1997 Ford Transit Convert - Budget Friendly Vanlife!

We came over from New Zealand and bought this van in February and drove around 12,000 miles over France/Spain/Portugal/Italy/UK for nearly four months. Now, sadly we have to fly back to NZ and thus it time for the van to find a new home.

The highlights:

1) Firstly, it has a banana engine. Essentially, this design, while old, is known to be extremely reliable and easy to repair… like… peeling back a banana. In a modern car if the timing belt broke it might be a write off, with the smiley the push rods can just be straightened with a vice. The engine is controlled by a single wire (No ECU). It is a relatively noisy and slow machine, however the simplicity of it means that if you are intending to travel long distances like we did essentially any mechanic can fix it. When we suffered a small breakdown in Portugal, I found a mechanic who was able to fix within 20 minutes of tinkering (for 20 euros!).

2) The interior is lovely. Giant bed that turns into a table, when it is in table mode we got 7 people sat around on the little sofas (great for festivals!). There is a world map above the front seats. The wood pannelling is all in good condition and it is insulated. We were able to live in the snow in the Dolomites with no issue. There is a diesel heater installed underneath the cabinets but we never even needed to use it. The leisure battery is less than 6 months old and runs a powerful fan and the internal rooflights. There is space for plenty of clothes, books and other possessions above the cab.

3) It can plug into mains power, all of the camping stove/mini fridge/mains cable/insulated curtains/baskets/boxs/jumper leads/fire extinguisher/etc will come with the van.

Also:

The main issue we had on our trip was with the electrical system. So we had the alternator taken out and fully repaired in Portugal, and an Italian garage completely fixed up the system that charges the leisure battery from the car battery. They also cleaned up the starter motor electrics. On its current MOT it was noted that there was a degree of rusting happening to the main chassis. On their report they considered it to be minimal enough not to worry. There is a degree of external wear and tear that you would expect from a vehicle this age and a ding in the right hand side. When passing through rougher areas of Europe that actually made us feel a little bit safer. Finally, there is a squealing noise for the first few minutes of driving, which a mechanic told us is from loose bearings in the water pump.

If you come pick it up from London we are happy to knock 150 pounds to spare you the LEZ charge. Open to negotiation as we are going back to NZ and need to sell it soon-ish. MOT is up on the 9th of July.