A little bit about the organisation these buses come from.
The variety club work with disabled and disadvantaged children and young people. Their sunshine coaches are specially adapted, accessible minibuses give youngsters the opportunity to explore places they would otherwise never visit. Due to the large scale of this charity outreach 100’s of these buses have been built and are slowly finding their way into auctions throughout the UK, where we carefully select the best of the bunch.
We’ve benefited 100’s of customers in the last 10 years who have bought these brilliant buses! Having successfully acquired a healthy proportion of these vans and on some occasions some bad ones (that we’ve re-entered into the auction), on the whole and for the majority the condition of these vehicles is second to non. The only consideration for us upon arrival for these vans is one of our main areas for concern when acquiring new stock, the chassis and undercarriage condition.
All vans have issues..
Once these vehicles arrive we give them a thorough check over, usually we replace the chassis battery and a couple of bulbs and they’re ready for an advisory free MOT. We video the chassis of each of these vehicles upon retailing them (see you can see for yourself how solid they are). Referring back to our point above, on occasions upon inspection the undercarriage is badly corroded and not worth our customers investing their time converting one with such a short life. We advise our customers to have the chassis and undercarriage sealed to prevent any future corrosion and problems. This is a poplar service that many people are benefiting from on a regular basis. Our customer built underseal bay, professionally cleans and protects the chassis for many many years to come (prices start at £450 please contact sales for more details). We’d not recommend buying a van that’s already undersealed to ensure nothing is hidden and thus why we don’t apply upon arrival in our stock.
Given their previous use we often find they come equipped with wheel chair access ramps, which is easily removed and we recommend that we do this for you due to their weight. Often times we find our customers using this storage space as a location for water tanks or something as simple as a spare wheel.
Who can drive these buses?
Removing the ramp on the rear also helps with ensuring you drive away with one of these vehicles legally. Due to these vehicles carrying many people they require a high payload capacity. The various seats and ramp also crank up the unladen weight. As result these buses are usually found as 4600kg or 5000kg gross weight. This means that if you acquired your license post January 1997 or do not hold a HGV license you cannot legally drive the vehicle.
The solution here can be found by removing all of the heavy and unnecessary items in the bus and getting the unladen weight low enough so that the vehicle will qualify to be downrated. The process usually takes around a week to complete and then you can drive one of these buses away on your standard car license!
Engine options and reliability
The engine options are all exceptional especially compared with whats readily available on the market thats found in the like of Transits, Peugeots and Citreons. I will get around to an article soon on the 2.2 soon enough.
The engines made by IVECO are well known for their reliability and toughness.
Your options are the following in order of the bulletproof legend..
- The 2.8 (SOFIM) Belt driven (check when wast last replaced, mpg, ran from 1998-2006.
- The 3.0 (IVECO) Chain driven (usually no need to replace chain), mpg, ran from 2006-2010.
- The 2.3 (IVECO) this same engine is found as FWD version in the ducato, this is belt driven.
The dream is a low mileage 2.8, recent service and cambelt well within time and you could drive around the world 5 times without needing to stop!
Mileage
The mileages of these vehicle is usually one of the most attractive parts.
We’ve had one as low as 4000 miles before, however you’re not so unlucky if you get a clean example with 150,000 miles.
Plenty of life left in these motors, providing well maintained.
Our conclusion
We can offer a downrating, engine service, MOT and underseal services for you to ensure you’re driving away with supreme confidence.
We can usually find these vans consistently with around 80,000 miles and therefore they’re an excellent vehicle to place on our reservation list.
If you’ve a budget of £8000 you can usually drive away with a near perfect van by buying one of these vehicles from us.