Just imagine being able to hop in on a Friday evening, head off for the weekend and not have to worry about bad weather pitching tents in our wonderful Irish rain!
The solution? A campervan of course!
Having pored over campervan forums and enthusiasts sites and having trawled the classifieds for a number of weeks, I decided a VW T4 Transporter was the way to go.
While the short-wheel-base (SWB) ones were handy for everyday driving, the long-wheel-base (LWB) ones were ideal for campervan conversions...so, preferably post 1996 facelift model, preferably with the torquey 2.5TDI engine and preferably a LWB one; only when I started to search did I realise that these yokes were like rocking-horse shit, with hen's teeth sticking out of it, sitting atop a crock of gold under a rainbow...on a night with a blue moon! Yes, fucking rare! this was gonna be a tough one to find!
Added to this, if I found one, I had to ensure it wasn't an ex-builder's hack, that had been beaten to shit with zero-to-no maintenance or tlc of any kind! EEK!
So, the search continued, with nothing showing up.
Then, one evening, I got a text message out of the blue last week, from a gent named David in Wexford....
''I hear you're looking for a T4...?''
''Yeah, they're hard to find though.''
''I have one parked in the mate's shed, I'm only down the road, sure come and take a look''
To say I did a little dance-of-delight was an understatement!
Went down, checked her out, and all the boxes were ticked: 2000 registered van, LWB, 2.5tdi...what more could I ask for?
The deal was done, and back home we came with the new wagon, here's a few pics:
This is a keeper, with the plan of fitting her out with the whole nine yards, as a campervan:
Sink/Hob unit.
Storage units
Fridge
Fully carpeted throughout
Side windows
Rock and Roll Bed
Fully soundproofed and thermally insulated
Front swivel seats
Electric fit out for rear
Full respray outside
maybe, just maybe, if we can get this done by next summer, who knows? a pan-european roadtrip could be on the cards!
Can't wait to get my teeth into this!
Right...must go...I've got a campervan to build!
laters,
RV.
