They say ignorance is bliss so Stan must be in Nirvana. The water-cooled
are head and shoulders above the air-cooled in many respects. Most
air-cooled Vanagons suffered expensive engine failures are much lower
miles than water boxer do.
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Mark, I'm in Dallas, TX . Nirvana is in California, somewhere near
Miramar; I'm told.
I never had any problems with 2000 mile trips to Albuquerque or 4000 mile
trips to Ft Lauderdale in my 83 Air Cooled Westy. I don't count the many
800-1200 mile trips to Birmingham or New Orleans since they too were
uneventful road trips.
I went in the Spring months and even without A/C the trips went off as
totally uneventful and nothing special to remember.
All of my long trips were pretty much straight through without scenic
camping to kill a few extra days.
With the addition of an oil cooler and a decent set of gauges to monitor
my engine temps and functions I managed to run higher speeds without the
'dropping the valve seats' ever happening in over 200 K miles.
I pretty much figured I'd be the only one to recommend Air over Water.
There is no doubt that each type of engine has its advantages, but it all
comes down to getting a decent van in the beginning and patience along
with careful shopping will get you a good van of either variety.
Given that I have some rudimentary mechanical skills I'd buy a Westy /
Vanagon with a dead engine and start out with a known entity rather than
purchasing a big stack of recent repair bills as a guarantee that the
work was done correctly.

Stan Wilder

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