looking for a cheap to run and repair reliable hauler, any advice welcome  cheers

Do you know what your looking for mechanically?

I’d say your in autotrader/gumtree/ebay land there and buy on condition, service history will be non existent probably.

just something that that has a long service life track record without issues, no idea mechanically TBH?

well into gumbaytraderland  😉

hmm at 2k your into the stuff goes bang point of life, either it’s all gone pop and been fixed or is about to or isn’t going to 🙂

helpful, thanks.

It is worth checking the DVLAs mot history page – at that level there will be plenty of advisories but at least you will be going into it with your eyes open.

Took me over 6 months, Manchester based. Had to travel far and wide to find one in decent condition with reasonable mileage in that price range. Every man and his dog are after the same thing! If you live in a city, any decent ones, within reach of the motorway network, are usually snapped up same day or are massively over priced. Don’t get me wrong, there out there, but **** me they are few and far between!

You would not believe the state of some of them! With people wanting top money for clapped out heaps of shit that have been to the moon and back.

Auctions were a waste of time IME. Full of clueless non-traders now-a-days, pushing prices up and canny auction houses with elaborate tapered fee systems taking full advantage.

Worst part about it is you get to meet some of Britain’s cleverest knuckle draggers, who like what they say and say what they like.

It is doable and you might get lucky.

What you after, how many seats, what sort of size etc?

What size are you after?

Last year I bought a 2006 Vauxhall combo with 109,000miles on it for £1600 from a dealer as it was a trade in. Came with a 3 month warranty (not tested it so may have been pointless). I’ve put 20,000miles on it for fairly little expenditure. It’s a basically a Corsa from drivers seat forward so parts are cheap.

Carried me plus teammate and 4 bikes to a load of CX races in the winter no problem .

Didn’t look too hard tbh, essentially got lucky the weekend I needed to buy, might. Be worth getting to know the local dealerships and asking about their tradeins.

something big enough to move furniture building materials etc in but not loads of it  3 seats plenty, tatty bodywork not an issue, just dont want to spend a small fortune on new injectors or a clutch/gearbox etc..

am looking at the Toyota hiace as a long lasing trouble free option?

Transits a minefield? so many versions any to avoid?

At that price range, it’s pretty much a gamble.

All you can do is make sure it runs reasonably well, and all the major bits still appear to work well enough.

Biggest issue with Transits in that price range will be rust. Vivaros shouldn’t have any rust problems, but they do have other potential problems, but some just go on forever with no major problems.

Merc Vitos are alright mechanically. You will mostly be looking at well in excess of 100k examples though and they don’t meet your criteria of being cheap to repair.

Transit owner here. £2.5k for 8yrs old with 79k miles. Now 120k+ miles at 14yrs old.

Bought the least rusty one i could find and it was fine for a while but it’s been fairly hefty welding bills for the last three MOTs, hopefully not next time as I think most of it’s been replaced by now! Mechanically great, only expensive bit has been a fuel pump. Mostly simple for the DIY mechanic and loads of parts out there from scrappys if required.

Look for rust in the sills, under the passenger seat, rear suspension mounts especially but it will occur anywhere. Spare wheel carrier will rot away completely but that’s not an MOT issue.

Mate scrapped a 2009 Vito due to rust.

Hiace is a good shout but for £2k you’ll be looking at really old and/or very high mileage, they do last though.

Best advice is choose on condition rather than age/miles, most vans are made of cheap steel and deisgned for a short, if hard, life and so rust like buggery by the time they are old enough to be in the price range.

And what Chester says, second-hand van salesmen make used car salesmen look very good indeed!

Advice I always got was to look for one that was used by a big company – gas/electric co, network rail or something like that. They get serviced on schedule at the dealers.

But to avoid the police ones cos they get ragged. Though I don’t know if that was more cars as opposed to vans…

thanks everyone