Hello new guy & welcome to the Vanagon world & the Vanagon list!
It's turning into a tire thread! There are very strong emotions about
tires on this, you can look search for tire threads in the archives.
My take is to get the best you can afford & that has worked well for
me since the mid 70s.
http://gerry.vanagon.com/archives/vanagon.html for the archives.

New owner stuff.
Change the fuel lines. See where the gas line comes into the engine
compartment through the firewall? That fitting is plastic if it's
stock, old plastic at that. Youtube is full of burning Vanagon videos
where the old lines or that plastic fitting failed.
Behind the licence plate you see the oil filler tube? Take the cap
off and the INSIDE slides out making the tube long enough to put oil
in without the big mess. is part of The coolant tank at the licence
plate door is the overflow tank, the tank inside the engine
compartment is part of the closed coolant system, you will generally
add fluid to the tank by the licence plate.
The Bentley shop manual is the Vanagon "bible", even if you don't do
your own work a mechanic in the middle of nowhere could use it to do
work to your VW. It IS worth the bucks.

Parts & such... there are several on line venders:
http://www.van-cafe.com/
http://www.busdepot.com/
http://www.gowesty.com/
http://vanagain.com/
 From seat covers to skylights to transmissions, there are many
vendors that have been & currently are being recommended

Need a recommended shop? Take a look at http://www.roadhaus.com/ (he
does tires too..)

Other place I go for help-advice-ideas-used parts is
TheSamba  http://www.thesamba.com/vw/

If you see me drive by in my Vanagon feel free to wave back, I always
wave at other Vanagon drivers.

Rob
vwrobb@gmail.com

At  11/23/2012 08:42 PM, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote:

>let's suggest he get 6 new identical vanagon-rated tires so he can
>rotate 6 and still be sure to have 5 identicallymatching ones should one
>tires suffer fatal damage ..