> The front door handels on the vanagon are reversiable. The tops may be
> crusty, but the bottoms are usually pristine,and never seen.Check em out.
> Take the left handel and put it on the right side.Put the right , on the
> left side(didnt need that , did  you?)To do this , there is one(1) phillips
> head screw holding each handel on. This screw is hidden behind the rubber
> weather stripping. Pull it back and undo the screw. The handel will come
> right off.  It will go right back on. No fancy manuvering needed.Practiceputting it back on , before you go take the other off. It is sooooo ez to
> do. You cant make a mistake,but then again maybe someone will find a
> way.  Gain your confidence with one handel then go for it.

This remids me of a story I heard once, since it related to my own
experience removing and flipping my door handles.
A man bough an old new england farmhouse, built some time in the mid 1700's.
The back door out the kitchen was a good 18 inches off the ground, but
fortunately someone had taken the time and trouble to drag a 10 inch thick,
4 foot wide, 2 foot deep cut slab of granite up there as a doorstep. The
only problem with it was that over the years, a low spot had been worn in
the middle towards the front from the passage of thousands of feet. 'No
problem', thought the new owner, 'I'll just flip that slab over to put the
bottom on top and it'll be square and even.' It took several hours of
grunting and straining to drag it to the side, lift it up endwise, and push
it over. As the dust cleared from the slab's return to horizontal, the man
saw, much to his dismay, that the bottom had a low spot worn into it as
well. Someone else, probably in the 1800's, already had that same idea and
executed the same maneuver.

Like the farmhouse guy, I pulled off my door handle only to find it equally
worn on the other side. Be sure to check the underside of the handle before
removing.

 --
John Bange
'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"