Anyone know this van?

[highroof]

Hi, long shot, but I'm looking at MF20 LSK, blue 1.5 Ecoblu. Advertised as 56k miles, one owner, FFSH, HPI clear. Already had clutch and flywheel, the invoice is £1700. Failed the MOT the year before last on tyre wear, apparently very heavy wear on the inner edge of the o/s rear and cords showing through the n/s front. The clutch and the tyre wear, plus the fact that it's advertised as popping out of 1st gear occasionally makes me wonder how much weight it's been carrying.

It's also had holes punched in the side and rear doors by thieves to access the locks. Not bothered as it's cheap, but it's a long way away, so I'm after as much background and info as poss, obviously. The vendor assures me it drives very well, there are no untoward dash lights and no codes ( although he'll obviously have cleared them when it came in, if there were any ). My plan is to replace the box with a warranted low miler, have the doors repaired to a high standard, make sure the tyre wear isn't due to anything untoward, clean the thing to within an inch of it's life, and put it back up for sale in as mint condition as I can possibly get it to. And hope not to lose any money!

Anyone recognise the reg?

[metalworker0]

Bad tyres with cords exposed sounds like neglect and first gear and clutch at 56k (looked up on gov mot test history) gearbox and clutch are probably due to boy racer starts. a clutch should last over 70,000 miles even over 100,000 if driven lightly.

all the best.mark

[08SWB-connectOwner]

The price compared to the vehicles age, its MOT history and the clutch work at relatively low mileage give me the feeling that this van has seen plenty of abuse.
(Also, alignment being off to the point of eating up a tyre at less than 50k also suggests a significant, but not massive impact on the offside front)

I would absolutely skip this one.

For comparison; I paid 2000€ for my 08 mk1 with ≈100k miles (165 000km), and I still had to fix both sills, which had major rust damage.

[highroof]

I've binned it off. I'm not shy about travelling any distance for the right thing ( Newcastle to Dartford in the middle of lockdown to get my current daily 2108 Connect for instance ), but the combination of this being in Bucks, not great pics of of it, and more things becoming apparent as I was quizzing the vendor has raised more questions than answers for me.

There's also the fact that the prices have fallen away to the point where I was worried there wasn't going to be enough left in it to justify the aggro. No harm done, the money's always better in the bank.