Date:         Mon, 13 Feb 1995 09:22:18 -0800 (PST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         David Schwarze <schwarze@superc.nosc.mil>
Subject:      Junkyards and Rialtas

	My trusty 73 Camper has been telling me that it doesn't like the
dual Weber carbs that I got for it, so I have been thinking about going
back to the stock dual Solexes, which of course I don't have any more
cause I traded them for the Webers (dumb, dumb DUMB!).  So, yesterday I
took a drive down to the junkyards in Chula-juana to look for replacements.
I needed:

2 carbs
2 manifolds
throttle linkage crossbar
manifold crosspipe
air cleaner housing and mounts
air intake preheater valve
misc. hoses, elbows, solenoids, hardware

	I wasn't expecting to find much since by late Sunday the yards
are usually picked over fairly well, but lo and behold I got lucky!  Found
a 74 bus with the engine virtually untouched!  Snagged _all_ of the above
and took it to the checkout, and found out that they wanted $42 for both
carbs, $7.50 for the crossbar, $5.50 for the crosspipe, $11.00 for the
air cleaner housing, and $5 for the preheater thingie.  Those were not
too bad, but then the killer: $29.50 *each* for the friggin manifolds!
Jeez what a ripoff!  I know why they wanted so much - because they charge
one price for any intake manifold, and most of them are huge hulking V-8
things.  The fact that I need two for a single engine matters not to them,
they wanted $30 for each one.  So I hid them (in case I get desparate
later) and bought the rest of the stuff.  I guess what I need to ask the
list is:  Does anyone have a pair of the stock 73-74 intake manifolds
lying around??  And would they sell them to poor little 'ole me so my
camper will be nice and happy for the Red Rock trip?  :)

	On the way back from the junkyard, I passed an RV dealer which
specializes in the 58-foot class AAA.2 motorhomes with the popout
living rooms with sofas and hardwood floors and washer/dryers and home gyms 
and jaccuzzis and... well nevermind.  The smallest RV I have ever seen on
their lot was a Toyota-based Minimotorhome which was still huge, until
today!  They had what looked like one of those large van conversions
(a-la Trans-Van) except that the front of it looked funny.  Hey wait,
It's a Rialta!  Jeez this thing is big.  Much bigger than the $38K
Winnebago conversion I saw at the VW dealer.  Looks like a Eurovan with
it's head peeking out of the front of a locomotive.  I would have
stopped and looked at it, but I was very, VERY grimy at the time and
I was driving DaBoat (that in itself was enough reason for them to ignore
me) so I decided not to stop.  I'll check it out later.

-David

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David Schwarze                  '73 VW Safare Custom Camper (Da Boat)
SAIC Comsystems                 '73 Capri GT 2800 (Da Beast)
San Diego, California           '87 Mustang Lx 5.0 (Da Bruiser?  Soon...)
schwarze@nosc.mil                http://papaya.nosc.mil/~schwarze
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