New to me 2018 mega spec L2 Trend " The hearse ".

[highroof]

Bought to replace this, my 60k 2009 T230 Limited, owned for 7 years.

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I'd been looking for a Limited L2 for the spec. I saw this, but initially dismissed it because I thought it wouldn't have enough kit. Plus, I didn't want a tailgate model. However I kept coming back to it, it was sensible miles ( 35k ) full history, the ad indicated it had nav, rev cam, DAB, and alloys. Then someone on here supplied me with the Etis options list. Load through hatch , synch 3 and cruise, 240 payload, none of which were mentioned in the ad.

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Ok, game on. Rang the seller. I'm in Newcastle. He was in Dartford, helpfully! More in hope than expectation, given that the thing was already cheap and there was no vat to pay, I set about him on the price, and humiliated myself by steaming in with an offer of a £1000 under the asking price. To his eternal credit, he didn't tell me to eff off and hang up, but did drop the price by £300.

In a fortuitous twist of fate, a mate was viewing a car in Watford, about 35 miles away from the van, so we travelled down in my old van, stayed in a hotel in Watford on the Friday, went to view his car nearby first thing ( Ferrari FF, the jammy git ), left a deposit on that and went to see the Connect. The dealer was great, threw me the keys, and disappeared saying to give him a shout when I was ready to drive it. Started it, plugged the code reader in, and was massively encouraged to find no current or historical faults. And no adblue! Absolute result as far as I'm concerned.

We had the van running the entire time we looked around it, found a couple of things to go into battle with on the price, but overall, very happy. Drove it, again, seemed fine. Ensconsed myself in the sales office and said it was a yes provided the discussion about the fact that both rear lights had the bottom inner corners broken off and there was only one key went my way. Managed another £100 off. Fair enough, cashed him up and set off.

I had already arranged to get myself to Chelmsford, as I'd done a deal with a breaker for a set of 2020 Connect steel wheels with nearly new Continentals on. I wanted the wheels for the winter Michelin Alpins I'd already sourced, and the Continentals for the summer alloys. Having travelled a significant distance in the wrong direction to meet this guy at the pre-arranged time, I was less than impressed to find that he had left 5 mins before I got there and wasn't planning to be back for almost 2 hours. A brief and acrimonious phone call followed, lasting just long enough for me to tell him to phuck off and die, before setting off back to Newcastle with my mate driving my old van. About 40 minutes later, and I'm wondering if that noise on the over run is something I shouldn't be hearing. Not much further and I've convinced myself the box has done a bearing.

Into a layby, up with the bonnet, and it's immediately clear it's done either the alternator bearing or the belt tensioner. I suspect from water in the bearing after having the engine jet washed during prep for sale. A gentle 200 miles later and it's got me home. A listen through a stethoscope confirms the tensioner bearing's had it, it's still got a month of Ford warranty on it, so I make the call. To find they can't do it for a month! I need it now.So I bought a tensioner and did it myself. Thanks for your help Ford.

Not a great start to what I was hoping would be years of trouble free ownership! However, these things happen. I put it behind me and bombarded ebay and paypal with multiple purchases, including waterproof, model specific seat covers, genuine floor mats, rear window security grille, replacement sliding door moulding to rectify the gouged original, replacement rear lights, new shorter number plates, a Brodit clip for my phone and roof rails and bars, which I still haven't had time to fit yet. I had the rear window tinted to 15% to stop people peeking in.

The seller of the wheels in Chelmsford made the effort and posted the wheels and tyres at his own cost. I fitted them and drove back to Watford with them on to pick up the Ferrari last Saturday. 5am start, arrived at Watford at 9am, had a pee and a cuppa at the sellers house, did the deal and got back to Newcastle at 2.10 pm having completed 520 pleasant and trouble free miles, during which I briefly managed to get the van more or less flat out on a blissfully quiet stretch of M1.

Pic as it looks now. I'm coming around to the opinion that it looks better on the late model steelies than it does on the alloys and they might stay. I'm probably going to get some black Zunsport front grilles next.

Sorry for the long post.

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[highroof]

Couple more pics....

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[Altransit]

Nice

I had to look twice to check that it wasn't a Custom

[Mike]

Nice one, what did it top out at?

[highroof]

Nice one, what did it top out at?

Don't think it was quite finished but I was catching stuff up and had to call it off. It was nowhere near the red line, but I doubt it has the stones to get close to that in top. It would probably do 140 if it could! Indicated 122. Slight but long downhill stretch. Probs about 108 in reality! I had Waze on, should have looked at that really! The opportunity caught me by surprise, I just suddenly seemed to have nothing anywhere near me.

My old 110 managed an indicated 118 on the flat, I had GPS on and looked at it, 106! I'll have a proper go when I get the chance. It's worryingly easy to find yourself at 95, it's really quiet at motorway speeds.

[Mike]

Speedy. Mine was speedy until it hit the factory limiter, strangely the cruise could be set at a max of 110 despite impossibility of actually getting to that speed solely under its own power.

[highroof]

Ha, never thought to try the cruise for big numbers! Never thought to take a pic either. Did you notice what the revs were at that speed? Are they all supposed to have a factory limiter? No sign of that on mine. Having said that, it took a lot of miles after I got it for the cruise and stop start to work, possibly a legacy of it having stood for a few months prior to sale and the battery being down.

What's the story with no adblue? I keep reading conflicting stories on the 1.5 and whether they had it or not. Is it year specific, or just a hit and miss thing?

[Mike]

All Ford commercial vehicles have a limiter at just over 100mph, and most commercials have tyres that are rated for about the same speed. It's some EU thing that the manufacturers abide by.

As for the adblue, when the Connect went to a 1.5 120ps engine (2016?) it wasn't adblue, when the facelift came out (late 2018?) they had adblue.

[highroof]

I had a look for info about the limiter after you mentioned it, seems it can be turned off. Starting to wonder if a remap has gone on in the past. I haven't anything to compare it to, so wouldn't know the difference. This is the only 1.5 I've driven.

[highroof]

Filled the tank from almost empty yesterday. 479 miles, average of 43.9mpg according to the trip. More than 10mpg more than the 110. I put the alloys back on that and drove it today to clean the brakes up, as it's stood for a month. It feels quick now it's empty, but whoever said it would feel like a tractor after the new one, well, never a truer word!

Got the roof bars and rails on the hearse today and drove it expecting it to be noisier with them fitted, but thankfully no difference. Pics to follow. I'm going to order another pair of bars as the roof is much longer than the other one, and reaching up to fit the ladder clamps isn't as easy as the 110 with the tailgate on this one. There's also the matter of figuring out how to fit a ladder roller that can actually be of any use, again, the tailgate is aggro for this.

I'm almost there with it now, I've ordered black Zunsport front grilles and I'm going to repaint the calipers at some point.

[highroof]

So, a week off work for good behaviour, and time to crack on with the jobs I wanted to finish.

Finally got around to painting the calipers. I wanted these to be as close to the factory colour when new as poss, but it's not an easy thing to do with rattle cans. I chose the palest gold I could find off the shelf, appropriately enough, a Ford colour, champagne gold. The weapons of choice for prepping calipers......

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The finished article...

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More to follow.

[highroof]

More pics. Calipers finished and wheels back on.....

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Ladder roller brackets powder coated and refitted...

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I also decided to try the upper reflectors that come as standard with the Limited. £58 delivered.

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[highroof]

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This hasn't been updated for a while. I've had it 16 months now and added 13k miles taking the total to 48k. A little while ago, I replaced the mirror caps with painted items, and took delivery of a set of ebay colour matched door handle covers for a cheap £25, the effect of both being much nicer than the plastic originals.

I've done 2 oil changes on it, the first at 37k miles, 5k after the previous service which was done in the care of the first owner and another at 43k.

Last week at 47800 miles it went in to Hendy Ford while I was working away in Southampton and received all filters and oil, an investigation into an oil mist which had appeared on the area around the turbo and inlet pipe ( which it turned out I'd already solved by nipping up the inlet pipe clamps ), and a video walk around pointing out the perished rear shocker bump stops ( frankly, couldn't care less about that ), and the minor leak from the n/s cv joint, which I do care about and will attend to sooner rather than later.

The bill, after some negotiation, was a reasonable £405, down from the initial quote of £479, a consequence partly of having an ( apparently, according to the lady receptionist! ) appealing geordie accent, always a hit in the south, and partly due to being friends with a favoured customer, who picked me up and dropped me off when it was in.

I came back home in it a few days later and treated it to a heavy session with the machine polisher, some poor boys black hole glaze, natty blue, chemical guys sealant and a misting of Q2M wetcoat, which makes drying the thing a much quicker and easier proposition! Wheels polished, tyres blacked. The pic is the finished article. Next will be wheels off to clean the backs and possibly another caliper refurb as I'm not ecstatic at the way my first attempt is holding up.

So far, reliability has been great. I've replaced consumables such as tyres and front brakes. It generally does more than 500 miles per tank. It's a very well put together and thought out high spec piece of kit, and I remain delighted with it, especially as the ins.co recently recommended that I insure it for nearly 6k more than I paid for it! Having looked on various sales sites I've realised how difficult to replace it would be were it to be totalled, and took their advice.

[metalworker0]

You can take at least half the caliper away and work on it, clamp the brake flex pipes, then you can take the whole thing away to work on it ..but then you'll have to bleed the brakes when you put it back together. mostly with those sort of tools , you'll be polishing the rust , giving you a false impression that the iron is clean and shiny ..looks that way (shiny and metallic and mostly burnished) until you wash it, you'll then see shiny and dark bits. the dark bits are corrosion.
The brake calipers get hot, hot enough to deteriorate normal paint sometimes. they frequently change temperature ..hot , cold , hot ..ideal conditions to accelerate rust.

Use the wire brushes etc ..but keep washing it down so you're not mislead, i use a powerful 8 inch bench grinder with a wire brush mounted instead of a stone ..to use efficiently i had to modify the grinder cutting away the guarding so the wire brush is more exposed.... note; could leave a non practiced person vulnerable to injuries, so don't follow my advice on the mods.
And you need to, not only keep it spic and span on the outside ..the inside matters too..meaning inside the sills .these .must be protracted or all your hard work will be for nothing, as they rot from the inside out, they all do - no exceptions - unless you are in California .. you must get there first before the rust does, wax treatment is a must.

all the best.mark

[highroof]

Hi, I'm happy that I got them clean, they weren't especially rusty before I started, and aren't showing any corrosion currently. I'm more bothered that the paint colour has darkened on the fronts, probs through temp change, and that the spokes on the wheels don't really allow access to clean them properly. It's possible I may be able to sort this out with the wheels off though.