A while ago I stumbled onto your site whilst searching for something and I was hooked. It wasn't until recently that I decided to join and do it properly!
I'm self employed and I've always had vans of my own. I loved the idea of modifying but at the same time I was in the "transit trap".
Transits are all I have ever known really, apart from a few LDV`S.
I used to like ford but gradually realized that apart from the MK5 they were just electronic bags of curse word waiting to cost me a packet when they went wrong.
Then one day I got talking to my mate, xjlee on here. He opened my eyes to a whole new way of vans, vans that actually work, last and are still alive many years after most things around them have rotted into the floor. I mean can anyone show me a transit van from 1985 that is still in one piece and will start first time in -15 degrees? I think not.
He showed me a few pics of slammed J vans and ever since then I was hooked. My only problem was finding one that hadn't been exported! We were looking at the usual suspects like Hi-ace, Mazda e220, Nissan urvan but they were either non existent or seriously overpriced due to demand.
Eventually I settled on the Hyundai H100. Now I wasn't too keen to start with as it has a strange front but I had a vision and it came good in the end. this was the base van, our blank canvas.
Nothing too special to look at, just a base J van with a 2.5 N/A diesel engine. I wasn't after a massive engine transplant or anything, just some simple mods to make it still usable for work but give me a smile when I looked at it.
The first step was to get it low!. Courtesy of the delica owners club we quickly slammed the front due to it being torsion bars. Lee managed to put it on the floor in a record time of 20mins for both sides, and in the rain!. For the rear we had to get a bit more technical. I went to see a friend of mine, a metal fabricator and he made me some 75mm lowering blocks. A nice chap over in the black country supplied a set of four longer axle U bolts and we set to work. To be honest I have never done this lowering business before but it was good fun and I recon anyone who is mechanically minded could do it. All in to drop it down it only cost us £50 to do, absolute bargain. After the drop it looked quite sexy but still needed some wheels.
I had quite a time finding bits for the van as it still needed to be practical. Two things I desperately needed were a towbar and a roof rack. Courtesy of the mighty eBay I finally managed to find one being broken in Wakefield that had both these items still on it! It cost me £100 for both items and that was delivered to the door which I thought was reasonable.
After I had fitted these I started looking on the net for modified H100 vans and drew a blank. That was until lee decided to do some crazy curse word like typing into google translate "Hyundai grace retro original". Well sweet jesus, we had opened up the whole world, there were people as far as Jordan modifying these vans and here is a taste of one of them
Now I really liked the look of them and particularly the mirrors. I learned that they were from a Mitsubishi delica. That was great but finding a set of them was a nightmare. There were the odd ones on eBay but they were battered to death and just one second hand mirror was fetching nearly £45!. I held out and eventually dropped lucky on a FULL SET, that's two fronts, the long arms, the small front mirror and the rear mirror in chrome for just £60! talk about the right place at the right time.
The next task was the wheels. Thank Christ for lee as I hadn't got a clue what PCD meant at the time. We found out that they were 114.3 PCD so we went hunting for wheels. I looked at quite a few but decided on steels in the end to keep it retro if you like. I didn't want alloys as that wasn't the feel I wanted on it. I found some bongo wheels on the mighty eBay again and they were delivered to the door for £90. A bit of a saga later to do with the tyres and a gimp trying to jack the van up on the sill
, and the tyres were on. It is still work in progress but here it is in all its JDM glory 
Next on the list are some import plates and god knows what else will take my fancy!. We went to pick up an addition to the clan today and here is a sneaky peek for a future thread that will be entitled "Is it a keeper?".
I hope I haven't bored you to death but I have been meaning to put this up for a while so here you go. Thanks for looking and hope you enjoyed it!
I'm self employed and I've always had vans of my own. I loved the idea of modifying but at the same time I was in the "transit trap".
Transits are all I have ever known really, apart from a few LDV`S.
I used to like ford but gradually realized that apart from the MK5 they were just electronic bags of curse word waiting to cost me a packet when they went wrong.
Then one day I got talking to my mate, xjlee on here. He opened my eyes to a whole new way of vans, vans that actually work, last and are still alive many years after most things around them have rotted into the floor. I mean can anyone show me a transit van from 1985 that is still in one piece and will start first time in -15 degrees? I think not.
He showed me a few pics of slammed J vans and ever since then I was hooked. My only problem was finding one that hadn't been exported! We were looking at the usual suspects like Hi-ace, Mazda e220, Nissan urvan but they were either non existent or seriously overpriced due to demand.
Eventually I settled on the Hyundai H100. Now I wasn't too keen to start with as it has a strange front but I had a vision and it came good in the end. this was the base van, our blank canvas.
Nothing too special to look at, just a base J van with a 2.5 N/A diesel engine. I wasn't after a massive engine transplant or anything, just some simple mods to make it still usable for work but give me a smile when I looked at it. The first step was to get it low!. Courtesy of the delica owners club we quickly slammed the front due to it being torsion bars. Lee managed to put it on the floor in a record time of 20mins for both sides, and in the rain!. For the rear we had to get a bit more technical. I went to see a friend of mine, a metal fabricator and he made me some 75mm lowering blocks. A nice chap over in the black country supplied a set of four longer axle U bolts and we set to work. To be honest I have never done this lowering business before but it was good fun and I recon anyone who is mechanically minded could do it. All in to drop it down it only cost us £50 to do, absolute bargain. After the drop it looked quite sexy but still needed some wheels.
I had quite a time finding bits for the van as it still needed to be practical. Two things I desperately needed were a towbar and a roof rack. Courtesy of the mighty eBay I finally managed to find one being broken in Wakefield that had both these items still on it! It cost me £100 for both items and that was delivered to the door which I thought was reasonable. After I had fitted these I started looking on the net for modified H100 vans and drew a blank. That was until lee decided to do some crazy curse word like typing into google translate "Hyundai grace retro original". Well sweet jesus, we had opened up the whole world, there were people as far as Jordan modifying these vans and here is a taste of one of them
Now I really liked the look of them and particularly the mirrors. I learned that they were from a Mitsubishi delica. That was great but finding a set of them was a nightmare. There were the odd ones on eBay but they were battered to death and just one second hand mirror was fetching nearly £45!. I held out and eventually dropped lucky on a FULL SET, that's two fronts, the long arms, the small front mirror and the rear mirror in chrome for just £60! talk about the right place at the right time. The next task was the wheels. Thank Christ for lee as I hadn't got a clue what PCD meant at the time. We found out that they were 114.3 PCD so we went hunting for wheels. I looked at quite a few but decided on steels in the end to keep it retro if you like. I didn't want alloys as that wasn't the feel I wanted on it. I found some bongo wheels on the mighty eBay again and they were delivered to the door for £90. A bit of a saga later to do with the tyres and a gimp trying to jack the van up on the sill
, and the tyres were on. It is still work in progress but here it is in all its JDM glory Next on the list are some import plates and god knows what else will take my fancy!. We went to pick up an addition to the clan today and here is a sneaky peek for a future thread that will be entitled "Is it a keeper?". I hope I haven't bored you to death but I have been meaning to put this up for a while so here you go. Thanks for looking and hope you enjoyed it!
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Looks so much cleaner without it cluttering up the front. Just keep it inside the van somewhere in case you get asked...then you can just stick it back on.
