Practically Classics Forum

following the saga of my beloved battered transit, ive repaired the brakes given up on the cambelt change as whilst i was underneath i realised how much i have neglected the old girl..
im looking at buying another, something like this

http://vans.autotrader.co.uk/used-vans/ ... 5f446c5c44

id like your thoughts
are they any good & can i fit a 2.5m x 1.2m board in the back?
any advice will be apreciated

Couldn't tell you about load space as we used to run pick ups on the Railway, but we were running this age of Transit and a crew cab / mess van when I finished in 2006 and they took no end of abuse.

Only bad points I can think of were,

One particular pick up used to shear and throw its waterpump pulley into the radiator every 20k miles, no idea why.. but it needed a new rad and pump every time, and another occasionally used to throw up the engine light and refuse to allow throttle until you turned it off and back on again, that one never let us down though, and they did take some hammer. The other three seemed pretty faultless most of the time, though one had some sort of gearbox / clutch / flywheel issue at one point though can't remember now just what went wrong with it.

So some were possibly better than others for some reason, though hard use would help show the weaknesses of a particular vehicle, in perspective compared to a Citroen pick up we had they lasted well.

Also they made the LDV's look like the face lifted piece of sh1t they must have been.

My view is that given the likely alternatives they are up at the top, perhaps Merc sprinters are superior but I don't think much else will shame them.

A friend had a similar one, though it had the 100 (or about that) engine and was a couple of years newer. He had few problems with it in the 90K miles he travelled in it - the only thing I remember was that he had to fit a new starter motor when it was about four years old. He's got a 2010 (or 11?) one now - bigger engine but the same sized van and it is doing well enough - though the dealers wanted to fit new discs when it went for its first service last year (at the customer's expense!). It is still running around on the original discs and the local garage now services it!

I seem to remember that a few of the early ones of that series (2001/2 or thereabouts) did have some problem with the engine management - though my friend's only did it once and there was some reason for it going into limp mode (I can't remember what!).

Surely the selling feature of the Transit was and still is that you can get 8x4s in the back? I could be persuaded either way, but I'd guess it's still the case!

thanks chaps, id love a sprinter but thats out of my league. all i need is a cheap reliable box on wheels that will take 10 years of neglect/abuse. i had a citroen c25 but we used to change the engine every year, id been looking at the modern peugot/citroen or even a renault trafic but i just cannot bring myself to buy one (not keen on french build quality or after sales service)...

Renault Trafics are the same as Vauxhall Vivaros, so they're built in Luton, although Nissan build some in Barcelona. Dunno if this helps much...

Sprinters are over rated pieces of junk that cost twice as much as a Transit to fix when they go wrong! The one you link to isn't too different to the smiley ones, it's just a mere facelift, hell even the speedo clusters are the same! That's the good thing with the Transits, they just evolve with minor changes, there's nothing majorly different with each evolution. I've just got a brand new 62 plater at work, and bar a few niceties it's not a great deal of difference to my old MK3!

The Trafic/Vivaro aren't too bad, but they're considerably smaller than the Transit, I can get 4 of my boxes across the Transits, the Vauxaults manage 3 with gaps either side so they slide about.

Stick with the Transit I say, you won't go far wrong!

Transits are good,but rust is a real killer of these as they seemed to have little if no protection from the factory.
Although the load space is a tad smaller the Trafic/Vivaro/Primastar is a much better prospect.

cheers chaps. is there a comparison site for commercials similar to the carsurvey site?

http://www.ouestfrance-auto.com/utilita ... 56899.html

http://www.ouestfrance-auto.com/utilita ... 32180.html

id like your thoughts on these 2... french but there isnt much choice

Personally I'd avoid the Boxer/Ducato/Jumper, I had the 2.0 JTD SWB Ducato, and it wasn't nice, it kept breaking, and work finally decided that spending another £1500 on it really wasn't worth it after just forking out nearly 2k a few months before hand. But saying that, I have a friend with a LWB one who says it's been the best van he's had!