My 86 2.1 L Westy has had dripping heads for a few months.  THen last week
I was driving in the mountains to go skiing and looked behind to see tons
of steam blowing out the back.  Tehn i lost all heat in the van, and about
the same time the coolnat light started blinking.  I had it put on a
flatbed and brought back to my house.  A local shop said they could do the
heads for 800-900 using their own machine shop to repair the heads.  They
have done many vanagon heads before and claim that its a permanent repair
(<60 K miles).   It also has a transmission leak- main seal which the shop
says can be fixed at the same time as teh heads for $200.  So do the shop
quotes sound good?  Should I check compression or anything else before
dropping $900 into this motor?  The cheapest rebuilt motors seem to be
about $2000.  I wish i could do a TIICO but its prohibitively expensive.
Also i wish i could do the heads myself but im in graduate school full
time which means i have no time and all moneyu for these repairs will
come from student loans.

Thanks,
Andrew Fox
86 Westy
Ft. Collins CO
www2.hawaii.edu/~andrewf/vanagon/links.htm