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hello

i have decided to take the plunge and upgrading from a tent to a caravan could anyone give me some advice of what to look for when buying a caravan i will bebuying second hand with a limit of about £3000 i was hoping i could get some pointers of what to look for, am i better of buying private or from a caravan dealer,how much roughly storage would be such things like that, i know about the GVW limit and what mine is for the car i have

thanks for any help before i buy 1 and make a big mistake as it wont go down well with the boss

neil

Quote: Originally posted by Mrs Mop on 22/5/2010

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I hope you don't mind me mentioning, but you need to check your license to see if you can tow a caravan without having to take an additional test, as they changed the law and I can't remember after what year.  Perhaps someone on here will know. 

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Take a look on http://www.caravanfinder.co.uk/caravans.html for the layouts you want, ebay is good for then seeing the photo's of your chosen 'van.  Then check the towing weight that your car can tow on http://www.whattowcar.com/ an 85% match is what you are aiming for.

Take a look around dealers but not all of them will have 'vans on sale for less than £3500. so look on autotrader, Gumtree, local freeads etc.  Look on ebay but do look at the 'van 1st before bidding.  When you've found a 'van you like then take a damp meter and check everywhere.  If you really like it then it might be worthwhile paying a mobile engineer to check it over to see if it is worth it.  A little bit like getting an HPi check on a car lol but more expensive so you'd really only want to do that if you really like the 'van. 

hth and please do keep us up to date on how you get on, we're not really nosey just interested lol

Buying second hand vans.

Also, be prepared to travel quite a lot to view vans that turn out to be rubbish.  Not everyone is honest with their descriptions.

Have you looked at the classified ads on this site?

thanks for the replies i will get a damp meter, i dont have any worries about my licence have hgv class 1 so my licence will cover caravans, for all the (interested people) i went and had a look at a couple of dealers today and realised (when told by the wife) i need more money to keep her in the luxery she deserves but it has given me ideas of what vans to look for, the 85% towing weight is a bit confuseing though reading some of the threads it can be interpreted different ways but found a website and said my weight for my zafira is 1150 so it gives me something to go on

thanks

neil