Dear List,

I thought you might be interested in this story.  Last fall I bought a Westy
that needed an engine.  A fellow from across the state posted this list with
a used 1.9 for $300.00.  I contacted him & picked up the engine on my way to
N.Y..  This fellow had an 84 or 85 Westy that he had converted to an inline
4 cylinder VW.  This fellow was a nice guy, a bicycle mechanic, the kind of
guy you just trust, who told me that the engine I bought was a good runner.

I brought the engine home and installed it.  It missed under load, no matter
what I did.  I took a compression test and found one cylinder had only 50
Lbs..   I pulled the engine and yanked the heads.  The low cylinder had a
very badly burnt valve.  Worse than I had ever seen before.  I called the
fellow & complained.  I figured that: 1) an engine core is worth something,
2) I had wasted a lot of time installing & removing, 3) that any monetary
relief I could get would be better than none.  The fellow told me that all
he could afford to do was pay me back $100.00 and that I wouldn't get it
until after Christmas.  That seemed like a fair enough deal to me.

Well, Christmas came & went and I never saw a check.  Oh well, some times
you just have to write things off and I really didn't feel like bugging the
guy.  Well, you can imagine my surprise when I today received the $100.00
check from him.

I guess that my original assessment of the guy was correct.  It is nice to
know that most of us in this Vanagon community are up standing.

Walt Spak
Pittsburgh, PA.
wnsopc3@3rdm.net