Greetings from the land of the air cooled bus!

Any day now we will be adding another child to our little family:) As of
late I am faced with purchasing a "family vehicle." Our air cooled VW buses
are well loved and will stay in the family but the Honda(like driving a
go-cart:) has got to go.This may sound silly but vehicle requirements at
this point seem to center around air condiitioning as much as anything.
Being a lover of buses my thoughts have turned to the water-cooled Vanagon
which reportedly has adequate A/C.

Baywindow and even splitscreen buses were sometimes offered with air
conditioning but it is reputedly lame in its cooling abilities and zaps some
of the prescious horsepower that we so dearly need. I have seen some air
cooled Vanagons that had air conditioning with a better system of ducting
than the add-on units in bays although I am nut certain if this if factory
ar a dealer add-on. Any opinions on these early air cooled Vanagons
regarding air conditioning?

I have done a bit of research and the Vanagon seems to suffer from one major
ill: leaking head gaskets and the resultant exspense in correcting the
problem. Aside from that obvious shortcoming are there any other caveats
that you can offer?

 I know that is a big question but............ Let's say you came to me and
said, "Hey, I have $1500 to buy a bus and I found this really nice 79
baywindow that runs ok for $1000 and the only problem is it needs an all new
exhuast system. And the seller said it is a CA. model whatever that means."

That means trouble!!!

Thanks
Chris
Greensboro, NC ( Man, it is gonna be hot soon!)
'72 westfakia
'69 justabus