Chris,

Congratulations on your new vehicle!

For your second question about the airflow sensor harness, make sure
that your symptoms ARE EXACTLY what the harness is suppose to fix. 
There are a number of 'similar' symptoms that is won't fix.  The harness
(or capacitor fix--I personally have the harness, it was $115--didn't
know about the list or the capacitor when I bought it) 'fixes' an
intermittent power loss.  This power loss is very irregular, sometimes
happening every time you turn around then going for months without an
incident.  The one consistent behavior is that it is 'fixed' by turning
the engine off and restarting.  If this does not solve your problem in
the 'short term', then the harness/capacitor will not fix the problem in
the 'long term'.  There are a couple of people that mentioned that this
exact behavior can also be caused by an improperly mounted ECU (I think
they inserted a peice of carboard between the ECU and some metal it was
coming in contact with and that fixed everything).  To complicate
matters, I didn't think that this harness was for the 84s, only later
models (86-87 range specifically, but then I have an 87 so am primarily
concerned with that year!)

Grounding problems have also been known to cause similar behavior.

If this behavior does not sound EXACTLY like what you're experiencing,
try posting to the list EXACTLY what is happening and when it happens to
try to get it diagnosed.

Good luck and congrats again!
Tonya
87 Vanagon GL Wolfs
74 S. Beetle