put that project off....till the next issue that requires me to
go into the pod........  Yes, the stockers look great and you can put
your toy Poodle up there and he wouldn't get shocked or be able to
chew anything important, but
 these are basically trucks or utility vehicles, not slick
cars....They should be easier to work on and do the job better if
possible and keeping it stock, at greater expense and lesser function?
 Next time something integral to the pod in mine breaks....I think
I'll be revising that mess...