> New to the world of Vanagon's and I recently discovered that the hall
sensor on
> my '84 appears to be in pretty bad shape. ... A local VW shop
> found one in their stock for like $280. With a price like that, I started
looking
> for whole distributors too, seems worth replacing after 36 years of
service. But
> they too seem in short supply. The distributors I found offered by Bus
Depot &
> Van-again are both out of stock and neither sell the hall unit

Matt, welcome to the Vanagon List!  We will have rebuilt distributors back
in stock in about a week for $159 that include a hall sensor. We're just
waiting for the rebuilder to finish rebuilding our cores. We'll have new
Bosch ones in about 3 weeks for $299.  You are right that it's not worth
buying the hall sensor alone; they were discontinued long ago so people
think the few that are left are worth their weight in gold.

BTW. as a list member you are entitled to an additional 5% discount on most
$5+ orders by using code list1e on checkout. This includes the rebuilt
distributor, but not the new one as it's already on sale.

Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot
BusDepot.com