Best place to buy a camper?

Evening all, with the arrival of the little dude we’ve workedout holidays likely to be within driving distance so thinking of getting a camper. Also handy for riding…

Been looking at transit conversions on autotrader etc but wondering if there is a STW equivalent for camper chat and sales? Any ideas?

Budget is around 10k if anyone has one here for sale too! But prefer petrol if poss…

Huge amount on eBay. But a real mix, some very basic homemade that are very overpriced. Some good ones….

Make sure everything works.

Don’t expect anything trendy for 10k.

Expect even less at a dealer.

Be careful on the home made jobs unless your willing and able to get stuck in.

I’ve spent 2 weeks full time sorting out someone elses wiring and plumbing …..The woodwork and the upholstery looked pro but the under lying fabric a bit meh.

As trailrat says, if you look at self-builds, go with low expectations. You can find some great well-specced vans that are really good value, but at the same time you will also find ones that are a bit shoddy, heavily built etc. The worst thing you could do is decide ‘thats the one’ and buy it without giving it a proper going over.

We bought a two year old ex-lease LWB Transporter then gave it to Vanguard Conversions in Fort William to transform as a long term investment.. couldn’t be more delighted with it. The only way the wife was going to consider using it was if it was done properly and comfortably. Brilliant adventures with the family 🙂 Given the conversion was just shy of £10k I guess it’s not going to be an economical option for you, there is no point doing a quality conversion on an old van.

local facebook groups.

We bought a two year old ex-lease LWB Transporter then gave it to Vanguard Conversions in Fort William to transform.. couldn’t be more delighted with it.

which’ll be over 2x the OP’s budget surely!

for balance i did it properly and comfortably for a fraction of what a vw transporter costs
as i said before avoid trendy vans like the vw and youll get alot more bang for buck.

i probably spent a 1/4 of that vw and well within the ops budget with significant change and am more than happy with it despite rewiring and replumbing it.

Iveco’s are the polar opposite of VW’s…I bought mine at two years old and the depreciation meant it was about 50% of the original price! It was immaculate and had about 12k on it. I’d have preferred to buy one that was a little older and cheaper but they are hard to find in good condition so had to stretch the budget a bit.

OP, without looking to create an argument, can I suggest after looking at a few £10k campers you check out a £10k caravan?

pfrumpy of this parish is selling a T4 camper that may suit and is in budget

Be very careful…

I bought a 10 year old Transit based camper last August for £2500. The conversion was nice but basic, and it was fine for my needs. I took it for a pre MOT check a month ago and the nice undersealed bottom which I saw when buying it was just covering up a very, very rusty base. I was quoted £2500 – £3000 to get it sorted and every body shop said Transits, Merc Sprinters and VW Crafters were really bad for rust with some being written off after only 5 years. I was told repeatedly to go for Fiats, Renaults or Citroens.

I have just bought a Renault Master Minibus which I used the conversion from the Transit as the base for my own conversion. Much happier with the result.

I did look at vans which had already been converted at up to £10k and there was virtually nothing which was either very rough, or had been to the moon and back. £12k for a van with 300k miles was not uncommon…

I guess my advice would be to look for a good base vehicle as the conversion can be tidied up relatively easily, but if the base is a mess then it’s game over.

yes

use

https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk/

check the mot before you go . avoid anything with flagged rot. rot doesnt travel alone…. rusty sills usually mean that the body mounts aint far behind …… youll just chase it round the van.

i see alot of low miler transits and LDVs – check on there and you see they have all had welding done for previous mot …. and the next mots just about here ….

I did look at vans which had already been converted at up to £10k and there was virtually nothing which was either very rough, or had been to the moon and back. £12k for a van with 300k miles was not uncommon…

again i wholely agree you need to have your looking head on . do not go with your heart. I went with my mate who was A. a mechanic and B Hates ivecos – and he couldnt fault it structurally/mechanically when driven.

but what i will say is i wouldnt expect a clean sheet for 10k….. it will have its faults but choose one whos faults can be fixed… ie electrical or mechanical – hell ill fit a new engine and gear box rather than deal with rust – and i can weld and im used to dealing with land rovers…..but lifes too short for rotten vans + as spooky pointed out to me pre viewing – to weld often the interior will have to come out …..

I have to second the be careful warning. At 10k for a fully converted van, you are likely to get a lot of fairly dodgy vehicles that are both older and have problems. To give a comparison, I bought a base 11 reg T5 LWB for 10.5k in 2015. I felt mechanically any older and if they have been a work van, then you needed to be very careful regarding the sort of life they have had etc. It’s all about the body work and stress on the body/suspension. We then spent around 10k on the initial conversion and a further 5k getting a pop top, heater and bike storage bit at the back installed.

You don’t need to buy a T5 obviously but even if you go for something a bit cheaper such as a Ducato or Trafic, I would still reckon on needing around 15k to build something fairly hassle-free.

It can really be a minefield out there and requires significant investment of time to try and find what you’re looking for. On the plus-side, having the van is amazing and gives so much flexibility both on heading off and also moving stuff around which is an amazing added bonus. In my mind well worth the cost!

Good luck!

eBay, Gumtree and Preloved are the best in my book. Also autotrader has a campervan and motorhome section too. Watch out for the countless scam ads on eBay/gumtree – camper vans/motorhomes seem to get more that any other category. If it looks cheap, check their other items to see if they have loads of other vehicles listed silly cheap too.

I’ve always gone for ‘proper’ conversions, I wouldn’t want the wife and kids travelling at 70mph with half a ton of DIY timber loosely screwed in the back. I know a proper motor home won’t fair particularly well in a crash, but there is some consideration to safety. We also decided that a bathroom was required, hence I had an Autohomes van (no longer made but similar to Autosleeper) and then a couple of Hymers. All were great! I now have a T5 but it is only for a family car, not for camping in.

You think pro conversions are any better? Lightweight ply screwed together with plastic blocks and self tappers?

Some self-builds will be full of roughly sawn 2×4’s but others will be much stronger than pro conversions. Its only recently the motorhome industry started making simple safety measures such as ensuring heavy fridges don’t break free and sail through the windscreen! Even rear belted seats have been a relatively recent ‘must have’.

I’m looking at something more basic, I figure you can always camp especially in summer and i don’t want to sell my usual car but have something for weekend trips that fits in the bikes and stuff and can be slept in at a pinch with some basic camping mats…

The basic question though is really the same on where to look/buy…
I’m pretty good at picking cars and usually buy privately but buying a van seems a lot different. (Especially private sales vs specialist van place etc.)

I can certainly live without a built in fridge and cooker ….
10k for me would be more than I usually spend on a car and I do 10k or so a year but what sort of commercial vehicle

I’d maybe hire one and test the reality of a van with small kids. Sleeping can be a bit of a lottery and if Wx isn’t great it’s not ideal. I speak as the owner of a 4 year old and an ex-owner of a campervan. We’ve invested money into nice cottages and had much more success – yes it’s not quite on the spur of the moment but we never managed that much anyway. For 1 nighters we take the tent.

I’m looking around myself at the moment, ebay or autotrader seem to have the most. I’m torn between a VW or larger vehicle, I like some of the home build larger vans on here but want something I can use daily too. You can get VW T4’s in a petrol version, I think they used the Golf GTi engine but won’t get the same mpg as a diesel but they do seem to be cheaper, but diesels seem to be a premium price and reading about some of the costs for repairing diesels scares me – why are diesels so expensive for some parts? I’m also liking the idea of getting a caravelle or tourneo minibus type van and converting myself, but we only need something like a day van rather than full on camper. Caravelles and minibuses seem to looked after a bit better too.

I’m also wondering if diesels will end being penalised as there seems to be a lot of stuff about bad emissions and banning in city centres? Wil the tax go up on these a lot, at the moment it seems diesel are less tax based on co2 emissions?

I can certainly live without a built in fridge and cooker

It must have a fitted cooker, storage and seating which can be converted into a bed, or a fixed bed in order for the DVLA to register it as a motor caravan so you get cheap insurance.

This is to stop people bunging a mattress and camp stove in the back of a panel van and getting it re-registered.

We had a similar budget and have ended up with a transit based conversion. It started life as a network rail van.

Ebay was where we hunted but be careful, we found several obvious scammers and some very dodgy looking stuff, but we did find some really good ones that we missed out on until we got ours.

My advice on ebay is to always click on the sellers other items. We found several who were selling multiple vans, all very good value / cheap, that were located all over the country and rarely within 50 miles of each other. We walked away from all of those.

and banning in city centres?

Which would be a great thing for all IMO.

Can’t imagine trying to park my camper in town- ever.

I guess that’s why you always see dailys abandoned double parked when unloading 🙂

My eBay advice is do not buy blind always view the vehicle….

Re: Insurance and re-registering with the DVLA as a motor-caravan, it often doesn’t make a difference. I’ve used two brokers and probably three or four underwriters and none of them required the van to be re-registered with the DVLA, and when I did eventually get around to sorting it, the insurance didn’t go down. Does open up a few more companies willing to quote.

Doesn’t make any difference to the MOT or tax either…the MOT tester will test it as presented (i.e. ask for a Class IV!) and tax stays the same.

Speed limit changes for for anything over a berlingo though ….Which you might think is trivial until you realise that Scotland has no motorways north of Perth and several fast a roads that you’d be stuck at 50 on being the most hated man around 🙂

Yep, speed limits is the only real benefit I can see, although 50mph feels fast enough on single carriageways in a big wandering Iveco!

I have seen plenty of good converted T4s under 10K, but mainly on the forums and Facebook groups rather than EBay. For a 4 berth I think they are a good price performance mix and likely to retain value as the T2.5 fleet rot out and they become the cheapest useful option. Service history more important than miles on the clock in these.

Why do you prefer petrol out of interest? If it’s simplicity, you can’t get much simpler than the 2.4 5 cyl T4 (you can however get plenty of things quicker .. just adjust your attitude to how long journeys should take and you’ll be fine).

For the do you really want a camper? question – I too went the other way – Caravelle with a couple of tents (family and short stay) which was cheaper and a better fit for us – with thermal mats in the windows a couple of us have kipped in the van when needed, but prefer a tent anyway, saves packing so much away each day.

Yep, speed limits is the only real benefit I can see, although 50mph feels fast enough on single carriageways in a big wandering Iveco!

Another good point – the caravelle can at least theoretically do 70 on motorways and dual carriageways, and only costs £7 to get across the bridge to Afan with 5 people and bikes.

It’s a toughie. We bought ours (Mazda Bongo, auto free top with full side conversion from Montague) off ebay. Previous owner had had it a year – bought as a new conversion from Montague – and all paperwork to back-up; Montague remember the van and have been a joy to deal with since. We paid £8k, van was £9-10k originally from Montague.

There’s loads of places to get info and I did some research. As it happens the van’s been great on the whole (touches wood), with just expected ongoing maintenance of a 20 year old grey import.

There are stories of utter dogs out there, and as time moves on there’s more dogs to be found. However that’s the same with any older van; I’ve heard horror stories of T4s, and you’ll be paying a lot more to be ripped off.

yeah spooky try that on the a96 to inverness and youll be run off the road. I had a monster 6 berth coachbuild camper on hire on that road once for the strathpuffer. i swear id stamped on some of those drivers babies heads. but i agree by and large 50 is plenty in the beast.

Another warning to make sure that even so called professional conversions sometimes hide some absolute horrors. When we got our T5 we looked at a company near home as they had a van for sale which on paper ticked all the boxes. New conversion, DSG etc. Went to look at it and on the face of it looked ok. Then the questions started:
– what make of roof is it? Don’t know, I’ll have to check.
– what make of bed is it? Don’t know, I’ll have to check.
– does it have a gas certificate etc? Don’t know.
– why are the cushions on the bed loose? Surely they’d just slip and fall off in an accident. Is this even safe to be on the roads? Don’t know, we’ll need to sort that.

At that point I left. Unbelievable. With the surge in prices of especially VW vans, anyone thinks they can become a convertor overnight.

Daft idea but have a look at stuff on the continent. Lots more range of especially factory/professional VW T4s like Reimo etc and a shed load cheaper than over here. Only downside is the LHD thing…

Personally, with little ones, I’d have either a proper motorhome (even a small one) or a T5 Shuttle/Caravelle along with a decent airbeam tent. You can still use the van as a bolt hole in bad weather but you will be falling over eachother in a T5 size van with kitchen and beds and kids (in my experience).

If your gonna go down that route a Mondeo and a tent is alot cheaper.

To me the whole point of a camper is to have somewhere to sleep.

Want petrol as a I have a fear diesel is not long for this world…we had an old t25 a few years back but had to get rid because of new leg on old Diesel engines. I would no be surprised if diesel gets another attack soon given health chatter at the moment

You need good safe seats for at least 3 people – so unless keeping 3 people in front that means something in the back.

We used to have a seatbelt anchorage test rig at work – there are very few rockroll beds I’d let my family use. Most of the safe ones are over £2k for just the seat, and even then very dependent on the quality of installation.

Having an Mot does not mean the seat is safe in a crash or meets requirements – all it says is the belts aren’t damaged and are vaguely attached to the body.

A lot of the stw van converter threads are using fixed belted M1 tested seats for a reason (and they often still need significant floor reinforcement)

If your gonna go down that route a Mondeo and a tent is alot cheaper.

Tried that (well, S Max) but 5 people with bikes, boards and camping gear just don’t fit. Plus the rattly old T4 has been cheaper to insure and keep on the road than the SMax by a country mile (DMF / clutch cost me near the purchase price of the Caravelle, though I think I got lucky). Tax is about £50 more a year. It’s also a lot more pleasant for long drives, and inevitable in van picnics waiting for the rain to break a bit.

OP, do you live in the LEZ then or something? I can appreciate a moral objection, but living rurally diesel is the only option for anything over Golf size for me. I suspect any government getting heavy on older diesel cars is likely to be out of government at the next election.