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Wed May 28, 2008 12:11 pm

Arrgghh!!

I bought a 1992 Eurovan in February and have been fixing up to get on the road. It was moved it outside of my rental garage which a few club members and myself share to work on our project vehicles.

The other night I went to the garage to work on the Van and found the carnage.

Vandals kicked in the rear hatch, shattered the rear glass, destroyed the rear driver side quarter windowand dented various panels. :evil:

I think the dents can be pulled but the windows are really scaring me.
From looking at the glass they appear to be glued in and would be a nightmare to find.

I called all the scrap car lots and the only Eurovans available are the panel vans with no glass and rear doors (no hatch).

Should I just scrap it and start over or try and fix it up? :(

Wed May 28, 2008 12:26 pm

Thats one reason I dont want to move my Vanagon outside...
I'm afraid the neighborhood "Hoodlums" are going to vandalize my Vanagon.
Locally there are VERY FEW VW's and most of my neighbors think I'm crazy for buying a Vanagon let alone one that doesn't run. lol

Wed May 28, 2008 12:29 pm

Sorry to hear about your loss, that sucks. If it's insured you might consider keeping it and fixing it up, I'm assuming that an insurance company would probably total it. You might be able to find the glass on the internet somewhere but of course then there's the issue of shipping. If the same thing happened to my 87' Westy I personally would rebuild him

Wed May 28, 2008 12:33 pm

Any local auto glass shop should be able to replace the rear glass fairly inexpensively. A windsheild for vanagons is still available for about $100. The wing window is more difficult but I'm sure a wrecking yard would have them. I'd just start making phone calls around and see.

Wed May 28, 2008 12:44 pm

www.car-part.com has most ANY part you could ever want, its a junkyard cataloging site, thousands of junkyards have their inventory entered there.

Wed May 28, 2008 4:27 pm

I don't see your location on your bio.

Have you checked the Samba classifieds? There are EV part-outs there in a couple of different locations. Also check Craigslist locally for part-outs.

Wed May 28, 2008 5:34 pm

Sue them for Eurovandalizing if you ever find them.

Stupid jokes aside, I give my sympathy for your loss, I don't know what I would do if anyone did that to my property, or my beloved van. Hope it all works out for you.

Wed May 28, 2008 5:47 pm

There was a similar instance with vandals on a splitty bus and the vandals got caught:
Safaris Smashed, Vandals caught - http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=291132

Thu May 29, 2008 7:13 pm

Thanks for the kind words guys and Jackbombay thanks for the car-parts.com link! Using it I was able to find a rear quarter window for $150 with shipping.

I am going to try to get it back on the road but wow the body is pretty rough. After looking at the rear hatch with all the dents I think I'm going to need a complete replacement.

I did find a Eurovan panel at a local scrap yard and it has the rear double doors that I think I can retrofit. The only problem is welding some door hinge nuts and the fact that the doors don't have any windows.
Still it would offer a solution to the problem and allow me to keep the van.

I'm in located Northwestern Ontario, Canada (top of Lake Superior) where Eurovans and Vanagons are owned by very very few people.

Thanks again everyone! I'll post up some "in repair photos" as soon as the parts show up.
The good part about all this is now I have an excuse to give it a paintjob :)