Finding a van
Welcome! To get you up and running I have provided a comprehensive guide below discussing some considerations when choosing the right van for you and how to make sure your purchase will be worth the money in the long run.
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CHOOSING A VAN
One of the most important decisions you’ll make is what van will be suitable for you. After all this may be your new home, your holiday fun or simply an investment project. A lot of consideration and research will to go into this first step, layouts can and will be revised a hundred times, but being stuck with a van that turns out to be a limitation or a liability is not a good situation to be in.We took a few months to research vans, we looked into all the information regarding mileage, MPG, longevity, common problems, ease of getting spare parts this was all in tandem with yet more research into the sizing of the vans.
What van is right for me?
In order to find the right van for you, let’s ask ourselves the following four questions:
- How many beds do you need?
- Are there any height or disability issues to take into account?
- How often and for how long do you intend to use the van?
- What kind of driving licence do you have?
Here we will explain the considerations we accounted for when choosing our van.
- Our van needs to sleep two
- Ben is 6′ 5″ tall
- We plan to live in the van full time for a year.
- Ben’s licence allows him to drive any vehicle up to 3.5 tonnes
The statements above ruled out things like the VW camper and unfortunately the Dodge cargo vans that are sometimes imported. Anything that has a cab over the driver area eg. a luton van or a truck camper and also larger vehicles such as minibuses are also ruled out due to driving licence restrictions.
Ben narrowly missed out when the rule changes were made and without taking lessons and the appropriate test his licence doesn’t allow him to drive anything over 3.5 tonne.We did look into the lessons and test at the time and found it to cost a couple of thousand pounds to get up and running assuming a first time pass. With budget in mind and plenty of other suitable vehicles we ruled these out.
Our requirements also highlight that a short wheel base van would also be too small, as it wouldn’t have the space to fit a longer bed in for Ben to sleep comfortably. That left us with medium and long wheel base vans as options. It’s a tough decision between these two wheel bases. On one hand the medium is easier to get around in and more accessible for parking. It is also more subtle than it’s larger LWB friend and therefore more stealthy for camping in, however the LWB gives you more room to play with and for a longer trip would be more comfortable. We decided to write down a list of considerations that would be important to us.
With these considerations in mind we went with the LWB Van for the extra living space. We each plan to work on our various ongoing projects whilst we are away, and need to have space to move around inside and work, especially if the weather outside is poor. From our chart you can see that ideally we would like a shower, trying to cram this into a MWB van and still leave adequate room for a work-space may prove to be difficult.
Additionally we’ll require a good power setup, and plan to use solar to re-charge our batteries so we can remain off-grid where possible and appreciate the natural world around us. A long wheel base van leaves plenty of room on the roof for a large solar set-up and a fan for comfort and to help with condensation and humidity.
There are many choices for Long wheel base vans:
- Mercedes-Benz Sprinter
- Ford Transit
- Volkswagen Crafter
- Fiat Ducato
- Citroen Relay
There is a lot to take in with the great selection of vans listed above and each have pro’s and cons.
Crafter Vs Sprinter
Crafters and Sprinters are very much alike in the body and a lot of parts are interchangeable, with that said the Crafter seems to have more of a boxier shape inside, which is probably easier to convert than the Sprinter when it comes to insulating.
Ducato Vs Relay
Both the Ducato and Relay have galvanized bodies, which means they should hold up better with regards to rust. I am told that the Fiat engine is better than that of the Citroen. I once drove a Citroen albeit a car, and personally found that the gear box uncomfortable.
The Outcome
With such a choice we decided to focus on what vehicle would be better for our main destination. Looking into the van market in the US and Canada, where we plan to explore we soon found that both sprinters and transits are common and often converted. Mechanically they would be somewhat familiar to the mechanics as opposed to a van that was not popular within the US market. At last we had a starting point!
Our Van Requirements:
- Mercedes Sprinter of Ford Transit
- Long Wheel Base
- High Roof
- Max Mileage: 150k
- Not previously listed as a CAT C, D, S or N
BUYING A VAN
You’ve finally navigated the tricky realm of compatibility, you’ve laid down some solid ground work into discovering your wants and needs and you’re rearing to go, ready to get out there and purchase that van!
Well… unfortunately it likely wont be that easy, as we discovered. We’ve had a few different experiences during the acquisition of the van. We have dealt with completely rude salesmen, private sellers selling the van just before we got there and also really helpful yard owners who have let us test the vans out and applied no pressure to get a sale.
We finally brought our van from Yorkshire, it took us a good four hours of train travel to get there and we were picked up from the nearest station, which was still 30 minutes away. Don’t be afraid to look further away you may just find your perfect van and the trip will be worth it.To help navigate through this process here are some of our recommendations:
Top Tips:
- Patience
- Use the DVLA database
- Bulk buy HPI checks
- Hire a mechanic
PATIENCE
We underestimated the time it might take to acquire a van, in rare cases some individuals may get very lucky and manage to get a van almost instantly but in reality it will likely take at least a month or longer to find the ‘one’ and for such an important and potentially costly purchase it would be wise not to rush in, especially if you also have limited mechanical experience like ourselves. Over the month that it took us to find our van we employed many tactics. Starting with a daily search on Gumtree, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace and AutoTrader, we then compiled a list with any we found that met our requirements (Mercedes Sprinter: LWB, High Roof, 2008-2018 Max mileage: 150k and of course in the best state possible).
DVLA CHECKS
Once we had a small list of vans we checked the vehicle registration against DVLA database. The DVLA provide two free and very helpful web-pages:
- Check if a vehicle is Taxed
- Check the MOT history
We found that the MOT history web-page came in very handy, not only does it give you a general guide to how the vehicles has been maintained but you can get some idea of what may need to be repaired in the near future. This quick check also helped us to weed out any vehicles where their engine had been replaced. It’s free to check any number of vehicles against the DVLA database and although it may take you a couple of seconds per van you can gleam a lot of useful information.
HPI CHECKS
With an even narrower list of vehicles to proceed with, we wanted to learn more about the histories of the vehicles and make double sure that there were no nasty surprises. We went ahead bought a batch of 10 HPI checks. This check picks up where the DVLA leaves you, the HPI check is able to tell you a little more about the vehicle such as: any outstanding finance by previous owners, if it has ever been reported stolen or written off by an insurer.
NOTE: Although often competitively priced we decided to stay away from the surprising high number of CAT S/N vans that we came across. We aim to go to the US and Canada with our van and I had heard some horror stories of people having trouble insuring these vans or even having to pay a higher premiums in this country so we figured that it’s going to be a challenge enough for us without that on top.
MOBILE MECHANIC
In the end we had two vans that we particularly liked, both of which ended up being over four hours away from us. Not being mechanically inclined we decide to look into having a mechanic go and check the vehicles over for us and report back. This was helpful as we didn’t fancy shelling out for expensive train tickets and taking a day off from running our business to go and pretend to know what we were doing.
Hiring a mechanic was a great idea and I highly recommend it. There are a number of companies that do this: The AA, Click Mechanic and The RAC, we found the pricing to be very dependent on where the vehicle was located.
CONCLUSION
I hope some of this information has helped any of you that are stuck at the beginning of your journey. This part of the conversion process can seem massive and incomprehensible, but you will get there, Good luck!
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