Or, as I originally wrote in my response to Bernie's question, but decided
to delete 'cause it sounded dickish:*

If your mechanic is like retailers I know in other fields, he's lazy. I
was going to say "lazy and stupid," but thought better of it because a)
lazy alone could account for his answer, and b) if he can get you into a
car that he can make more money on, he ain't stupid. So I'm betting on
that lazy thing.

===============
* I can say that on the air, can't I?

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
Bend, OR
KG6RCR

On 9/1/2009 2:53 PM joel walker wrote:

>> A good VW shop in North Vancouver is now recommending to it's
>> customers NOT
>> to purchaseVanagons as they are "too old" and some replacement parts
>> difficult if not impossible to get.
>> Your comments please?
>
> from a purely practical point of view, they are correct ...
> i would not recommend any of my friends (who are not vanagon nuts) buy
> anything more than five years old. certainly no more than ten years
> old.
>
> why?
>
> simple ... dealers are in the business to make money. they do NOT want
> to stock a lot of parts for old cars. the vw dealer here has NO
> aircooled parts at all in stock, and NO vanagon parts in stock. not
> even an oil filter. so if i drove my vanagon into the dealer for an
> oil change, it would sit there until a special-ordered oil filter came
> in. and that's IF the service department decided to do the work.
>
> and it's not just vanagons or volkswagons. Ford and Chevy and Mercedes
> and Toyota and Honda all do the same here. they have no one who is
> familiar with the older cars, and don't want to take the liability of
> having some hotshot young mechanic screw it up because he thought it
> was like the new ones.
>
> and it's getting worse. new cars today are pretty much NOT capable of
> being worked on by the owner at home. you have to have special tools,
> special electronic devices for diagnosis, and a lift to be able to get
> at things more easily.
> i'm not saying that it can't be done, but that it is getting harder
> and harder and harder.
> an oil change on a beetle was easy. oil change on a vanagon is MUCH
> easier. oil change on a honda is a royal pain, and you can't even do
> it without a set of ramps at the minimum. :(
>
> so, from a business standpoint, i suspect that it would be true all
> over the country, perhaps even around the world: old cars are not
> profitable. so the dealers would rather NOT work on them. :(
>
> unca joel
>