I'm sure most of you have heard the saying "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". Sometime I think I am proof of that, because 1) I keep buying VW buses/Vanagons, fixing them up and selling them, then doing it again. The last one I had was the the sweetest one I could ever hope to own, and I sold it. The other thing is that 2) I keep trying to paint these VW buses/Vanagons myself. Now 35 year ago I painted my '72 Ghia in my mother's driveway with a $20.00 compressor and a cheap spray gun (the ring of Saturn yellow paint was on the driveway for years!). The results were amazing-it looked beautiful! Even when I traded that Ghia in, the dealer couldn't believe I had done it myself. I then painted my '67 Deluxe splittie, same equipment and again great results. This lead me to believe I was good at painting cars. After that I bought a "real" compressor and a pro grade gun. Ever since all I have been able to do is what I call "50/50" paint jobs- looks good from 50 feet or at 50 mph. A couple of weekends ago I painted the passenger side door and sliding door of my '85 Weekender (Bronze Beige Metallic) and, well, it looked like crap. Today I sanded it all down again and repainted it one more time. This time it looks great. I can actually see my reflection in both doors. The silver in the metallic is a bit uneven, but I kinda expected that, it seems very difficult to get metallics applied evenly. So, maybe there is hope. The two doors are a bit darker than the rest of the van, but the rest is original 26 year old paint. I'm feeling confident enough that I may just do the rest of it! Jeff 

Jeff Stewart