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Ok, I can see that I can save a bucketload of money if I buy a caravan privately rather than through a dealer - and I've realised that our budget of around £3000 has to cover towbar, insurance, storage, extender mirrors .. all sorts of extras that need to come out before we actually buy a van.  Then obviously, the less we spend on the van, the more we have for our holidays in it right now. So a van for around £1,500 is probably the van for us.

So I started looking on ebay and gumtree and have seen a couple of possible vans - one only a few streets away listed as ready to pack up and go with all the equipment we would need.  But I'm finding it very hard to convince myself that I'm not going to buy the world's worst van and that, as a consequence, Mr WR will refuse to set foot in a caravan for ever more (after it took a lot of persuading from me that it is a good idea to buy one in the first place)! 

I've read some online guides so know i have to take my dampmeter and my torch, to try out that everything works and the beds make up with no missing slats, that the fridge/lights/fire all come on (how does that happen if there's no gas in the bottle or no ehu?), do I ask for a demo of the shower and taps?  Do I assume that the loo will flush in the right sort of fashion?  I ask about service history and Cris registration, and whether it's been involved in an accident. I have a pull on the grab handles to make sure they aren't loose, check the handbrake-y thing that I've temporarily forgotten the name of, make sure the jockey wheel turns and the breakaway cable isn't rusty. I look for cracks in the windows and cracks in the tyres. What else is there that's obvious that I'm missing?

If you bought privately with no previous caravanning knowledge, how long did it take you to make the jump?  How did you avoid all pitfalls? Did you buy a nightmare van and if so, what did you do?

And how do I know what makes of van were the real good 'uns 15 years ago? The top notch caravans that were built to last? 

So many questions!!

Thanks both! That's at least persuaded me to send off a couple of exploratory emails ...! And hello to a fellow west yorkie, SpriteSam

Can anyone recommend a mobile caravan engineer in the Leeds area, please?

And can anyone tell me how do I move a thread?  I meant to put this under the general caravan heading, not in Equipment

Hi.White Rose

To move this thread just cut  what you have put on here and start a new topic in the caravan section and paste in there what you have written here.Cheers.Alex simples