Is it hard to find parts for a 1984 VW Vanagon camper?

if you live in the USA, you can still get parts fairly easily. Sites that come to mind are JC Whitney

http://www.jcwhitney.com/

and Mid America Motorworks.

http://www.mamotorworks.com/

and Wolsburg

http://www.wolfsburgwest.com/

then there is also the SAMBA site where you will generally find assistance

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

Engine parts are also relatively easy to come by.

Some of the camper parts are hard to find new as VW hasn't supported the Vanagon series for several years. Replica has given some sites that indeed are great for finding many items; however, some odd bits and pieces can only be found used these days.

If memory serves me correctly, most of the Westflia camper stuff was the same through out the years, (more or less), the engines and emissions systems differed somewhat from year to year.

The water cooled flat four, often called the "water boxer" motor, has had a troubled history and is well known for blowing head gaskets, overheating and leaking coolant. Changing coolant on a regular basis is a must, but, bleding the air out of the engine cooling system is a royal pain. Failure to do this correctly will led to an air pocket in the block and cause the head gasket to blow. Head assemblies for the motor are getting hard to come by and are expensive as well.

Avoid at all costs the diesel motor sold for a few years in the 80's; it has so little horsepower something like 50 BHP, that you need to run the vehicle at full throttle all time (just to keep up with city traffic, never mind freeway speeds!) and motors just didn't last very long due to that.

The best bet would be the EuroVan, sold in 1990 and later. The early models had a in line 5 cylinder motor, much better than the mmotor in Vanagons. Its main faults are exhaust manifold warpage and cracking and studs breaking off in the head... The manual transmission with the 5 cylinder has very difficult to obtain parts (was only used for a couple of years), but its still slow and fuel economy isn't anything to be proud of...

The best choice is the models with the VR6 motor; parts are easy to obtain, has decent acceleration, an air conditioning system that doesn't drain off all the horsepower when its turned on and the camper conversion has parts that come from Iowa... all good things. The dual air condition system (on some models of the VR6) can actually cool the cabin ( the dual air condition on 5 cylinder motors was very trouble prone).

In general engine parts generally are the same in the vehicle of the same generation ( i.e., 5 cylinder models will interchange with other 5 cylinders EuroVans, Vanagon parts in general will switch with other Vanagons of the same type (air cooled generation or water cooled models).

Hope this helps, a car nut

Don't buy it. the early watercooled vanagon engines and the cooling system plumbing are a nightmare. Go 87 or newer or 82 or older.

depending on where in the world you are , yes the parts are hard to find, even at a good recking yard