In an earlier post from Joel about sources of Vanagon information in print
the following address is given for a VW Van club in South Africa. This van
club is of considerable interest because the south africans have vanagons but
they use a substantial number of locally manufactured parts rather than the
parts from Germany. It may be that these parts would be of benefit for us in
the rest of the world.

For example, the South Africans routinely install a "Ford Essex" motor in
their Vanagons when it comes time to replace the VW motor because these Essex
motors are much bigger and cost effective. 

I wrote to a guy in South African and he sent me a mini-stack of information
about the Ford Essex motor conversion, including parts, costs, etc.

Other than this one letter there seems to be an almost complete lack of
information about South African vanagons. Accordingly, it was with some
interest that I noted the following address for a South African van club
which Joel posted to the list some time ago. 

> Backchat Buggies & Vans
> 20 Rippen Crescent
> Bloemfontein  9322
> REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

The fact is, I have written to this club twice with all kinds of manipulative
begging to get a subscription to their newsletter (assuming they have one) or
infomration about their club and have recieved no response. 

I am considering transferring the best of the vanagon list onto a 1.4meg
floppy disk and sending it to them to try to pound them in to responding or
beat some south african out of the brush and onto our list. 

My question is: has anyone else ever written to this south african van club
address and have they received any response? The address has been published
for years in VW Magazines and elsewhere so I feel certain someone else must
have tried this. 

Does anybody on this list have a connection to these distant Vanagon folk?

derek