van time! T4 vs T5….

My dad has had his 53 plate T5 2.5Tdi Caravelle for a good 7 years now, a rear suspension spring chipped and until recently that’s been about it…..but it’s now in need of a new turbo. Personally I think that’s reasonable for a 10 year old vehicle with nearly 150k on the clock.

Unfortunately whilst it is plush for a van of it’s era, my 10 plate Fiat Doblo (yes yes) shows it up for lack of refinement pretty comprehensively. Then again, the caravelle has some street cred 😆

T4 is slow, noisy and agricultural

You’ve obviously not seen mine 😉 [/quote]

Roughly 100bhp more than yours 😉

… I blew the turbo

There’s a lesson in here somewhere.

Yep I need a tweaked 2.5 turbo 😉

There’s a lesson in here somewhere.

Yep.

Turbo’s don’t last for ever, and on a van with 216,000 miles on the clock, things break.

(It’s a 150bhp as standard. 37more is hardly a massive leap, certainly not enough to cause turbo’s to fail)

To get a green placard for Germany you’ll need to get a filter fitted on the exhaust if it doesn’t have one. Our old T5 didn’t have one and it cost us about 1000 eur to get one fitted. Like the others have said the T5s drive much more like a car than the T4s. If you go for the older T5 (pre facelift) I think you’ll find the 1.9 engine a bit under powered. The newer ones are all 1.9 bit they’ve bumped up the ps but I have noticed it doesn’t tow our caravan quite as well as our old T5.

The people saying a T5 drives like a car must have really bad cars.

T4 2.5tdi. Ex AA van. Woofed up a bit by the AA. Goes very quick if that’s your thing. Drives like a van because it is but is a very easy drive. Afraid to say that if you find them a hassle to drive you are a spaz and should not be on the road. Would like a T5 but can’t afford one and doubt if a second hand one would have been as well looked after as a ex-AA jobby.
In true forum style T4’s are the best because I have one.

T4 2.5tdi. Ex AA van. Woofed up a bit by the AA

I’ve had a couple of ex AA T4’s and had them on the rollers, neither of them were any different (power or ECU map) from the standard 102bhp T4.

I think the idea that the AA vans are more powerful than standard, came from the fact they were listed at 114bhp in error at the Auctions.

Ahh but didn’t buy it at auction but from a garage whose sole business for a few years was flogging them so I believe them. Compared to other vans I’ve driven its fast when you floor it and hills present no problem. I’m more than happy with them and will drive it to its demise a long way in the future. I hope.

They bought it at Auction though. All the dealers (banwy vans etc) that sell Ex AA vans but at auction, as they all go for sale at auctions as they are released from BT Fleet.

The 102bhp 2.5 TDi is a powerful lump and it has loads of Torque. Which is why they feel more powerful than they should.

shouldn’t be too much of a worry. i live in Germany

Low emission Zones are Europe wide and German has loads of them.

http://www.lowemissionzones.eu/