>> You're missing the most important part of his original post

>> The mechanics report came back somewhat negative,
>> reporting many leaks and pointing out rust underneath.

Rust and "many leaks"?   Head gaskets? oil? fuel?  structural rust??

It may well be worth less than $8000.

Those $14000 westies are pristine low mileage vehicles, not rusty
ones with many leaks.

On 29-Nov-06, at 10:21 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Wed, 29 Nov 2006 06:04:10 -0800
> From:    Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
> Subject: Re: What to do: Keep or Sell?
>
> Think of it like this: How much work/improvement could you have
> done for the
> $1250 you've lost from the sale you had if you do manage to sell it
> at $8K?
> I'm thinking that selling these vans (the Westys, anyway) is more like
> flipping a house than it is selling a car.
> You need to figure out what you could expect to get for it in a given
> condition, how much it would cost to get it in that condition, and
> how much
> you would expect to gain at sale from the 'investment'.
> This is, of course, basically ignoring what you already have in it- I
> realize the analogy doesn't necessarily stretch so far as to
> actually making
> a profit, unless you're GoWesty or Poptopwhatever.
> And like Eric the Joe says, it helps tremendously to do as much work
> yourself as you can. A monkey ought to be able to swap out a cat/
> muffler
> (and for a good bit less than $600).
> If you've undervalued it as much as Chris thinks you have it may
> well be
> worth taking the time and effort to at least correct those obvious red
> flags.
>
> Cya,
> Rober