On Nov 9, 2010, at 4:51 AM, Ken Wilford wrote:

>  Over the years we have seen many awesome minds and mechanics come
> and gone (Bob Donalds is one) and speaking as a long time member,
> the biggest issue is the feeling of BTDT.

Two comments about this, Ken. First, as all teachers know, BTDT is
what it's all about. Anyone who doesn't want to teach on the list can
exercise the delete button. But I don't think that hazing people is
the best course of action. The best course of action is to turn
neophytes into experts and let them teach the next group of neophytes.

Far more Vanagon-specific, every time a question comes up, it's
actually a new question. Example: when I did my first 2.0 L rebuild,
the advice I got was to go to Mark Stephens for my heads, which I did.
Great advice, great heads, but he was out of business by the time I
got around to sending back my cores.

(Mark Stephens is still lurking in the archives, and always will be.)

And unless there's some BTDT, who is going to know that you are in
business? BTDT is going to send people to Bus Depot for, well,
everything. Which is okay, but there are other good suppliers.

Our vans are aging. We're finding out what goes wrong after 15 years,
and 20 years, and 25 years. Suppliers come and go. Parts go from cheap
to pricey to NLA.

Also, as you know, when gerry started spitting out emails all those
years ago, almost everyone was on dial up. Part of the reason for the
"check the archives first" attitude was that we were sucking
information through straws back then. Remember 1200 baud modems?

The "BT" in BTDT is in the past. This is today. None of us have every
done today before.

Mark
'82 Westy