Reply to Bart, not me!

-----Original Message-----
From: bwinelan@alleg.edu [mailto:bwinelan@alleg.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 10:04 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Hello (New from PA)

Hello All:

(I wrote this to send in the day the router died and have since gotten the
PA inspection completed and have put a few hundred miles on her, camped
with it twice and can't wait for Friday when we are going again.  The
family (wife and 2 boys) love it.)

Saw where a couple new subscribers introduced themselves so I thought I
should do the same.  My name is Bart Wineland and I live in Conneaut Lake,
PA that is about 100 miles due North of Pittsburgh.  After several years of
looking and hoping I finally stumbled into a '87 Westy that I could afford.
I won't bore you with the details but I think I was pretty lucky. There
just doesn't seem to be many available this direction. It is the flash
silver and seems to run well, but needed some body work. Mostly had surface
rust in the areas that seem to be pretty common.  The quarter panel under
the utility hookups was gone. I did some patching and attempted to paint it
a couple weeks ago.  I can say it is still flash silver (some areas have
more flash than others) and is better than it was before I started, but
that is all I can say. My hat is off to anyone that can paint a car and
make it look good.  I've painted a couple tractors before and started to
fancy myself as not too bad.  I don't think much of my skills
anymore.    There is a big difference between Farmall Red and a rusty
tractor and Flash Silver on a VW. I do what I can myself and live with the
results and sometimes find myself over my head so I appreciate this
resource, it has been a huge help already.
  The original owner knew nothing about the special coolant you were
supposed to use and it has had a steady diet of Prestone 2 or whatever in
it, so am I on borrowed time on my head gaskets?   The only problems he had
in the 120k he put on it were he had the clutch replaced "not long ago" and
some wiring repaired that a groundhog chewed through.  I've put lift
cylinders on the hatch, plugs, cap, rotor, fuel filter, full seal kit on
the top, and have plug wires, and a tail pipe coming any day from "The Bus
Depot" along with the Bentley manual.  I have searched the archives and
found a wealth of info.  Last night I took the tips for lighting the
fridge, which I had not been able to do, and this morning had tiny ice
cubes for breakfast.

Thanks for allowing me to butt in.

Bart