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hi everyone,although we are not newbies to camping ,we have sold our pennine folding camper and we are going to buy a caravan,does anyone have any tips that we should or should not look for when we view.we will buying 2nd hand at first and dont want anything too expensive,but all your tips and ideas would be useful.

also was wondering if there is anywhere i can look for a guide to the price of vans,have been looking for a few weeks and the prices seem to vary so much,so not really sure if i've found a bargain or not lol.

all advice wil be welcome,many thanx in advance,

wendy and the gang

thanx very much for that ,will go and take a look,

regards wendy

Don't forget to get a damp meter to check out the van properly, usually around £10 from DIY stores.

Happy Hunting

Papa

Hi

I sold my Pennine folding camper about 6 months ago for a caravan so I know where you are coming from.

We trawled the internet and visited many dealers and compared prices that way. Dealer quality varried enormously though - we saw the same spec van in 2 dealers, one was a dog, the other was so immaculate we bought it!!!

Reckon we saw 100s along the way first.

We bought through a dealer because we knew nothing about caravans and wanted a decent guarentee if there were any problems further down the line. This has been a prudent move since the toilet flush packed up about a month ago. Dealer repaired it FOC.

Anyway, good luck finding "your" caravan.

SB

Same for us, our first van, didnt want to spend a fortune & knew nothing about them at all.

Bought from a dealer with 3 months warranty-and worth the paper it was written on

Very pleased with van & service, only problem so far was the hitchlock which was replaced no questions asked.

For me it took away the worry, and the van is worth a little more than we paid for it

Happy hunting

Re the damp smell, this is not always a good guidline as I witnessed with Als Parkers Caravan, there was no smell of damp and the only sign that something was wrong was a grab handle came away in his hand, after extensive repair works by Als and his missus the van is now probably in better condition than when it left the showroom!

This is our first van and we bought it for £500 with the intention of replacing it when we could afford to. Now in its 17th year we still pull it all over the country and plane to do a complete rebuild once we get the weather and a chance to do so!

thanks for those kind words papa, I agree with you totally about not having a smell of damp as some caravans are fitted with a plastic seal on the inner wall bord joints that trap any smell behind the walls.

these days damp is a much larger problem than the days when caravans were built to last and thank god for this website as the amount of information and advice that is available by the I fixed it club is second to non and i very much doubt is available anywhere else on the web. just another unique item on the UKcampsite forum .

here is a list of websites of the fixed it club members.

http://www.alanparkers.dsl.pipex.com/
http://hp-h.com/p/wizard41/
http://members.lycos.co.uk/neilscot/index.htm
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/justperfumery/Page%20One!%20-%20The%20Find.htm

http://www.leanneandmark.co.uk/Caravan_Repair.html 

http://www.kparsfan.bravehost.com