UKC

Hi all,

The tent is starting to feel a little inadequate these days. I'm think of upgrading to a Van. What are everyone's opinions on the pros and cons of the various options below? What advice can you give me if you've already been down any of these roads? (ha, get it!!)

Option 1 - Buy a clapped out old shell for £2,000 with 500,000 miles on the clock. Kit it out on the cheap with mattress, lining, fairy lights for the Mrs etc, pay my mechanic to service the engine, then run it into the ground.

Option 2 - Lease a new fancy pants shell (lined) - take advantage of the warrantee, fuel efficiency etc, but accept that I can't kit it out with any permanent features and accept the high monthly costs.

Option 3 - Buy a second hand camper/part conversion from AutoTrader for about £3.5k to £4k or like. This would mean a higher up front cost, and if a full camper at £4k, would probably be a bit of a money pit to keep running.

Thoughts? I'm open to all three of the above or other suggestions.

In reply to ogreville:

I got a Mazda Bongo for about 4k, not sure what they are these days.

In reply to ogreville:

Option 1 and 3 is the same, only somebody else threw a mouldy matress into that clapped out 500k miles van and now they ask for £5000 for a van worth £1000.

I'd go for option 4, which is to buy a good condition fairly modern van for £4k and kit it up myself, and when bored with it you can sell it for £7000 because you threw an old mouldy mattress in it and stuck some tinfoil in the walls with no-more-nails

In reply to ogreville:

I was in a similar position recently, but decided the car/van berlingo thing with a "boot jump" was the best option for me. I didn't particularly want to drive around in a van (I don't drive to my normal workplace, but that's very likely to change and I could be commuting to all sorts of places in the near future) but I do want a camper rather than tent. This is ideal. Just had a fairly rainy/windy trip to the Hebrides and it worked very well.

2nd had berlingos are readily available and dirt cheap, and the removable conversion works an absolute treat. I got mine done by this guy for a grand - he'll make a bespoke conversion for any vehicle.

http://peakvanconversions.weebly.com/removable-units.html

Zero work, real comfy to sleep on, quick to make a brew, can sit in it drinking when it's freezing/rainy.

There's a second hand Amdro boot jump on here:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=644138

The Amdro one has advantages over mine, but also comes with a slow ethanol cooker which isn't great (workable in summer, apparently shite in inclement conditions).

Definitely worth thinking about this option as you get a normal car to drive that's pretty efficient and you could sell the conversion separately if needed. But what you don't get is a spacious van to hang out in...

In reply to ogreville:

Ha! I just went through this nightmare myself pretty much similar budget. High mileage but clean newer vans, low mileage rust buckets, mixture of the two. Ended up blowing the budget and buying a 2011 Transit Jumbo with FSH, low miles clean body etc and side windows for 6k. I'm a big fan of Transits, generally good value for money, good vans, cheap to look after. There's a reason there's 1000s of them everywhere.

In reply to Mr Lopez:


HA! funny you should mention that. A lot of the conversions I've seen for sale on the internet seem to be a bit top heavy on the mouldy mattress, tinfoil and no-more-nail front and a little lacking when it comes to quality joinery and well fitted fixtures.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Got a Bongo, N reg. Got 184,000km on the clock. Just been to west coast of Ireland in it. Bloody brilliant. Tough as old boots.

In reply to ogreville:

If you are buying second hand then consider the fact that many vans have a hard life and may need money spending on them, so consider who has driven the van before and how well serviced has it been? Also consider if the van has any aftermarket features, I've just bought an ex fleet LWB extra high Transit and it has a night heater, water heaters, the mother of all leisure batteries and did have a toilet, microwave, 3 water heaters etc that I'm in the process of ebaying (£100 for a second hand crapper!)

My brother in law was looking at ex police mobile speed camera vans and they tick a lot of boxes e.g. very well maintained, air con and heaters front and back etc...

Ex MOD vans would be worth looking at too - there are specialist auctions for them where you can see an RAC/AA check before you bid.

Other considerations are, are you wanting to fit swivel seats in the front, and if you do is their a bulkhead and is it removable? Also, look at past MOT's which will show up advisories.

Hope this helps, if I think of anything else to look for I'll post it up, but these are the first things that come to mind.

In reply to Baron Weasel:

Absolutely. There's fleet vans that are well looked after and fleet vans that are utter crap. I went to a few auctions and most were the latter. Wouldn't touch anything without FSH

What water heater you got? If it's a decent one I might be interested!


Also to OP
Make sure you test drive every van you look at, even if you're not sure you want it. You'll get an idea of what a good one is and isn't fairly quick. I drove one with a diff so loud I turned around within 200m of the dealers as I thought it was about to explode. Another that smoked a load. Another that was down on power, for no obvious reason.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:

Got two to remove, one is the hot drinks one and the other is a hand wash one with a fold out dog bowl style sink. I'll be packing up later for the weekend and will check the exact specifics and get back to you. Mrs W is doing the ebaying and reckons they are worth about £80 and £40ish respectively.

Also to OP. Check out what mileage you can expect, my previous van was a T4 1.9TD and was underpowered and had a low gear ratio gear box which meant it was only economical if you drove slowly and avoided hills. My new van has a 6 speed box and a 2.4TD engine and it really makes a difference to cruising economy.