Since I now knew what I wanted, I started scouting various used car sites for a while.
I was happy to stuble across a nice van on Marktplaats (The Dutch kind of used-ads site like Gumtree, Craigslist and so on)
As most vans, it was an old service van. (In the Netherlands almost all are either service vans, or delivery vans. Generally they are phyisically pretty abused, multiple dents or worse is more the default than occasional.
The one I found however, was quite nice. It only had some small dents on the rear doors.
Off course, there was also other obvious wear, small scrathes and so on. And, like most white vans based on the Sevel chassis, the paint on the engine hood started to peel of. But other than that, it was in pretty good condition.
The seller (a car dealer) was selling the car on behalf of their client. They actually didn’t do much on it, even didn’t clean it, just post some pictures, label it with a price and post it online.
No problem for me, the worse it looks (a picture can look much worse than it actually might be), the more people might skip the van 😉 )
The van: A Fiat Ducato from 2007, L2H2, 2.3 JTD diesel engine.
The L2 was the smaller option, with 5.4m lenght and a 345cm wheelbase. (17’9″ / 136″ wheelbase). The L3 would have been an option too, but with the L2 I could fit a bikerack and still remain below the 6m lenght.
It had 248.000km on its counter ( 154720 miles). As stated before, for me that wasn’t a huge issue. Also, the timing belt needed replacement, but i did calculate this into my offer, which the seller agreeded.
It did have a (working) AC, but there was no cruise control. As stated before, I knew this was easy to add, so no problem.
And nice: It did have a Webasto Diesel heater installed. (but was missing its original controls, it had a manualy control with some switches in the dash, but it did work)
Anyway: The van looked it was a good option, and the price was really a bargain. So I had a look at it, and decided: This would be the correct van to do my build!
As a service van, the inside was pretty standard: A driver’s seat, a passenger bank, and in the back the usual storage stuff for the service guys.
The inside wasn’t too bad. It did have the usual wear, but the seats were protected well (The have used it with a seat cover, so the seats were still pretty nice)
The stickers on the sides were removed, but since it hasn’t been polished or cleaned it was still visible (And probably will remain slightly visible due to aging of the paint on the body)
