I recently bought a MK7 LWB L4 H3 2.4 115 transit and joined this forum to learn things and share what I’ll be doing to it. Firstly this is a budget purchase and a budget build so don’t expect anything super high quality!
The Plan:
The end goal is to have a vehicle that I can store and transport my sons go kart in the back of, and my family in the front of. For test days we just take the van and have a day area in the sliding door where we can eat our sandwiches and go over data etc. My plan is to have a bulkhead behind the sliding door to separate this area from the ‘garage’ in the back. I would like the day area to consist of 3 forward facing seats against the bulkhead, a permanently fixed table and 2 rear facing seats back to back with the drivers seat. The idea being that on the really long journeys when we have the big caravan on the back my wife and the children can sit at the table and do colouring or jigsaws etc to keep themselves entertained whilst I drive. The current method of taking both cars for the local tracks with me towing the caravan and my wife towing the trailer is unsustainable, and the longer distance journeys require me to empty the whole trailer into the caravan which is plain ridiculous!
The Search:
I had initially decided to get a twin wheel transit minibus and did a lot of research into driving a minibus with out a D1 or PCV and found out that it is possible as long as the seating capacity doesn’t exceed 16 passenger seats and it is for Social Domestic and Pleasure or other charitable reasons. I found a suitable van in Dumfries and went to view it, liked it, and put in offer in pending me getting insurance. Cue two days of being on the phone/internet to loads of different specialist and generic insurance companies to no avail. It turns out that apparently the bottom has fallen out of the SDP minibus insurance market in about June this year. Even Adrian flux were unable to offer any insurance with all 16 seats in as they can no longer offer cover for SDP minibuses. They did say that if I reduced the seating capacity to 8 passengers (as was my intention) and register the vehicle like that then they could offer me insurance starting at £2500 per year!
So that put paid to that idea. I started looking into getting a van and putting seats in the back instead. I was pleasantly surprised at how unregulated it appears to be to add seats to a van. To be honest this is one of the most blasé webpages on a .gov website I think I have seen!
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... n-the-rear
Tl;dr Do what you want maybe think about bolting the seats down and maybe have seats belts, we don’t really care!
That’s how I have ended up with this big white van! It’s old and needs some attention but it was a good price and not too far from me. 196,000 miles but it seems to run pretty well considering.
I have various things I would like to do to it, a shopping list of parts some have already arrived and more are in the post. I’ll keep you updated on how I get on.
) to access the rubber feed hoses. I blasted them out with compressed air and loads of grime came out of them, refitted and they work perfectly now. I had to wait for some new trim clips to arrive from eBay before refitting the lining.