I inherited a 20 year old van that had not recently run the fridge on gas. It took a good few minutes to get the gas to come through and spark up successfully. There weren't any leaks - the gas just needed time. Remember to give it a chance ...
Thanks for sharing your experiences, it's useful for me as I'm selling my narrowboat and moving into a motorhome or campervan later this year. When you said 35 out 38 vans had significant damp, I've started to think about buying a panel van conversion instead. You can still get rust with those, but at least the skin doesn't leak. The only question is whether I can adapt comfortably to a smaller living space, less storage, etc. I'd be interested to hear why you ruled out a van conversion yourself, if you don't mind sharing that?
We originally wanted to do a van build and as I have a CAD design background I designed it down to the mm with wire guages and everything but finding a building space was impossible. So we went down the 2nd hand MH route and fell across a few A class vans which I liked as they make better use of the space and they also have less seams ergo: less possibility for water ingress. Ducato, Boxer & Relays are all basically the same van and have good underseal, galvanised undercarriage and good near the coast so less rust whereas the Mercedes and VW are a little longer but do suffer from rust. We actually managed to get 4 travel seats, 4 berth, shower/toilet & a rear seating area into a XLWB van so it's possible but with a coachbuild you get more storage. I'll be doing a walkaround tour of ours shortly going through all this and you'll see just how much storage you get. If I had to do it all again would I build? No. Buying prebuilt is a compromise but so is building as you lose a lot of storage IMHO.
Not knowing anything about you I'm sure your time is worth more than travelling around looking at vans, surely you would have saved more money buying from a decent dealership and paying them a premium for some kind of peace of mind warranty
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
I inherited a 20 year old van that had not recently run the fridge on gas. It took a good few minutes to get the gas to come through and spark up successfully. There weren't any leaks - the gas just needed time. Remember to give it a chance ...
Thanks.
I have tried a few times but I am concerned about a gas build up if I just leave it trying to fire up.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, it's useful for me as I'm selling my narrowboat and moving into a motorhome or campervan later this year.
When you said 35 out 38 vans had significant damp, I've started to think about buying a panel van conversion instead.
You can still get rust with those, but at least the skin doesn't leak.
The only question is whether I can adapt comfortably to a smaller living space, less storage, etc.
I'd be interested to hear why you ruled out a van conversion yourself, if you don't mind sharing that?
We originally wanted to do a van build and as I have a CAD design background I designed it down to the mm with wire guages and everything but finding a building space was impossible.
So we went down the 2nd hand MH route and fell across a few A class vans which I liked as they make better use of the space and they also have less seams ergo: less possibility for water ingress.
Ducato, Boxer & Relays are all basically the same van and have good underseal, galvanised undercarriage and good near the coast so less rust whereas the Mercedes and VW are a little longer but do suffer from rust.
We actually managed to get 4 travel seats, 4 berth, shower/toilet & a rear seating area into a XLWB van so it's possible but with a coachbuild you get more storage.
I'll be doing a walkaround tour of ours shortly going through all this and you'll see just how much storage you get.
If I had to do it all again would I build? No. Buying prebuilt is a compromise but so is building as you lose a lot of storage IMHO.
Not knowing anything about you I'm sure your time is worth more than travelling around looking at vans, surely you would have saved more money buying from a decent dealership and paying them a premium for some kind of peace of mind warranty
I've had issues with some dealerships also unfortunately.
Mabey if you had a good roast beef dinner your luck would change
😂