I think a lot of what Scott is writing about is fraud and intent, not
working fast or too fast. There has been a lot of confusion in this post
about that. My mother-in-law once got charged by a repair shop for a new
transmission in her 69 Beetle. I looked under it and saw that it was not
new at all, and that she had been defrauded. You wouldn't say they were
trying to shave time off the job, Scott.

Scott mentioned that he has lots of vanagons. If one of his is down a week
so he can do the annual speedometer cable lube, he just jumps in another
one. Not me. I have one. If my dash is out for a master cylinder on Sunday
afternoon and I have to be on the road on Monday, that speedometer cable
lube and ground star cleaning are not going to get done that day. They
eventually do. My car is in good shape, everything works and it all gets
taken care of.

At the average shop, if a van comes in and needs a master cylinder, is it
the mechanic's fault if the speedometer cable doesn't get lubed or the
ground stars get cleaned, if the mechanic even knows there are ground stars
in there? I don't think so. It's up to the owner to state what they want
fixed, and say "while you're in there, would you take car of x, y and z?"
If you as an owner don't meet that qualification, then Vanagon ownership
(or any other old car) is probably not your thing.

A good mechanic will call you up and say what else needs to be fixed. But
as far as going through the whole car and taking care of every little
detail, that's restoration in my opinion, and not part of everyday
mechanicing.

Jim

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Don Hanson <dhanson928@gmail.com> wrote:

>    If someone brought you a broken Vanagon and said fix it  and make
> it right, you have to ask yourself (and perhaps the client) "How right
> do you want it?"   You can oil things and straighten out the wiring,
> clean grounds and check the running gear, etc etc....and that would be
> reasonable, but you wouldn't go taking the body down to bare metal to
> restore the paint, or re-working the tranny, if the only broken thing
> was  a leaky water hose or a faulty fuel pump....you wouldn't pull the
> motor and re-do the heads,
>

>
>