>Anyway, thanks for the injection of common sense, but as usual, I'll
>have to take a pass and side with emotionalism over rationality. Give
>me this much credit as you laugh at me, I at least understand my
>problem, even if I'm unwilling to do what may well be the 'right
>thing' about it.

There is nothing "wrong" about deciding to restore your van -- heck in
our "throw away" world, I find it down right admirable.  You understand
your options, and have to make the hard call of how much money you can
afford to spend to satisfy your heart.  I think I understand the dilemma,
I have a wooden boat *and* a Vanagon :-)

From the sounds of it you could get a pretty near "brand new" Vanagon
from Doktor Tim for $15,000, plus or minus.  That doesn't sound like a
bad price to me -- though it might not be something you could get a bank
to fund.  Maybe you'd even want to put some more money into having a
good sound proofing job done.  Assuming that you're not up to doing the
work yourself (or that you wouldn't love doing it), spending the money
all at once is probably the cheapest way to go, and even on credit cards
you'll probably come out ahead of what you'd have to pay (including
interest) for a newer van in comperable condition.  The other plus of
doing the work now is that Vanagon parts are just going to get harder
and harder to find.  Restoring the car now gives you a much better
chance to do a good job than you might have in 10 years.

Nobody ever gets their money out of a car.  It seems like a more
realisitic goal is to get the cost down under $0.35/mile.  You might
just be able to do that -- assuming that the car will last another
100,000 miles.

But make sure you listen to the heart part of Stan's advice -- make sure
that you can *really* afford to restore the car (time, money, hassles),
if you can it will be a family treasure.  If you can't, it could hurt
the very thing you're trying to preserve.

Good luck!

Doug
--
Douglas L. Urner <dlu@canishe.com>  Port Orchard, WA   +1 360 769 5565