The Big Timber Mancave & It’s... Chaser spam... 30-01-20

Until i become a grown up and work out some rudimentary IT literacy and can upload videos...





Chaser spam?
















































































The more i look at these pictures, the more i'm missing this silly Yakuza missile

Are you a Grimsby / Cleethorpes native then mate?

The Chaser went over to Coventry unfortunately. I'm usually to be seen in my Transporter or the R53 Mini at the moment, the CR-X comes out to play when the roads aren't salty

Life can move on astonishingly quickly can't it?

I think it's fair to say the past three years have been pretty strange for everyone. I've had a bit of a rollercoaster.
I've found myself with a slightly different outlook on life and for the time being at least, a strong desire to spend my time away from the busy and the noisy and instead time at home tinkering. It's something my dad's got involved with and it's feels nice pottering in my garage and being fairly unproductive, but thoroughly enjoying the process.

It's not often I buy new things, even more so technology, yet here I am prodding this out on a laptop I bought for the specific purpose of going back on Retrorides. It's always nice sharing your toys and showing bits you've knocked together, and for me its really nice way of documenting what I've been up to. It's a reference point for the things I've been up to that have made me happy and kept me busy.

Over lockdown I did an awful lot of faffing around with vans. Camperisng them mainly, and usually VW T5s. I'd always wondered what a T4 would be like by comparison. I'd only had a brief go of one before, that was a fairly standard 1.9td and it was enough to tell me I didn't want one. At least not with that engine. 5 pots are cool though. I can't think of much they aren't great in.

bout this time last year a friend of mine invited me down to London to have a catch up. I ended up doing a days work as a SFX assistant, meeting Peter Capaldi and agreeing to buy a tired looking, smoky VW T4 Caravelle in a very endearing shade of green. In all fairness I paid a bit more than I would have liked, but my friend was still losing money at that and I thought it had good bones. It also had the 5 pot 2.5tdi, in 88bhp non-intercooled 'Blue I' flavour.










Immediately approved by Billie cat

It's a 2002 Long Nose, Short wheel base, twin sliding door, tailgated shell Caravelle - everything you cant find in most ex works vans. Cool if your after that sort of thing. I never did take advantage of the twin sliders with any artistic photos or tomfoolery through the opening like a motorbike chase. Anyhow.

It also came with 250K miles on the clock, probably 10k left on the cambelt, mismatched tyres, a bit of a smoking problem and some admittedly pretty well colour matched bodge tape hiding rot in one of the sliding doors. Add in some white silicone sealer around the windscreen and a faded old roof box and it looked a bit life/ex.
The roofbox turned out to be a period and vaguely sought after Kamie item that scrubbed up pretty well.

Except for a terribly colour matched repair to the nearside front wing it was really solid. I'd been dreading having a real prod underneath but it turned out to have never been welded and all the surface grot was saveable. I immediately set to fixing none of its immediate weaknesses and ordered a 2.5" stainless side exit exhaust because it was a bargain and completely justified by the old exhaust having oil on it. The same day of enthusiasm saw a pair of new -55mm lowering springs from Germany fitted (£55 delivered seemed like a bargain) with the front torsion bars wound down to match and a swap out of the rear 3 seat bench and a second hand twin seat belted Rock n Roll bed fitted.


















I always meant to reupholster it but never did, although it had a selection of funky green throws in there. I got a bit weird and started finding green things to go in it for a while.

The exhaust and altitude correction had a staggering effect on morale. It was still a very slow boat but now it was a slow motor launch rather than a tanker. They make a proper noise too. 5 cylinders and a whoofly turbo noise and a pretty revvy kind of keenness to it. It was at least sounding like it was trying.

Did I mention it had tow bar? Well it does, and went straight in and made a plan to extract my CR-X from its very miserable spot on my drive where it's festered for 3 years and bring it to my work to be revived after hours. It towed pretty well. It didn't have much in the way of trousers when it came to hills, which is a problem in the Lincolnshire Wolds.





Around this time it gained some cool 1960s chrome steel wheel trims I picked up cheap from an autojumble. I'm not usually a fan of much chrome, but I think you can get away with certain things more when it comes to VW buses. The problem was being as mine was a late T4 it had the bubbly round hole steel wheels. These interfered with the concave wheel trim and wouldn't engage. I ended up spending more in diesel and faffing about going to pick up some early spec square hole wheels to get the buggers on. Looked alright though.

I think it's all in the engine mate. I've driven the 60 odd brake 1.9td T4, albeit briefly and it was slow. Slow and still revving its knackers off above 55. I think without the grunt and the noise of the 2.5 it loses its clunky charm and it all stops being endearing. I find that with the Transit Di engined stuff, its just too much like hard work after a while. The 5 pot has longer gearing too which helps massively. I think it gives a theoretical top end of about 120!

How are you getting on with your T5? They are a world apart to drive aren't they, some can be made surprisingly quick too

I've got a few more bits from the past couple of years I'd like to put up. I'll look through my pictures and stick something else up tomorrow.

That looks really smart on those wheels, black paint is pretty rare too. Nice

Sounds daft, but in lining the interior have you breached the seal on the tailgate anywhere? I've seen that done and it causes little leaks that track through. Or perhaps the seal itself. I think some online sellers do a set of extra thick door seals that are designed to give a more luxurious feel to the refinement, but I imagine they would take up the slack of any wear or imperfections around the doors too?

We have no end of trouble getting home built campers registered as such these days. The requirement seems now that it has to have a fixed roof extension and even pop-tops wont suffice. Some sneak through but its hard work when it really shouldn't be.