LDV Convoy Campervan for quick sale

Yes – the van that is featured throughout this site is for sale! Please see the Ebay listing here

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-berth-LDV-Convoy-Campervan-ready-to-travel_W0QQitemZ280395313569QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Campers_Caravans_Motorhomes?hash=item4148dcf1a1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Normal service and the remainder of the trip will be updated soon.

So – I know I haven’t posted in a while – but I have been busy, honest!

And to prove it there are some photos below of our wonderful campervan conversion.

Things are going a bit slower than I would like, but then I’m impatient.  We will finally be leaving next Wednesday.  And heading straight to Sweden

So – the photos of the van…

The starting point of converting the van

This is the stuff what will keep us warm

View from the back of the van

Front of van with bed one in the foreground

Well there you go, I will post more when she is fully finished and will do full posts on each of the steps when I actully have some energy.

Anyways, hope you are all ok.

Take care.

Si.

In memory of Kate – who still plays on my mind.

Yep.  Back to disappointment.

You see I have to wait for my insurance documents to come through the post before I can go and get my Road Tax before I can actually drive the van off the driveway! It’s been six days!!! Come on Direct Line, seriously – send the bloody bit of paper!

Anyways readers, I have ordered around £300 worth of stuff this morning.  Hopefully all delivered between tomorrow and Monday – so I’m going to keep this post short. Otherwise I will just end up ranting about how much I dislike my insurance company!

Anyways, must go and put some more wires in for our 6 Sony XS speakers and 1200Watt Subwoofer, much fun!

Some photos from our cleaning and re-spraying days are below, enjoy!

Happy Travelling!
Overland Si

Well today, I have yet again been cleaning!

…and tomorrow I will be doing the same tomorrow! But still, the van needs it. There was so much dust left over from it’s working life that it would have probably be a health risk as a campervan!

So anyway ladies and gentlemen, I am again thoroughly knackered (which means really tired (for Kate)) so below are a few photos from today’s cleaning mission, more coming soon.

LDV Convoy Dash Stripped out

The door panels, as they were

Scratches and horrible white gunk on the door panels

Door Trim mid-scrub, you can see the horrible colour of the soap suds!

Anyways, more to come tomorrow.  The floor is also coming up and the seats are going to be steam cleaned, leaving me a clean canvas to start the conversion.

So that’s Sunday sorted.  Hopefully on Monday morning my insurance papers will come through, meaning I can finally get tax on the van and actually drive her!

Hope everybody else is doing well!

Yes, after too long a wait the LDV Convoy that I was after has finally been purchased and is now parked on my driveway being stripped out.

I have attached some images below for you  guys and girls and will post some more updates later this weekend.  To be honest I am a little bit knackered from stripping out the ply-lining, dashboard and cab area, door trim, and floor.

Once these were off I discovered a build up of dust that could only be described as having it’s own landscape!  Oooh and I also found an authentic 2007 banana skin tucked behind the dash.  Lovely!

So there we go, one step closer to turning this van into a campervan.

And for those of you who want to know, yes it is an ex Parcel Force in GPO Red, LDV Convoy, Hi-Roof, LWB 3.5tonne, 2.4L, 90PS, Ford Transit Duratorque TD.  How did you guess? ha!

——Laptop is not behaving, please see link below for photos —— http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67978&id=502954239&l=8545f8ed4a
And I’m going to bed, hope all is well with your world. Special Shout out to Kate, whom I have learnt so much about.  May your trip bring you all you want it to.

G’Night,

Ah yes, the great C.W. McCall song “Convoy“.

Well I haven’t quite got myself an (LDV) Convoy yet but I certainly have a clearer idea about what I am going to go for. And no, I haven’t got a “thousand screamin’ trucks” in a convoy either – Rubber Ducky anyone?

After my post a few days ago on a good piece of music I have decided to direct you all off to another lovely piece of music, this time a bit more upbeat and comes from my love of Samba, why yes blog readers I am also a talent (lacking) musician – and play with the wonderfully colourful and incredibly noisy Bloco Fogo.

So here is today’s music suggestion – a bit of sunshine direct to your PC or Mac or phone or whatever; Daniella Mercury – Nobre Vagabundo, foot tapping, chair rocking, smile enthusing fun all in 4 minutes. I have now learnt the wonderful skill of embedding videos – tis simple really, so here it is below, click play and listen to it whilst you read if you wish.

I spent most of today dashing about through Kent, Sussex, Essex and London looking for the now elusive LDV Convoy of my dreams (yes – I now dream of hi-roof, long wheel base vans, I’m also single – I make no connection between the two.)

Well I have made a great discovery dearest readers…

This is the discovery that you can actually turn a relatively new and brightly coloured van into a war ravaged wreck in just 4 years.

How? I hear you ask – well the answer is simple, hand it to our dearly beloved Royal Mail. I honestly had no idea that you could seemingly drag a van around on its side and that it would survive, nor did I realise that there were just that many poles, posts and walls to hit – and that they came in so many different shapes and heights, all perfectly moulded into the side of one van! Impressive.

Most LDV Convoys come from fleets, one of the reasons why they are so cheap, there are several major fleets out there and by far the best I have found so far are ex-Anglian Windows vans.

Although the insides of them are a bit tired out they are generally OK and I am hoping that my theory – the one that states that they must have been driven slightly more carefully because they had glass in them – will hold up before, during and after 6000 miles trekking around Europe and Scandinavia.

So I have pretty much settled upon one van in particular… It has the newer Ford Dura-Torque engine in it and is the more reliable than the “banana engined” predecessor.

So there we go readers. This is what I have been up to today. Tomorrow promises a few secret projects and this blog should be available on overlandwannabe.co.uk tomorrow as well thanks to ITSimple.co.uk. Simply awesome!

Also – a bit of an aside, what daily things do you come across that you wish were designed better? My sister has a design project on and needs some inspiration. Comments welcome as always.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si

And I mean Good – For this morning I do not have any work to go to. The sun is out and I am off to view some more LDV vans for converting.

That’s all for now folks, will update more later on.

Hello to all you readers. I now have nearly three hundred followers (stalkers), which is brilliant.  I haven’t bee able to look at all of your blogs because the connection whilst I am here in Germany is not the fastest and online time is limited, mainly by my Facebook obsessed sister!

Please leave a commnent and I will check out your blog as well.

In our brilliant little stellplatz there are many, many campervans. A lot of them are coachbuilt wagons that are incredibly expensive.  Unfortunately my budget will not stretch to any of these travelling mansions.

There are also a number of van conversions here.  Most of them are, of course, Mercedes Sprinters or Volkswagen Crafters and Transporters.

All of these types of wagons are brilliant for converting into campervans. Below are a few things that you may want to think about before converting choosing or converting your own van. I have noted a few of these points before in my post talking about travelling Europe and Scandinavia in a Van – Link here

When choosing a van ask yourself these questions.

Do you want to have a van that you can stand up in?

Having somewhere to stand up whilst getting changed or just moving about can make a huge difference.  If you do buy a hi-roof van then make sure you check for water ingress at the connection between the van and the roof.

Think about where you will be travelling, If you will be travelling a lot into towns and cities then bear in mind that you may not be abe to get in a lot of car-parks due to the height.  I would always recommend taking public transport into major cities though.  Much easier and usually works out cheaper.

How big do you want the van to be?

This will affect your design, think about how many people are travelling with you and what you will be taking with you.  Also bear in mind the extra costs that you will incurr if your travel plans include any ferries, most of them will charge by the metre.

Van widths vary between manufacturer, with the Mercedes Sprinter being narrow but long whereas the Fiat Ducato is short but wide. The LDV Convoy is long, wide and tall.  Making it a perfect choice for conversion in this respect. You may not be able to get down every county lane in a wider van, but fold your wing mirrors and hope for the best!

Weight

Anybody who passed their driving test after 1997 in the UK is unable to drive any vehicle over 3.5tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW).  (I am not sure how this translates for other countries, if anyone would let me know I will be grateful.) Make sure you check before you buy the vehicle that you can actually drive it!

A lot of Mercedes Sprinters and VW Crafters are 5.5t rated, having them down-plated to 3.5t is a hassle that you could avoid by buying the right van in the first place.

Also make sure you take the weight into consideration when converting the van.  The van must never weigh more than its stated weight, even when full of people, packing and food.

Also if you plan to visit Austria or Switzerland then note that your Vignette (compulsory road tax for all) will be more expensive ifyou are over 3.5tonnes.

Is speed something that concerns you?

If it is, then you may want to look at the Mercedes Sprinter – it is a beast.  Unfortunately the more powerful vans usually means a more expensive insurance policy and less economy therefore more money spent on fuel.  Speaking of fuel – go for the Diesels everytime, try to get a turbo charged one, they have good enough power and reasonable economy.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the vans I have looked through and considered.

Fameseekers can post a comment here!

Ok, so I promised you a post on car / van insurance for Europe and here it is!

Please remember that this is only my own findings, if you have been told something different to what I have written here then please let me know – It might be something I have missed out on!

Travelling Abroad

Two Europes

Again though be careful of which countries you want to visit. “Old Europe” will cost you less whereas the “New Europe” countries will cost you more.

As usual please post any questions in the comments and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si

Howdy all,

I am not sure if Blogger has issues or if it is just me but the last post seems to have some sort of issue accepting comments. Bizarre! Try this one – hope it works!

I be off on me holidays in about 5 hours (and counting) and I need one of those “split-screens” that they have on the rather brilliant 24 series to clearly demonstrate just how many tasks I am trying to do all at once so that I can get going!

I have been looking through the Google Analytics package to see how most of you are finding my little piece of bloga firma and have found (without surprise) that it is from the wonderful Blogs of Note.

Then I found out that some of you were also arriving from Search engines. So i thought I would be all clever like and actually answers one of the questions from the search phrases, seeing as they are related to this blog anyway.

One of the most popular is asking “How long to drive round Europe?”

Well I think that this is the wrong way to approach it. There is just so much to see that you could spend months, years, decades or centuries just travelling round Europe.

The best thing to do is select a few destinations (and not whole countries, yer we’re gonna DO Italy, Yuh huh… quite a LOT to DO!) Keep it down to individual campsites / areas. “Doing Rome” is a plausible statement. You could spend a couple of days in Rome then move on to your next destination.

The trick is to have a plan about how you’re going to plan bear with me it does make sense.

If you have a few people travelling with you then all try and pick on destination of your own. Set all the destinations then see how far the journey is.

If they are a few of you doing the driving then you can do many more miles, If it is just one or two people then make sure you get a good nights sleep otherwise you will be seriously affected by tiredness. Also, remember that in a lot of European countries you can stay in motorway service stations overnight, sleep in your van if you want to – save money!

If you haven’t got a set plan then take a map and a dart or something that makes a mark and lob it at said map, this must be done over your shoulder and well away from any livestock. These have heralded some of my greatest adventure travels. As you may end up in some quirky place you must be prepared to enjoy everything you see and accept the choices.

Alternatively, and currently my favourite destination planning device is Google Earth. Scroll over and just have a look at some of the photos (Panoramio) until you see something you like and then go there! Works brilliantly!

As for timings though – Plan some sort of plan first then work out how long you can take to drive round Europe.

Unless, of course, you have nothing to get back to. In which case put your right foot down and get that van rolling.

Speed limits in Europe.

UK motorways are a ludicrously slow 70mph (112kph) The rest of Europe is mostly at 80mph (130kph). Then of course there is Germany. Their Autobahns have no set speed limit (on some sections only) and you can expect a lot of BMW’s and Audi’s and Merc’s to be passing you at 130mph (209kph).

Beware though that Germany has also brought in a new rule for many parts of these de-restricted motorways and enforced an 80mph (130kph) limit between 10pm and 6am.

Equipment

Yes – something that has caught a few people out. Most countries in Europe require the following equipment by law, else you may face a fine. And there’s no point blaming it on the rental company. It’s your responsibility to be safe. Also for your own safety carry them. You never know, it might just save your life.

• First Aid kit
• Reflective Jacket
• Fire Extinguisher
• Sticker stating where the vehicle is registered (GB / D etc.)
• Spare Light bulb set
• Warning Triangle

Not having any of these could lead to be fined, or just hassled, there is also possibly more. Check before you go with your motoring association, they should know or be able to find out.

Lights

In Austria, and some other countries, you are required to have your lights on all the time, Day or Night. Don’t argue, just do it. Put a post it note, or make a sticker, to remind you and put in on the windshield or somewhere prominent.
Update – this is no longer the case in all of Austria, only certain counties – better check or just leave ‘em on! – thanks to Susi @ 2girlsincalifornia for the info

Also – a note for American visitors.

A note from a previous experience. Please remember that us lot over here in Europe mostly drive manual (stick drive) vehicles.
If you are looking to get a van to travel in then I can almost guarantee that this will be the case.
Automatics are very few and very far between, and will cost you a lot more to hire or rent.

Next time I will do some sort of information on the Insurance policies and how they work in Europe, Feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments.

That’s all for now. I hope this helps some of you. I will update you guys from our glorified car park some time next week.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si!