Hello,

I'm back from a less than pleasant vacation characterized by my
just-owned-for-two days '82 catching fire and burning into
nothingness.  I posted about this and since my post generated a lot of
responses and discussion I thought I should reply in some way.

First I'd like to thank all of you who responded with sympathy and
empathy.  One of my main motivations for the original post was that
sort of comiseration I knew I could get from fellow vanagon lovers.

For those of you who requested to see pictures, I'm sorry to
dissapoint, but we hadn't taken any, and I believe that the insurance
guy already took the carcass to the scrapyard.  (still no money yet,
though)

A lot of people had questions/concerns about the cause of the
fire--I'm not sure what caused it.  Several people on the list
suggested bad fuel lines and that was certainly a possibility.  The
only other possible cause I could think of is this:  I had been under
the van the day before to bleed the brakes and found the remains of a
bird's next.  I cleaned out all that I could see, but I wonder know if
they may have been more dry twiggy stuff like that up in there
somewhere that ingnited from the heat and then set off other things.

I guess now I'll never know.  I hope this isn't a pattern with
Vanagons.  Even though I've had a 100% failure rate so far (bought
one, lost one) I"m looking now at buying a new one--this one has brand
new fuel lines, and there's already a fire extinguisher on board.
[although, I'm considering buying a few more and keeping one on my
person at all times :-)].

mac

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