My 84 inline powered van has been humming along marvelously.  Nothing bad
happening, all good for quite a while...

I have an older River Dory (aka Drift Boat) in my shop right now, being
refurbished for a client.  Normally it's the vanagon's spot.  It spends a
lot of time in there being improved, for my own enjoyment...
But yesterday as I was coming up our road, Buster's (I am trying out
names...Buster Brown.... my shoe box-shaped van is that Brown shoe color,
too...Ya think? ) anyway, the window crank broke right off in my hand.  I
looked special to find a van to buy without power windows...less to break,
less to fix.  .Not always the case I guess.

  So I un-screwed the handle and thought..."better get on the Net, find a
replacement" then I clamped my small vice grip (aka  a Handy Dandy Tool) on
the shaft to work the window in the mean time.  But then as I was working on
the boat 're-hab' and had a little West Epoxy mix left from re-bedding some
gunwale through-bolts, I thought..."Hey, I can just fix that handle, I don't
have to go to all the trouble of ordering one somewhere and paying shipping
etc etc"   So I troweled a bit of left over epoxy into the backside of the
cast aluminum 'skeleton' of the window winder,  and stuck some carbon fiber
along across the break...Voila!  A carbon fiber composite window handle in a
Vanagon.  Cool, huh?

  I think my next project will be to use some of the nice Brunzeel ply I
have kicking around  (Thanks, Rob, for the leftovers) to do some door panels
in the van...I can then say I have "Uni-directional cellulose components"
(sounds high tech..more so than "plywood" eh?) as well as carbon fiber
adjustable aerodynamic aids....

  Friday Don Hanson