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Glad to hear you sold the van.

Well Tom been there but didn't do it. We wanted a Van that would sleep 3 with shower toilet cooker fridge. We were looking for a van to convert and the cost of conversion for around £10k

1 First do you need a shower and toilet, these add a lot to the end price.

2 Try and find a good van, not battered, not easy. From what we looked at I would recomend the Relay, Ducatto, Boxer all basicly the same van or if you want a bigger van the Iveco. You are looking at £6k for a nice one then you will be lucky, vans get battered.

3 Then conversions we looked at many, with or without shower toilet is a big factor. Try this guy, http://hightop.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/index.html  one of the cheaper converters and the conversions are good for the money. If you say basic without toilet shower £5k with Toilet Shower £7k plus the cos of the van. The web site is poor and only shows the high tops he does but he does a nice convertion

4 Based on the above you spend £11k to get a nice basic conversion and £13k for a full converted van and have a poor resale value due to it not being a branded conversion

5. We came to the conclusion cheaper to buy one done.

Hi

Thanks for your input, Caz we have looked the the link most interesting,we did some research on it and he is a one man band and snowed under with work, must have found a good niche market for himself.

We were going to buy a van to use as a tow car only, (Volkswagen transporter was 1st on the list) as our ageing Laguna is getting close to its sell by date. We thought a van could carry all the bits and bobs for camping, barbies, chairs etc. Then we came up with idea of a camper, to do the odd 1 nighter. We have had a camper before, a rather cheap and chearfull 96 LDV. We found it great for 1 night but did a mini tour of Scotland in it and decided, mainly due to noise and size factors, it had to go. I know vans are noisy but that one was deafening, 60 MPH and we were using sign languge. We had a ride in a Transit engined LDV and this seemed a vast improvement over our original one. To be honest we just want to invest the least amount of money on the "camper" side of things. We are going to stick with our caravan as our main method of camping. Even just to get it lined,  insulated, some cupboards, the bed fixed, in will interest us. We are still looking round the secondhand market, but 6k for a 15 year old Transit/Renault that Noah fitted out, no way!!!!!!! Our tow car/van budget was 4k when we thought of the camper we increased to 6k, not a lot of money in camper van terms, but for the use we would get out of it we can't justify a lot more really, we might go to 8k, but the seller would have to be in tears when he handed the keys over!!!! We will keep looking and make some phone calls and see what happens, you never know.

try talking to Nu-Venture, both of them, near the canal at Wigan. Have heard good reports of their helpfulness, and it's not too far to travel, and you can always take a strol up 23 locks and back while you're waiting!

What about the Mazda Bongo?  You can pick one up unconverted and get it converted when you have the funds perhaps?  Imperial in Hamworthy Poole have a good range on their website.

Ali

Quote: Originally posted by twooks on 06/2/2006

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try talking to Nu-Venture, both of them, near the canal at Wigan. Have heard good reports of their helpfulness, and it's not too far to travel, and you can always take a strol up 23 locks and back while you're waiting!

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