Hello chaps.
I thought I’d put this up in here for a few reasons. It won’t be anything fantastically interesting, it will probably be rather boring. I don’t have any spectacular plans or anything like that for it, however I will most certainly need some help. I thought rather than ask a load of individual questions in the technical section, I could post it all in here, document how following the suggested advice goes and hopefully it can become a reference for anyone else who decides to buy one of these vans.
It all started with a house move. I’d just bought my first home and it was a renovation project, so I needed something big that I could take into the tip and move a good bit of gear in. So I bought this wonderful green Seat Cordoba Vario.
Drove it down to Devon a few times as well, excellent mpg.
However unfortunately it was a bit too small, plus when I loaded it up with rubble it got stuck going into the tip and it wasn’t actually that big inside, so I had to part ways with it, reluctantly and look into something bigger, so the Seat was sold and I bought a Mitsubishi Challenger.
It was a fantastic truck and it collected a huge majority of my house materials, but it cost me a fortune to run, 3.0L auto diesel and I could no longer tow my trailer as it was too large for my close, so I could no longer back up my driveway with it. So the search begin for something a bit more practical.
That’s when I found this.
I spotted it on Gumtree, not my preferred marketing site, it was about an hour away down in Hythe, advertised by a woman who had bout it as a project and had to move it on.
Very little description written about it, 5 or 6 lines of information at most which is never reassuring. I’ve had a few and know what to look for in a round about way so sent off an email. No reply.
It was pretty obvious from the photos that it was a magnitude of different shades of white!
It had previously had some sort of day van arrangement inside which isn’t what I wanted but had been removed. Had some deep shag carpet in the back in a tasty light green!
Had the tailgate which I prefer.
It looked quite tidy up front compared to my previous builders vans.
Once again, I had no reply from my earlier enquiry. So I went back and asked if I could view. I didn’t have much time to fit a viewing in, but needed to replace the 4X4. So a bit of a rearrange and I managed to get down to see the van one Friday night.
First impressions were not good, multiple shades of white, looked rough around the edges. The owner was a very nice lady, she produced a huge mass of paperwork for the van since she had owned it and confessed she didn’t use it enough to justify renewing the insurance or tax. A few issues were bought up herself and a few more I had discovered. She gave me the keys and told me to take it for a drive. After a bit of talking we agreed a price, I was very reluctant as I didn’t want another money pit, my prior T4 experiences had both been awful and I didn’t want to get stung once again. My theory was that if I could just get 2 weeks out of it which would cover my house move, then happy days!
So I bought myself a T4.
It handled the house move in its stride. Surfboards on the roof seem slightly ironic!
The Plans
Lower it
Set of wheels
Some new seats up front
Upgrade the audio somehow
Tint the window
Pressed plates
Maybe even a private plate
Fix the abundance of problems!
Rear camera
I thought I’d put this up in here for a few reasons. It won’t be anything fantastically interesting, it will probably be rather boring. I don’t have any spectacular plans or anything like that for it, however I will most certainly need some help. I thought rather than ask a load of individual questions in the technical section, I could post it all in here, document how following the suggested advice goes and hopefully it can become a reference for anyone else who decides to buy one of these vans.
It all started with a house move. I’d just bought my first home and it was a renovation project, so I needed something big that I could take into the tip and move a good bit of gear in. So I bought this wonderful green Seat Cordoba Vario.
Drove it down to Devon a few times as well, excellent mpg.
However unfortunately it was a bit too small, plus when I loaded it up with rubble it got stuck going into the tip and it wasn’t actually that big inside, so I had to part ways with it, reluctantly and look into something bigger, so the Seat was sold and I bought a Mitsubishi Challenger.
It was a fantastic truck and it collected a huge majority of my house materials, but it cost me a fortune to run, 3.0L auto diesel and I could no longer tow my trailer as it was too large for my close, so I could no longer back up my driveway with it. So the search begin for something a bit more practical.
That’s when I found this.
I spotted it on Gumtree, not my preferred marketing site, it was about an hour away down in Hythe, advertised by a woman who had bout it as a project and had to move it on.
Very little description written about it, 5 or 6 lines of information at most which is never reassuring. I’ve had a few and know what to look for in a round about way so sent off an email. No reply.
It was pretty obvious from the photos that it was a magnitude of different shades of white!
It had previously had some sort of day van arrangement inside which isn’t what I wanted but had been removed. Had some deep shag carpet in the back in a tasty light green!
Had the tailgate which I prefer.
It looked quite tidy up front compared to my previous builders vans.
Once again, I had no reply from my earlier enquiry. So I went back and asked if I could view. I didn’t have much time to fit a viewing in, but needed to replace the 4X4. So a bit of a rearrange and I managed to get down to see the van one Friday night.
First impressions were not good, multiple shades of white, looked rough around the edges. The owner was a very nice lady, she produced a huge mass of paperwork for the van since she had owned it and confessed she didn’t use it enough to justify renewing the insurance or tax. A few issues were bought up herself and a few more I had discovered. She gave me the keys and told me to take it for a drive. After a bit of talking we agreed a price, I was very reluctant as I didn’t want another money pit, my prior T4 experiences had both been awful and I didn’t want to get stung once again. My theory was that if I could just get 2 weeks out of it which would cover my house move, then happy days!
So I bought myself a T4.
It handled the house move in its stride. Surfboards on the roof seem slightly ironic!
The Plans
Lower it
Set of wheels
Some new seats up front
Upgrade the audio somehow
Tint the window
Pressed plates
Maybe even a private plate
Fix the abundance of problems!
Rear camera
