The Janners Van

The van has progressed.

When we bought the van we took a bit of a chance on it. At 265000m, no service history, looking a bit unloved and a short MOT it’s everything that you should not buy. However it was yellow, registered with 5 factory fitted seats, had side windows, no windows in the back doors and hadn’t been altered / lowered / tuned etc. Combined with only 2 owners from new it met a lot of the items on our requirements list. So a deal was struck with Paul at T4 Direct and the van was purchased. Great chap to deal with, as he was upfront about the van and didn’t try and sell it as anything special. I was well aware it wasn’t a show winner and would need plenty of work doing to it.

The photo is flattering, it really was looking battered.

What did we find?

Well it needed everything! Literally everything, welding to wiper blades, belts to brakes and everything else in between. After a spending enough to make me mutter profusely we have a mechanically sound van. It still rattles, squeaks and farts but it starts and stops. In reality it was all service items that needed doing, but that was the point it was ALL the service items!

Clean and tidy

It needed a really good clean, I mean days and days of taking stuff out, cleaning, wiping, washing, polishing, refixing, and general fettling. Nothing of major expense, but again just sorting out a van that had been used rather than loved.

A couple of days of polishing to get the yellow back from a very faded washed out custard with very little shine, to a bright sparkly in your face “YELLOW”. For those that know this is an ex AA van…yes that yellow.

Then what?

We had decided the van was going to be sign written and vinyl just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted things to look aged (the van is 16 years old) in keeping with the fact the van isn’t a pristine show winner, it’s a camping, surfing, mountain biking, BJJ bus. Fate takes a funny turn as I meet a fellow yellow VW T4 ex AA van owner who is a traditional sign writer, yes that paint by hand skill. We bounced around some ideas, a few designs, various fonts and boom sorted.