Imagine how cool it must be to be working on this problem at NASA! Digging through 50 year old engineering documentation not for archival or historical purposes but to actually make it work.
Also, it appears that Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1, according to Wikipedia... So maybe they had problems with Voyager 1 from the very beginning.
"It was launched 16 days before its 'twin', Voyager 1"
I guess unless Voyager 0 is the final goal. Either way, NASA is not using money efficiently.
Even if we had a backup probe to launch right now, it would take 46 years for it to get to where voyager 1 is now. How is the cost of repairing voyager 1 greater than 46 years of lost data?