The criterias we had on the car.
- It had to fit a long bed as Im tall.
- It should be cheap.
- It should be relativly cheap to own.
- It should not fall apart as soon as its done.
- It should be lower then 2meters (ferries are much more expencive for high cars, this one is gonna ride on the gothenburg-fredrikshavn ferrie alot).
I dont know how it is else where but here in sweden it was quite hard to find good disel van´s from around mid 90´s. Anyways since I predict driving it quite far and a van beeing a large car I really wanted a disel, we shall see if it pays off or not. Also I really wanted a van with at least 280x160cm sized compartment. Alot of vans have a sofa that transforms into a bed, standard on VW Westfalia´s. I didnt want to do that as I can have more storage room under a non convertable bed. So due to this the small Transporter really isnt an option as the 230x160cm compartment would only leave 30cm between the bed and the seats.
After alot of looking I found a 1994 Transporter Disel with a long body. In the 6 months that I was looking (ok on and off for the first 3) I only saw 3 of them, first one was sold once I found it, second one in really bad shape and the third one in decent shape so I bought it.
A friend of my girlfriend helped us out and got some mechanical things fixed.
- Disel filter, air filter and oil filters hadn´t been changed for years.
- Oil needed changing.
- Horn wasn non existing.
- Exhaust needed welding.
- Rust by the side door need patching (other wise just the standard rust for the model).
- Blestring the floor in the back to get some little rust of it before painting it.
- Fuel and Temp gauges need a fix since they tend to die, very stressing having to drive on the tripmeter when not knowing exactly how many liters per 100km.
- Also the plastic clutch (VW wtf where you thinkin makin a plastic pedal???) broke while at my gf´s friends place so he fixed that as well.
The inner wall was the biggest decission. To remove it or to keep it. Inorder to remove it we really need to get the car ready and to a quite high standard so it can be registered as a house mobile. Inorder to go through house mobile registration we need cooking facilities, bed, clothes compartments and table. We plan on having all of that but where thinking we buy the stuff a little by little. But then I noticed nope we need to remove the wall before we do the inner roof else we would most likely have to redo the roof work once we remove the wall. So we went with removing the wall.
This infact was more work then I had in my budget and the car beeing more expencive then budgeted made me sweat. It´s a bit stressfull to start off over budget right away. Then when buing the building material for floors and walls I realized it would be more expencive as well. You know how it is "take this cheaper one or this better one that gives you bla bla bla" ofcourse you go for the better one, regardless of what it is. So if you are sitting there and planing to build a van, make sure to have room in your budget.
The picture below shows how the van looked just after we removed the inner wall. Unfortunatly I dont have any pictures of the van with the wall, but trust me it does a whole lot of a difference. Also I wouldnt feel too comfy sleeping in the back not beeing able to get to the wheel, ignition and front doors.
As you can see the interrior has been totally gutted. Did that inorder to anti rust treat and isolate it. Even though we most likely aint gonna sleep in it during the winter isolation does work to keep heat out as well (something people in warm countries should learn, yes I am looking at you people in california).
You can also see that the floor has been treated with anti rust paint. The walls are also anti rust treated but with an anti rust oil thats more or less transparent. I also decided to paint the inner walls in all places that arnt gonna be covered by the wooden wall. To be honest the deep red is ugly and I really dont want to see it from within.
