hi volks,

My name is Sean and my wife and I just joined this wonderful community
vw motoring.  We bought a 78 westy about a year ago and now we are
looking to buy a water cooled vanagon.  Unfortunately we are not
familiar with vw's built after the 1970's and we don't know much about
mechanics, but we are slowly learning.  We have heard a lot about
vanarus lately (subaru conversions), however if we can find a westy with
a solid motor we won't worry about that for a while. Anyway, I have some
questions for y'all.

We have been searching for a while and have seen a variety of prices for
a variety of westy's.  For a solid running van with a clean interior,
what can we really expect to pay or a mid 80's westy?

Can the "waterleaker" problem be fixed and how prevalent is this problem
with mid 80's vw's?

if we wanted to do the subaru conversion and wanted to get a westy w/o a
motor, what can we expect to pay and where should we look?

when looking to buy, is/are there anything that we should look for that
is/are a problem with mid 80's westys that you don't find in air cooled?

Finally, if anyone in IL (chicago area or central) would like to get
together to share some of their experiences we would love to hear from
ya.  Also if anyone wants to have some summer fun and likes working with
rust our 78 westy (burrthah) would love to meet you.

hope all is good
sean and michelle
78 westy
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~srohde/vw.html