You have to have trust in yourself also, not just your van. If you are concerned about the van take it to a shop that you trust, one that knows vanagons, and have them inspect it. No inspection will find everything, or guarantee that something still won't fail, but you will have a better idea of the condition of your van. Have them prioritize any necessary repairs, do the ones that you feel comfortable with, let the shop do those that you are not, then go enjoy your van.

If all else fails and your van does breakdown, oh well, it is fixable. Thanks to overnight shipping, this list, its members, and a credit card or bank account, you will be on the road in no time.

We purchased our 87 Westy Syncro last year in Berkeley, CA after having a shop there inspect it. Their report said that it needed front brake pads, a tune-up, and that the transmission was noisy. As I hate to pay a shop for work that I can do myself, I brought the necessary parts and tools with us when we flew from our home in Anchorage, AK to purchase the van and drive it home. We arrived in Sacramento on a Wednesday afternoon, borrowed a friends car Thursday and drove to Berkeley to get the van and bring it back to our friends house. We spent Thursday afternoon and Friday cleaning it, doing a tune-up, and scrounging up cookware, etc. The brakes were ok so I left them alone until after we got home. We also had a shop recharge the A/C system that the shop that performed the buyers inspection told us worked great. It blew air nicely, just not cold air, it seems that you need refrigerant in the system to get cold air. Friday evening we started our journey home by heading south
 so that we could pick up the coast highway across the narrows from San Francisco. two and a half days later we suffered our first failure of the journey, our alternator died on I-5 outside of Tacoma. Not knowing Tacoma, we had the van towed to a dealership as I figured that if they could not help, at least we would be off the highway and I could handle it from there. The dealers parts department was unable(unwilling) to get a replacement alternator until the next day. As it was 11:30am on a Monday morning I knew this to be absurd. After borrowing the receptionists phone book and phone I had a Bosch reman. delivered to me in their parking lot after two phone calls and an hour and a half. The delivery driver arrived just as I finished removing the offending unit, and we were on our way shortly thereafter. Four days later we were pulling out of Whitehorse, YT, Canada at 9:00pm on a Friday night when I noticed that our tachometer was accelerating up the hill much faster then we
were, our clutch was slipping. As part houses in Whithorse do not stock vanagon clutches I ended up having one shipped from Anchorage, along with extra tools in case I had to change it myself. In the mean time we enjoyed the sights of Whitehorse an old goldrush town from the Klondike goldrush days. The clutch was delivered to our campground at 1:00am on Monday morning and at 8:30am we were parked outside of the local VW guru's shop. The shop, John's Auto, rescheduled their appointments to get us in and by that evening we were on the road home.

If your van does breakdown, make the best of it. Find something to do wherever you are and make an adventure of it. A resourceful mind is the most important thing that you can carry with you.

Mark in AK