Andrew’s Van Chat
Brakayla in all her brown glory.
Hello! Andrew here. One of the longest and most anxious days of our lives was the day we were to check out what could be our new VW Vanagon Camper. The work day seemed to take FOREVER. As soon as we both got home, we showered and headed right out the door. Weaving in & out of rush hour traffic, we made it across town in record time. As we made our final turn onto the owner’s street, we both could see that big, ugly brown Campmobile in the distance. They say “you can’t polish a turd”, but we saw all the potential in the world sitting there. An older gentleman came out and greeted us. He couldn’t have been a nicer fella. We exchanged pleasantries, and he proceeded to give us the tour of his beloved van. You could tell he didn’t want to sell it. Using the clutch pedal to shift through the gears of the manual transmission was taking a toll on his bum knee. He was looking to buy a Ford Transit with an automatic transmission once his Vanagon was sold.
Original Interior Overview
The Vanagon's interior had seen better days, but it was nothing that couldn’t be cleaned up with a little elbow grease. The exterior looked great, apart from the color. There was very little rust. He had told us the van had spent a lot of its life in Florida, and you could tell. The Vanagon had been well taken care of, but it was in dire need of some sprucing up. He then started it up to show us how the Bostig Engine Conversion ran. (Bostig is a company that builds kits to enable fitment of a Ford Zetec engine into a Vanagon.) It ran great, but there was smoke billowing from the engine. What he thought was in incurable Oil Pan leak was what I saw as just a leaking Valve Cover Gasket. An Easy fix.
He showed us the ins & out of the pop-top, fold-down bench seat, stove, fridge etc. Neither of us had ever even been inside a Vanagon before. It was nice to finally step inside of one. It’s really hard to judge the space using pictures from the internet. Anyhow, the van had a number of upgrades & recently replaced parts. Everything was looking really good to us.
He then handed over the keys for us to take a test drive. Now was time to see how she drove. I could tell right away the suspension and brakes needed some love, but nothing that couldn’t be easily rectified. The clutch felt nice, and the Bostig had much more get-up-n-go than I could have ever imagined.
This also gave us a bit of alone time to chat about what we thought. The way we looked at each other when we hopped in the van we just knew we were buying it that day. We couldn’t let a VW camper in this condition go to anyone else. (He had said that someone else was buying it if we passed on it.) The fact that we found a Vanagon that checked so many boxes for us here in Louisville is crazy. We figured we’d be shipping one in from out West or flying out to drive one home.
We pulled back in his driveway, and hopped out of the van grinning ear-to-ear. He was asking $10,500 for the van. He said he would take no less than $10,000, and we agreed to buy. It’s been over 6 months since we took ownership of the van, and it still feels surreal. This is something we had talked about doing for years, but it had seemed like more of a pipe dream than something that could be a reality.
In future posts, I will be talking about work we have done to the van to make it our own. Hopefully I can give some insight or ideas to fellow Vanagon owners.