I lived in Chicago until September, and my vanagon guy there was Mr. Wong.  Very skilled, honest, no frills kinda guy.  He's worked on vw's for a long time (40 years?) and vanagons for as long as they've been running.  He probably has 3-4 semi-regular vanagon customers right now0 (but I could be off).  His phone number is 773 241 6044, I think.  In the yellow pages (at least on yahoo) he's listed as "Air-Cooled Motors".

If you want more information, let me know.

Good luck,
wes

On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 10:53:46PM -0500, Spencer Allen wrote:
> Can someone in the Chicago or Milwaukee area recommend a mechanic or garage
> that knows about the care and feeding of Vanagons?Someone who  knows how to
> properly bleed the coolant system and that the brake fluid  reservoir is under
> the speedo housing and leaking heads are no surprise.  Any help would be
> appreciated. Thanks all.
> Spencer
>