I agree with your body shop friend.  I am in Southern Ontario and the
winter salt is probably the same as upstate NY.  No matter what rust
prevention or washing you do, it will start rusting.  If I were you I
would winter store your Westy.  If you drive it in the winter the
depreciation (through rusting) could have paid for a winter beater.

Laurence Smith
Hamilton, ON
90 Westy (fanumbos)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List
> [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
> Of anne dollard
> Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 8:33 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Winter driving in the NE. Is it worth it?
>
>
> 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 gre!
> at 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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