One of the most frustrating things for any VW owner can be trying to find parts for your Vanagon. Many times you will call a local parts store, or the VW dealer, try to describe what you are looking for, but it is a shot in the dark, whether they actually understand you. So you could be waiting for a week or two for a part, that when it shows up, is the wrong one. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look up your part ahead of time, get the part number, and then call your parts supplier with the part number in hand? For some reason VW has always jealously guarded their part numbers as if they were made of platinum or some other precious metal. I can understand this back in the day when they were trying to sell new parts for vehicles that they had a dealership network that depended (partially) on the sale of parts. Fast forward to our day when the Vanagon is over 30 years old! Your local VW dealer could care less about the Vanagon (they actually hated them when they were new so guess what they think of them now). There is no longer any reason I can see to keep faithful VW enthusiasts from getting the part numbers for the parts they need to keep their vehicles on the road. Yet VW still guards them like they are Fort Knox. Enter Russian Hackers. Yup, those guys that everyone hates or sees as the Bogey Man right now. Well they are actually the best friend your VW ever had because for the last several years they have given us the keys to the kingdom! A web site that allows you to look up VW’s precious parts diagrams with most of those precious part numbers (yup some are deleted due to age, thanks VW for sharing before that happened… Not!) Here is a link to the site at this moment:
This is subject to change because every few months or so, VW will find them, and kill the site. But they will usually pop back up somewhere else. So if you can’t find it at this address let me know and I will update it to the latest and greatest. Now go, and spend countless hours looking at VW parts exploded view diagrams. You know you want to. Be sure to thank the Russian Hackers for their help. 🙂