I drove through again (on my way home) and the shop that
has this thing was open.  I spoke with the owner for a bit
(showed off my bus, too) and looked at the bus he's selling.

It is an '87 Wolfsburg Westfalia Weekender, with 69,000 on the
odometer.

The previous owner (from Texas) lost a water pump out in the 
very hot cental valley of California, had the bus towed to 
Los Banos, and sold it rather than repair it.  Apparently, he
was planning on selling it as soon as he got to San Francisco,
but he didn't quite make it.  All repaired, now, and through
smog checks.  The shop went through it somewhat, apparently, and 
did the brakes and a rear hub bearing as well.  The previous
owner left all the camping stuff in the bus -- not the VW stuff,
but a coleman stove, little charcoal grill, bag of charcoal, etc.

The bus was real clean, particularly inside.  Outside is quite
clean as well, but it seems to have some bodywork on the driver's
side.  The vertical seam there was rusty, and touched up.  I
suspect that it was hit there and badly repaired some time ago,
with rust starting to show through the bad repair, and bad touch-up
paint applied to hide this...  This was basically all I saw wrong
on this bus though.

He's asking $7900, and the place is called "Foreign Auto" in Los Banos.
The owner (Steve?) was real nice.

This guy also has a diesel Vanagon L.  Not running (although driven to
the shop) it has a damaged (but he thinks repairable) one-year-old
1.9l engine.  Otherwise in excellent shape.  This guy does not plan
to fix the car -- not enough return on this one.  He wants $1000 for
it as it sits -- said "make an offer".  The 1.9 engine, fixed, might
make a pretty nice pusher for a van.  The old 1.6 was pretty anemic.

Today was fun.  I got to see a 1987 DoubleCab (and discovered the
same interior appointments my Kombi has) and got to show mine off to
two people that actually seemed to appreciate it.  I still want to
find and examine a TriStar...

Does anybody out there know if there were any Single-cab Syncros ever
produced for Canada?  Any of you Canadians ever see any single-cabs
for sale, or in wrecking yards?  Still toying with the idea of
converting a single-cab to syncro...

malcolm