Hello. I bought my 85 Syncro Westfalia up here in AK last November. While the body is in GREAT shape; everything else soon fell apart. I drove it all over the west coast last winter and ended up leaving it with a mechanic (in Portland, Oregon) to take his time rebuilding all aspects of the van. Things are looking really good; and I hope to get many more years out of it. Now for my dilemma. My family is in Upstate NY...land of gobs and gobs of winter time salt on the roads. In a perfect world I would come down and drive it from the NW to the NE  for the holidays and then proceed on down to Florida, and back across to California for an awesome 2-3 months of cross country travel. I was just in NY visiting(by plane) and talked with a friend who owns a body shop. When I asked him his opinion(and my concern) about bringing the van to Central NewYork; he was adamant that I should NOT do it. That it would be the beginning of the end of my west coast body. Now I knew it wouldn't be great for the van but I thought that maybe I could get away with it with lots of washings, and maybe a protective undercoating. My body shop friend says nothing will stop it, but this guy also feels any vehicle you want to preserve should be kept under wraps in the winter and stored in a controlled enviroment. Is that possible with our vehicles? Aren't they about being used? Still I would like to give this van lots of TLC. I appreciate it's uniqueness.

I would love to hear opinions. Driving it back would make my trip so smooth; but I would be sick if I had a rust bucket 1 year from now just because of that one trip.

Thanks

Anne and her Vanagon

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