Thanks I use to tow caravans around for a number of years I think this would be less
Hassle just need to make my mind up wether to go for turbo or not seen a nice layout 2.5 non turbo she say just make your bloody mind up lol
We had a 1986 French Le Voyageur for five years up to last autumn. It was 3 tonnes and a massive 73bhp but we managed the mountain roads of Alsace & Auvergne pretty well, albeit slowly sometimes. Even not having power steering wasn't as big a pain as you might think.
There are plenty of Hymers of the same vintage out here in France and a lot of Talbot / Peugeot based vehicles from the same era. Whether they are rust buckets or not depends a lot on how they have been looked after.
A lot of the older campers have the 2,500cc Peugeot J6 / Citroen C25 and Fiat Ducato engines. They are all the same engine and bullet proof.
Hi Frody
We bought a Hymercamp 4 years ago. It's a 1995 reg with a 2.5 diesel engine and it's automatic and based on a Ford Transit. We looked for a long time (2 years)until we found a motorhome that we were happy with and even then we missed some things we should have been looking for. Our budget was even lower than yours so we looked at some really ropey old vans. So when we found our immaculate Hymer on offer for £6000 with only 18,000 miles on the clock we were very excited. The phrase if it seems too good to be true then it probably is comes to mind as we bought the motorhome and about a year later found some serious damp issues in the back which were conmpletely undetectable concealed by a false wall. We only became aware of it because the exterior started getting tiny holes in it. We've repaired it all now, after a lot of hard work but fortunately we've been able to do it all ourselves so it hasn't been too costly. The engine is very sound and whenever we have it serviced the engineers say how good it is, it's always run like a dream but you do have to be careful and very thorough when you're looking at these motorhomes and not get too excited about them until you've checked everything and I agree with some of the other comments that you need to be keen on DIY and maintaining the vehicle or it will deteriorate quite quickly. Having said all that we love our motorhome it's great fun and the Ford transit element of it has touch wood never let us down. We've travelled around all of the UK and we've never had a problem with the speed, on the flat it will happily go at around 60 - 65 and we tend to do our touring in short spurts of 150-200 miles a day so we've never felt the need for anything faster it does however slow right down on the long steep hills but again now we've got used to it we just relax and wait for it to get to the top, probably annoying all the other drivers but we get there in the end and I think with a motorhome you have to enjoy the driving part of the holiday too so if you don't mind leisurely driving you'll be fine. We're just planning our first trip to Europe in the motorhome so that has made us think about the route and avoiding steeper areas but apart from that I'd recommend you go for it but prepare for a long time searching for the right one. Good luck.
We bought a pre owned autotrail, star fire, turbo with solar panel.
We pick it up on 16th when everything will be explained to us.
First thing will be to fill it up and find out mpg.
We towed 4 berth fixed bed caravan with 2 ltr so i can't there being much difference in mpg.