The waiting is killing us

A cou­ple of weeks ago we finally found a West­falia that we love and have agreed to buy. It has all the stuff we want, stove, sink, two dou­ble beds, char­ac­ter, style, and all around fun. Even bet­ter is its in good shape with a newer Sub­aru engine trans­planted into it. Not too bad con­sid­er­ing its 24 years old,

The new engine is per­fect as it will have some power to get OVER a hill and I don’t have to worry about some of the orig­i­nal engine’s “idio­syn­crasies”. Its not a speed demon by any means, a 5 ton square vehi­cle is still a heavy brick on wheels, but its one less thing to worry about.

Here are a cou­ple of the pic­tures the pre­vi­ous owner had put on Kijiji that drew us to it originally.

We will be only the third own­ers of the Van. It was bought in Cal­gary orig­i­nally so it has been “Cana­di­an­ized” by the dealer, with a block heater, inter­nal gas heater to stay warm in win­ter! The orig­i­nal own­ers had it and used it spar­ingly before giv­ing it to their son who man­aged to blow the engine inside of a month. It was then sold to the shop mechanic who had sold it in less than a month as his wife said “no more vehicles!”.

The sec­ond owner showed it a lot of love put into the Westy already, big­ger tires, rear lift kit, new engine, new hoses, dyno­mat, the list goes on. HE was sad to sell it, but his fam­ily out­grew it.

We are hop­ing that we can give it the love that it deserves!

It does need a new propane tank, so I ordered a new one up from the states. Showed up the next day. Wasn’t expect­ing that. The tank is here before we even have the camper!!

We get own­er­ship on it Thurs­day night and to say we are excited is an under­state­ment. The cur­rent owner has asked for a two hour walk through so we know whats going on with the van and its his­tory (it is a 24 year old van after all). Very exciting!

After we get the bill of sale, we need to come up with a name for it. It seems that this type of vehi­cal just asks to be per­son­i­fied. The pre­vi­ous own­ers called it “Root Beer” for the brown body and the white top, but mostly just “the westy”. We are hop­ing to find a name that calls out bet­ter to us. Feel free to fire any sug­ges­tions our way!