In the past, I tried two different "fixes" to common vanagon problems and I
thought i would wait to see how they turned out before commenting on them.
It's been several years that both have been in service, so here goes:

Modifying visor clips to allow the use of late model visors in early
vanagons. I would think that about 100 percent of early vanagons now have
shabby bags of foam crumbles instead of nice functional visors. All I have
seen have been that way. I had a bunch of late model visors but because of
the way they mounted, you couldn't use them in an early 80s model because
there was not enough distance between the retaining slot and the roof of
the car where the retaining post (the part that the visor swings into and
clips) was too short. The solution was to make posts that allowed the
thicker molded visors to fit. I used a model saw to cut the top off of one
mount and the bottom off of another insect a way that the result was a
taller mount. I was afraid that given the heat and the leverage it might
give up and split, but both are working well after a couple of years.

The other thing that surprised me is the quality of the conductive fluid
pen you gat at places like Radio Shack to repair printed circuit board
paths. I used this to extend the worn-off copper around the final end of
the instrument foil in my 83, and it has held up under repeated removal and
replacement of the long connector. Between troubleshooting, brake lights,
master cylinder, turbo instrument wiring and so forth the thing has been
snapped in and out at least a dozen times since the repair and it functions
perfectly so far.

Jim