Does anyone use a decent sized van in place of a car? (Bike transport)

PhilipPirrip

If the van's already got seat rails, and particularly if they can't easily be removed, you could look at utilising them instead of fitting Unwin tracks.

All the units in mine are attached to the original seat rails with 10mm carriage bolts so whilst I tend to use it as a camper for myself I can remove a side box seat and add the centre row of belted seats whilst retaining the fridge and cooker for family days out, fit the extra seats and remove all the units to carry people and their luggage or remove all the units and extra seats to have a van for load carrying.

daniel_b

PhilipPirrip wrote:

If the van's already got seat rails, and particularly if they can't easily be removed, you could look at utilising them instead of fitting Unwin tracks.

All the units in mine are attached to the original seat rails with 10mm carriage bolts so whilst I tend to use it as a camper for myself I can remove a side box seat and add the centre row of belted seats whilst retaining the fridge and cooker for family days out, fit the extra seats and remove all the units to carry people and their luggage or remove all the units and extra seats to have a van for load carrying.

I am familiar with seat rails that go back and forth in a car, and you can visibly see the rails, but a lot of the wheelchair vans with the single seats at far sides, don't have any visible, to my eye, rails, so I had just assumed they were directly bolted down through the floor.

Sounds like you have an uber flexible setup in your own van - what type is it?

PhilipPirrip

Daniel B wrote:

Sounds like you have an uber flexible setup in your own van - what type is it?

Mine's a Ford Freda which I didn't recommend to you as it's only available in SWB and went out of production around 2004 and mint imports are v rare these days.

Whether using seat rails or Unwin tracks in a minibus or panel van, to me mainaining the flexibility to adapt the vehicle as and when required is a must. Although you want it for getting out with family and bikes you never know when you'll be called upon to move the occassional fridge freezer or double bed.

daniel_b

Evening all,

reluctantly have discarded the i800 as an option, as it's just too inflexible really with the rear seating.

I have located this place near Bath that hires out WAVs - so am hoping to get my hands on one of these for a couple of days soon:
https://www.wavsgb.com/wheelchair_vehicles/vauxhall-vivaro-automatic/

Unless they sell it first.

Didn't want to drive an Auto, and have been warned off buying them period, but this is just a tester and to see how we would get on with it as a daily drive in place of a car - so to that effect it will serve a purpose.
Critically the seat layout is pretty much what I am after, so I can also show some bikes up to it, and see if all my hypothetical likely locations for them will indeed work - hate to buy one, bring it home and then find my calculations were out!

My current thinking is to have one with the two single seats - affix a pair of hubs near the floor somehow behind each seat - and then two bikes could go up on the raised areas sans the front wheel, which would go in a wheel bag.
I would also tether these to the side of the van, somewhere around the rear triangle of the bike.
The middle area then would be free for 3 fully assembled bikes, I'd have to fashion a stand of some description to hold them firm - but they could butt up against the ramp at the back - probably two facing one way, and one facing tuther direction.

If I find I need more luggage space, presume there must be a way to fit some high level cupboards if I really wanted to, or I can just go roofbox of course - but those times will be rare I reckon.
I've also spotted you can buy those rotating seat bases, so you can spin both the twin passenger seat, and drivers seat around 180 degrees should you want to.

Next hurdle will be insurance I reckon, need to ring some specialists, as of course a WAV is a 'modified' vehicle, so of course they will charge more.

Bordersroadie

I like your thinking. Flexible seating will make or break long term versatility and happiness.

I managed to obtain a very rare double seat second row for my LWB Trafic bus when I acquired it. This is my default seating plan, and having the full length space down one side is priceless for day to day use, camping or just general mixtures of humans plus bikes cargo permutations!

Having just a fixed triple bench in the second row is extremely restrictive. It's good when needed, and the third row triple comes out occasionally but each triple is heavy and big on storage space requirements.

Your wheelchair bus idea is sound and as you say the lift mechanism is probably quite sellable back to the trade.

Swivel bases are great for camping mode.

animal72

One thing for consideration, having owned a few vans over the years.
Make sure whatever you buy is under 2m high. If not, car parks are a PITA and Ferries are way more money.

Oh, mine also has roof-bars and thule racks strapped to the floor. Works a treat.

daniel_b

Bordersroadie wrote:

I like your thinking. Flexible seating will make or break long term versatility and happiness.

I managed to obtain a very rare double seat second row for my LWB Trafic bus when I acquired it. This is my default seating plan, and having the full length space down one side is priceless for day to day use, camping or just general mixtures of humans plus bikes cargo permutations!

Having just a fixed triple bench in the second row is extremely restrictive. It's good when needed, and the third row triple comes out occasionally but each triple is heavy and big on storage space requirements.

Your wheelchair bus idea is sound and as you say the lift mechanism is probably quite sellable back to the trade.

Swivel bases are great for camping mode.

I'm pleased you can see the sense in this, no one else I speak to seems too :-)
So as standard you have 5 seats then?
What do you do re strapping stuff in, and stopping it flying about the cabin, are there ample securing points you can use, or have you fashioned something yourself?

The ones I am favouring now do actually not have a lift mechanism, as they have a dropped floor - my thinking being the fully assembled bikes could sit down in the dropped floor if that makes sense.

They do have elextric winches though, not sure what I can use that for!

Animal72 wrote:

One thing for consideration, having owned a few vans over the years.
Make sure whatever you buy is under 2m high. If not, car parks are a PITA and Ferries are way more money.

Oh, mine also has roof-bars and thule racks strapped to the floor. Works a treat.

Thanks Animal, cracking tip on the car parks - just googled it, and it would seem most car parks are 2m, or 2.05m - the Trafic confusingly comes in at between 1955mm to 1967mm - guessing perhaps the difference is what kind of wheels and tyres they come with.

Interesting, as I have a set of roof bars, and two thule roof bike carriers I could bring into action if needed.
How did you secure them to the floor - bolts.......?

daniel_b

ovi wrote:

I use Gladiator insurance and transferred my car NCB no problem from Tesco.

Thankyou for this (Yet to try Brentacre) just used their online qoute tool, and it came in at £224 - with protected full NCB!
Which I think could even be cheaper than the current car insurance.
*I was unable to specify the WAV bit, so will e-mail them to see if that will affect it at all.
Only downside I can see is that it doesn't cover you 3rd party on other vehicles - which can prove useful now and then, but it's pretty rare tbh.

Bordersroadie

Daniel

Yes, my standard set-up is driver plus double passenger plus double in second row.

Dropped floor sounds like a great thing.

The Trafic Passenger has big steel tie down loops.

Your winch would potentially be a life saver if you got stuck in mud/snow!

animal72

Animal72 wrote:

One thing for consideration, having owned a few vans over the years.
Make sure whatever you buy is under 2m high. If not, car parks are a PITA and Ferries are way more money.

Oh, mine also has roof-bars and thule racks strapped to the floor. Works a treat.
Thanks Animal, cracking tip on the car parks - just googled it, and it would seem most car parks are 2m, or 2.05m - the Trafic confusingly comes in at between 1955mm to 1967mm - guessing perhaps the difference is what kind of wheels and tyres they come with.

Interesting, as I have a set of roof bars, and two thule roof bike carriers I could bring into action if needed.
How did you secure them to the floor - bolts.......?

I've bolted the racks to the bars so the bars are flat on the floor, took some lining up of the bolts inside the bars but not too bad. The whole thing is then strapped to the floor using the vans tie-down points. Plenty stable enough.

Also worth mentioning that as loading is easy you can put the racks really close together so you don't waste the whole back of the van with the bikes.

daniel_b

Bordersroadie wrote:

Daniel

Yes, my standard set-up is driver plus double passenger plus double in second row.

Dropped floor sounds like a great thing.

The Trafic Passenger has big steel tie down loops.

Your winch would potentially be a life saver if you got stuck in mud/snow!

Sounds like a good setup, and on a LWB, the space must indeed be cavernous!
Ah that's good to know they have tie down loops - I spotted some on the WAV's but assumed they were perhaps fitted for the wheelchairs, but sounds like it must be standard fitment.

I'm struggling to see a downside to the dropped floor - other than perhaps a security issue, due to the tailgate not bridging the gap, and the ramp making up the rest of the area, not sure if that is a legitimate concern or not, hopefully not.

Maybe I could use the winch to move other cars out of the way! (Joke!)

Animal72 wrote:

Animal72 wrote:

One thing for consideration, having owned a few vans over the years.
Make sure whatever you buy is under 2m high. If not, car parks are a PITA and Ferries are way more money.

Oh, mine also has roof-bars and thule racks strapped to the floor. Works a treat.
Thanks Animal, cracking tip on the car parks - just googled it, and it would seem most car parks are 2m, or 2.05m - the Trafic confusingly comes in at between 1955mm to 1967mm - guessing perhaps the difference is what kind of wheels and tyres they come with.

Interesting, as I have a set of roof bars, and two thule roof bike carriers I could bring into action if needed.
How did you secure them to the floor - bolts.......?

I've bolted the racks to the bars so the bars are flat on the floor, took some lining up of the bolts inside the bars but not too bad. The whole thing is then strapped to the floor using the vans tie-down points. Plenty stable enough.

Also worth mentioning that as loading is easy you can put the racks really close together so you don't waste the whole back of the van with the bikes.

Awesome, so using the same tie down loops as mentioned above - that's pretty neat as you can just whip it out and stick it in the garage roof I guess until you need it.
Assuming I go the WAV route, that would mean they were above the raised floor, which could be handy, as I could then store bags underneath, but thinking about it, in that config, I could do without the metal roofbars, and simply use some nicely fniished wood, that was the right size to fit into the gap. I would still lash it down of course, but in normal use it would be captive and be unable to move left or right - I expect it would also be easy enough to brace front and rear as well in some fashion. This is giving me loads to think about!

Have now e-mailed a place to hopefully book a WAV SWB Vivaro for the weekend of the 25th, so we can give it a test run that weekend - the missus also has a gig to go to, so she will have to take the Van, and see how she gets on with it!
Make or break time I think in the likelihood of it happening, but so far, economy, insurance, VED, luggage and bike options, it's all looking very positive to me.

Oh BR - do I read it correctly that the Trafic has an 90 litre\20 gallon fuel tank? If so, that equates to getting on for an 800 mile range........???

Oh and also, what year is your model, and what VED do you pay?
I had assumed it was £240, but then read a page that said if it is a Euro 4 or 5 compliant van it is only £140.
https://www.thevaninsurer.co.uk/insurance-guides/van-road-tax-calculator/
And then from the Honest John site I see this:

From 2006 the Trafic’s engines were all Euro 4 compliant

£140 would be nice, as it adds to the weight of benefits to swap to it - think the Volvo might be getting on for £300 VED now, and the insurance is £289, versus £227, so immediately there that's £160 less, and I am guessing servicing, and consumables like tyres is going to be a fair chunk less.

Only downside with the van I am interested in, is that it is not the sport model, which is an oxymoron, but means it doesn't have some extra nice to have toys - but then it's cheaper so, swings and roundabouts I guess.

daniel_b

Just sent off a couple of qoute requests to local companies who retrofit cruise control, rear parking sensors, and potentially a rear parking camera - all things that might win the girlfriend over.

daniel_b

Greetings,

I need to resurrect this thread - as there has been a change of plan.

The SWB diesel van is now no longer an option, and I am tasked with getting an economical petrol (Diesel has been deemed not to be an option) vehicle of some sort, so I think I need to scale things down size wise, and looking at how few vans sadly come in petrol guise, it looks like the Fiat Doblo (Mentioned on page 1) could be the new favourite.

Still may consider a WAV, as that would give me a 4 seater option, plus full length of the cabin for 1 or 3 bikes - appreciate that I would likely need to remove the front wheel, but if I am travelling solo, looks like there might be the possibility of poking one wheel between the front seats, and leaving that bike fully intact.

Will look at the Kangoo and Berlingo too, but of course the petrol angle reduces options hugely.

Any obvious options I may have missed?

Budget will be 5-10K at max.

DeVlaeminck

I've got a very late first generation Doblo - I like it although I admit I'm not a petrolhead at all. The only real downside for me is it's not a quiet car which can get a bit wearing on long journeys - I expect being van based that the new version is similar. However that didn't stop me driving from the East Mids to Girona with 5 of us and a dog and back from the Pyrenees in a single hit so long journeys are possible.

As far as bikes go if solo I take the front wheel off and fold one third of the rear seat down securing the bike to the rear headrest to stop it flapping about. You can fit several bikes in like that though two "nice" bikes is probably the limit as 3 wheel be rammed in a bit - you can take 3 bikes and 4 passengers like that though if doing that regularly a rear rack would be preferable.

The Fiat Doblo was chosen on Top Gear as Jay Kay's (is that how he spells it - singer from Jamiroquia) favourite car and he's had a few.

StillGoing

Daniel B wrote:

Greetings,

I need to resurrect this thread - as there has been a change of plan.

The SWB diesel van is now no longer an option, and I am tasked with getting an economical petrol (Diesel has been deemed not to be an option) vehicle of some sort, so I think I need to scale things down size wise, and looking at how few vans sadly come in petrol guise, it looks like the Fiat Doblo (Mentioned on page 1) could be the new favourite.

Still may consider a WAV, as that would give me a 4 seater option, plus full length of the cabin for 1 or 3 bikes - appreciate that I would likely need to remove the front wheel, but if I am travelling solo, looks like there might be the possibility of poking one wheel between the front seats, and leaving that bike fully intact.

Will look at the Kangoo and Berlingo too, but of course the petrol angle reduces options hugely.

Any obvious options I may have missed?

Budget will be 5-10K at max.

Why no diesel? If you're doing long journeys, diesel remains the sensible choice. Where the modern diesel with DPF's fitted fail, is in regular short journeys.

ugo.santalucia

I've owned a Doblo 2010 1.3 Diesel Multijet.
While the car itself was fine and roomy, I had two leaky radiators (in succession), the DPF got jammed empteen times, forcing me to unnecessary motorway rides to clear it. The "exhausted oil" warning light came on about 3,000 miles after a service, forcing me to another service, that despite me using the car solely for journeys and never for traffic.

Overall, I would not recommend it... a lot of hassle

daniel_b

Thankyou gents,

I personally would like a diesel, maybe like is too strong a word, but prefer one at least but as I am in the dog house at the moment with my gf for buying another bike, she has decreed that the next vehicle must be petrol, as she doesn't want our vehicle to potentially be banned from London at some point, and or not to be let into some cities in Europe etc etc.
Yes I KNOW these are not likely to happen for a while, but I feel I have to let her have this one so........

And thinking about it, a lot of what we do will be short journeys, trips to the supermarket - we both walk or cycle to work the days we are not wfh. Long journeys are more rare.

Also, the various failures that Ugo has mentioned above, do not seem to afflict the petrol one as much.

The 1.4 16V is pretty economical, and boasts and entire 95bhp, which is adequate - plus, and this is the icong on the cake, I then realised I could conver it to LPG!
Same as the Volvo, but a bigger tank, would give an LPG range of something like 350 miles, plus whatever the 60l petrol tank can manage, which is about 600 miles by my reckoning.
So nearly a 1000 mile range!

If you still have your Doblo Ugo, would you mind measuring the distance from the inside of the tailgate to the back of the front seats please, and also the height from boot floor to roof lining?
Assuming there is enough height there so as to not have to remove the saddle?



The other thing I especially like about the Doblo, is that it has the split fold rear seats, agreed, but that it appears with a few bolts you can remove one or both parts of the rear seat -for my journeys to the velodrome, I would likely remove the 40% element of the rear seat, for the bulk of the time, thus leaving us with a 4 seater for the vast majority of the time we have with the vehicle.

spannerdude

If you go down the LPG route , you will have to think about an extra tank, not sure if you can still get ones the same size as a spare wheel
Back in my land rover days I did look at it, plus the cost of the conversion, £1000, that was for a 3.5 v8
It would of taken 4 years to pay for it’s self

daniel_b

spannerdude wrote:

If you go down the LPG route , you will have to think about an extra tank, not sure if you can still get ones the same size as a spare wheel
Back in my land rover days I did look at it, plus the cost of the conversion, £1000, that was for a 3.5 v8
It would have taken 4 years to pay for it’s self

Hi SD - yep that's cool, we had our Volvo V70 T5 converted about 6 years ago I think it was - and at that time we calculated payback was about 20,000 miles - installation cost was £1100 I think.

That was some 70,000 miles ago, and it's been pretty good - well apart from the fact that in this progressive country they seem to be removing pumps instead of adding them :evil:

The Volvo used the spare wheel tank, and so would the doblo - the advantage being the Doblo has a bigger space clearly thus extending the range, and a smaller (almost mountain bike sized) spare wheel, so that would take up less room in the rear area.

StillGoing

Must be a Fiat diesel thing. I drive a 3.0 V6 Tdi VW Touareg. It mostly gets used for the school and shopping run, but gets driven "enthusiastically" rather than economically. I ensure that I do a long journey every couple of weeks to heat the DPF up thoroughly. The emissions readings from the test a couple of weeks ago returned 0.29 which is very good when the limit is 0.6 almost. I use Shell Nitro V diesel and never supermarket pumps. I had the engine carbon checked and cleaned by engine carbon check, who said the injectors were in some of the best condition they'd seen, even as new.

I don't see any government banning diesels for a very long time and those cities on the continent talking about it already, have serious congestion problems and will ban petrol and diesel cars.

shirley_basso

What, like London and other northern industrial cities in the UK?

daniel_b

After some more reading up, it would seem for our usage, a petrol does defintely make more sense - the stories of the DPF's going kaput if you are not regularly carrying out longish motorway runs I think cements that outlook.

I thought I had struck gold with the Doblo, when I found a long wheelbase crew cab version, as it's the same length as the Volvo, but of course has much more height - but sadly that only seems to come in diesel :-(
https://www.motors.co.uk/car-49877346/?i=2&m=sscp

Check out the space - would take a full length bike with no removal of anything!


So it looks like it will have to be a 1.4 16V petrol in the shorter wheelbase - I have spotted high roof version, but not convinced that extra height is necessary - but at some point I will get my hands on one so can have a good measure up.

I think I will look into the LPG angle as well, as that will make it cheaper still to run, and with minimal loss of storage.

Looks like 5K will get you a 6\7 year old one with 30K on the clock - pretty impressive value imho.

I did get a qoute for a brand new, non WAV one, and that weighed in at a pretty impressive £12500 - BUT I'm not 100% sure it is the right vehicle yet, so don't want to invest that much quite yet.

Also found that Gowrings (Who are really close) hire them out, so have dropped them a line for a qoute.

StillGoing

Have a look at Carfile. He's a broker who does deals for private individual customers. He can save you £ks on a new car. In fact he saved me around £9k when I bought the Touareg.

daniel_b

philthy3 wrote:

Have a look at Carfile. He's a broker who does deals for private individual customers. He can save you £ks on a new car. In fact he saved me around £9k when I bought the Touareg.

Will do, though the cost of one of these versus a Touareg are disparate I would wager!
Worth a go though.

StillGoing

Daniel B wrote:

philthy3 wrote:

Have a look at Carfile. He's a broker who does deals for private individual customers. He can save you £ks on a new car. In fact he saved me around £9k when I bought the Touareg.

Will do, though the cost of one of these versus a Touareg are disparate I would wager!
Worth a go though.

Seems he doesn't deal with Fiat, but Carwow do and I believe Orange Wheels do.

daniel_b

philthy3 wrote:

Daniel B wrote:

philthy3 wrote:

Have a look at Carfile. He's a broker who does deals for private individual customers. He can save you £ks on a new car. In fact he saved me around £9k when I bought the Touareg.

Will do, though the cost of one of these versus a Touareg are disparate I would wager!
Worth a go though.

Seems he doesn't deal with Fiat, but Carwow do and I believe Orange Wheels do.

Thanks for the update, had just come back to the thread to get the name again :-)

The price reduction I received was from carwow already, will try Orange wheels though.
EDIT: Orange wheels do not list Fiat either.

After watching a fair few videos have decided a petrol non WAV would give me the most flexibility, although there are precious few out there alas second hand.
With a WAV, the one or two single seats will be bolted in, where as with the MPV version, it seems that with a bit of grunt, you can easily remove the single seat without any tools, and the double with an extra pair of hands.
Would give ultimate flexibility.
The stumbling block for me, unless I go new, is the scarcity of non WAV petrol 1.4 16V versions, so I may have to bite the bullet and go Wav, or just wait for one to turn up.
Not in any huge hurry it has to be said, the Volvo is still ticking along fine, but would be nice to get something sorted within the next 9 months or so, and definitely before a trip to the mountains.
Thinking aircon would be a nice to have as well, and the one I have found so far does not have it :-(
Cruise control I can have retro fitted, so not woried about that, but think for driving through Europe, with all that glass, that aircon would be desirable - the Volvo does have it, although it needs to be regassed, well unless the seals have gone of course.

This is pretty much the only non wav petrol one I can find for sale at this moment in time, that is 2010 or later - contacting the seller tomorrow about it - also comes with original wheels!


Popped in another request on car wow, found where to choose extra options, so added in cruise control, side airbags, rear parking sensors etc. £600 for a leather wheel and gearknob seemed a bit rich versus £130 for cruise control imho.

me-109

Not sure about petrol options but have you considered a Ford Transit Connect / Tourneo? They seem to have long wheelbase options too but they may be only the latest model.

veronese68

We bought an 8 year old petrol Smax last year. Can get 3 adults and 3 bikes inside it with the front wheels off. It's comfortable and pretty quick with just over 200bhp, there is also a 240bhp version.

daniel_b

Me-109 wrote:

Not sure about petrol options but have you considered a Ford Transit Connect / Tourneo? They seem to have long wheelbase options too but they may be only the latest model.

I have not looked in detail, but I think they are not as long as the Doblo, which I think tops it, as well as the likes of the Berlingo and Kangoo etc - also not sure they make a passenger variant, but will check it out.

Veronese68 wrote:

We bought an 8 year old petrol Smax last year. Can get 3 adults and 3 bikes inside it with the front wheels off. It's comfortable and pretty quick with just over 200bhp, there is also a 240bhp version.

Thanks for that, just had a look, but the fuel consumption is fairly juicy, whichever engine you choose, and the tax is also pretty high.
With a single rear, or two rear seats removed (Do they come out completely?) is there enough length in the cabin for a bike with both wheels on, and is there enough height as well for saddles etc?
I'm fairly sure that the standard doblo with one seat removed, has a long and high enough area to take a fully assembled bike, just need to find one to have a prod around and take some measurements.

I've had a qoute through carwow for a new Doblo with air con, and additional bits I would want, so rear parking sensors, cruise control, side air bags, alloy wheels, and it all comes in at a smidge over 14K, which seems overall pretty good value, but still an awful lot of money to spend, on what is basically a boxy van with seats.

The one petrol mpv Doblo I posted above is in good condition, sub 30K on the clock, and a FSH, but sadly does not have aircon - if it did I think I might be super interested.
So I guess I just keep my eyes peeled, and hope one suitable pops up at some point, OR bite the bullet and buy one new.

imposter2.0

Daniel B wrote:

I have not looked in detail, but I think they are not as long as the Doblo, which I think tops it, as well as the likes of the Berlingo and Kangoo etc - also not sure they make a passenger variant, but will check it out.

Passenger variant is the Tourneo Connect, the LWB version is the Grand Tourneo Connect...