Well, the primary goal wasn't to save money, the primary goal was to have
fun with a project to work on.  I've had several other project cars before
but always
before the car kind of turned into a project car but wasn't intended to be
one.
That is, I bought the car planning on driving it as a used car, then after
getting it within 6 months there's huge amounts of things wrong, so I end
up spending a lot of time working on it, rather than using it for what I
bought
it for.  Then when I finally get everything fixed on it I've spent way more
than I
wanted to, and now I have so much invested in the car that if I sell it I
will
take a bath.  Plus that since I've been working on them under pressure -
when
you need the car to go to work the next day, for example - there's little
enjoyment in doing the work.

This was the first vehicle where I went out and deliberately looked for a
specific make and model vehicle in the "broken-down $100-$200" price
range with the express intent on being able to work on it at leisure.
I was particularly pleased with this find because for that price I had
been expecting to end up with something like a late 80's early 90's short
wheelbase Caravan that either had the smaller 2.5L engine or had a 3.3L
engine but had massive body damage.  I never expected to get a T&C of this
vintage.

It is actually quite difficult to find $200 vehicles out there that have
little to
no body damage but blown-up powertrains.  Most of them when they
get to be that price they have passed into the hands of owners who don't
give a sh.t about them and use them for stump-pulling or plowing the
back 40 or something equally bad, and when they finally bite the dust
the seller is just hoping to get $50-$100 for the carcass, instead of having
to pay someone $50-$100 to haul it off.  We are talking vehicles with
cracked winshields, big bashed dents in the side, collapsed bumpers,
and rusted like a sieve.  Most of the middle class people in society when
they have an older vehicle that they have maintained well and it's
powertrain blows up and is not cost effective (to them) to fix, they
they don't think to sell it, instead they either trade it in to a new car
dealer
or a high-end used car dealer, or donate it to the Kidney foundation.
Once it ends up there it goes straight to the auctions where the leeches
all fight over it, then it ends up getting picked apart in some wrecking
yard.
And I don't have the time to devote an entire day to attending some auction
of junked cars, then getting outbid by a wrecker who can take a van
like what I got, chop the 3.8L engine out of it with a cutting torch, and
sell the engine for double what he paid for it for.

With this van I've been tracking the expenditures on it.  My goal is to
try to end up between $1500-$2000 total expenditure for everything,
including consumables, replaced interior parts, the A/C system which
needs repair, and the other nickle-dimey stuff.  So far I think I'm doing
very well to meet that.  If I do I'll end up with a vehicle that is at least
worth the same as what I put into it, probably more.  And how many
leisure activities are out there that you can say that about?

I'm having Transmission Exchange Co do the transaxle:
http://www.txchange.com I live about 3 miles from them. Once they open the
trans up and see what's inside they will call me on it.

Actually, I think the big cost savings on this is in all the subsidiary
work.  For example
with the trans out of the way, changing spark plugs in the back of the
engine is simple.
Also I found a used driveline in a u-pullit that has intact seals for $35 -
a shop would
have probably wanted to put in a rebuilt driveline, and cost of that is
$250.  (there is
only one driveline shop locally in PDX that rebuilds this style driveline)
Also I've
found the front motor mount is shot, the LH drivers half-shaft boots already
have a bunch
of surface cracks on them, one of the cast aluminum PTU support brackets
that
bolts onto the engine is cracked, and the serpentine belt looks like a cat
clawed it.
Fixing all that piddly crap now means I can get the
parts from a wrecker (like the bracket) or get remans on the axles  (I'm
going to do both
sides) and you see, that is where the real money of these jobs is.  A shop
would charge
a parts markup on all these parts plus labor.  It's not cost effective for
them to send a
guy out to a wrecker for an hour to pull an aluminum bracket that the
wrecker would charge $5 for.  And it's not even worth calling the wrecker to
do it since the wrecker is either going
to want to keep the bracket with the PTU, or they are going to destroy the
bracket
while removing it, and even if they didn't they are going to want to get
paid for labor
too.  The garage would order it from the dealer at $50 a crack plus their
markeup.  And they
would get reman axles from NAPA and charge me $80 (NAPA's retail price) per
axle plus their markeup it would be more like $90-100 per axle.  I can go to
Thrifty
and get a Federal Mogul reman axle for $60 per axle.  And this isn't even to
mention  the consumables like ATF, which would of course get shop markups on
as well.

And also, half the fun of bringing a vehicle like this up is running around
to all the
places and finding the parts you need.  It's like a jigsaw puzzle, it's just
instead of
doing the puzzle at a table, it's a much bigger puzzle you do in the garage.

Ted

Heh - you missed the part at the beginning of the pictorial where I said we
had an
"existing '95 Chrysler T&C"   I can pop the hood on that if I forget how to
reassemble
something since the engine compartments are identical.

Thanks!  I mainly put it together as what you might term performance art,
and because
someone else on the forum mentioned they had a AWD with the same problem,
languishing
on the side of the garage.  Besides, this is the kind of job that sounds a
lot worse than it
really is, hopefully someone out there who has one of these who is a bit
afraid to jump into
it, might reconsider after viewing.

Ted