Thoughts on these vehicles as a base

[ecoman]

Hi Everyone,

would like peoples thoughts on the following vehicles as a base for a conversion.

Ford Transit hi top LWB 2006 onwards to 2010

LDV hi top LWB 2006 onwards to 2010

Q1 How reliable are they?
Q2 What sort of mileage should I look for/do they go to without any problems?
Q3 Any model specific problems that I should look out for?
Q4 How easy is it to get parts, how expensive are the parts, how easy are they to work on and how cheap are they to get repaired?

I have seen a lot of these two models in crew versions at reasonable money.

Thanks

 

[ecoman]

I cant believe that nobody has any opinions...even if they are not based on fact or personal bias!

 

[geebus]

On Q4 - the transit will no doubt win out. Because there are so many around. Also, a good lot of knowledge around on fixing them.
Can't comment on relative ease of repair - but at least you should be able to find out how to do it.

I've owned a transit and a couple of LDVs in the past, but they've been much older.

I think the LDV LWB would be a little bigger than the transit, but not up to sprinter/LT/Iveco sizes (which are all 4m load space I believe.)

 

[Harmergeddon]

I cant believe that nobody has any opinions...even if they are not based on fact or personal bias!

I think they are both ugly. Does that help?

 

[gaz2676]

i agree my sprinters not pretty i prefer the front end on the crafter but boy are they good vans hands down
much prefer the merc to a ford

 

[FULL TIMER]

from what I have heard the transits are sods for fuel pumps and electronics, the LDV I believe uses the earlier Transit engine which was a lot more reliable and less trouble electronically..

 

[FULL TIMER]

On Q4 - the transit will no doubt win out. Because there are so many around. Also, a good lot of knowledge around on fixing them.
Can't comment on relative ease of repair - but at least you should be able to find out how to do it.

I've owned a transit and a couple of LDVs in the past, but they've been much older.

I think the LDV LWB would be a little bigger than the transit, but not up to sprinter/LT/Iveco sizes (which are all 4m load space I believe.)

you would like to think so unfortunately that doesn't seem the case these days, even main agents struggle to sort problems and more often than not it is now a matter of spending many hundreds of pounds just to find a fault never mind cure it and it would seem most of the trouble with the later transits seems to be either fuel pumps or the electronic cans neither of which come cheap,

 

[mark61]

I imagine if you intend traveling a lot in Europe the Ford may have advantages with parts/service. Don't see too many LDV's abroad, at least not until you get to Russia, which is full of GAZ's

 

[hextal]

I ended up going for a vauxhall movano (renault master).

All the vans have their pros/cons (some more cons than others), but given that I was going to be spending so much time and effort converting the van I didn't want it rusting away around me. So my (arguably odd) choice was, having chosen the size of vehicle I wanted, to go for the one that seemed to demonstrate the best bodywork condition. Obviously I wanted something reliable/robust too, but given that in the grand scheme of things it would be unlikely to be doing massive annual mileage (as we both work) it wasnt such an issue.

Now this is all highly subjective, but having spent several months climbing around vans at various dealers (i tended to focus on much older / higher mileage versions of the type of thing I was after to get an idea of how well they held up) I found that the movano/master bodywork and chassis tended to fare the best.

As I say, very subjective and arguably an odd focus.


To be honest though, as long as you give whichever van you are looking at a good going over and set drive before you buy it should be fine.

Ooh - also try and get one with a decent engine - they all have different engine configurations, given that they will be heading towards their max weights quite often, you want to ensure you've got enough grunt for hills etc without turning into a rolling road-block. I guess 120-150bhp (ish) should be reasonably comfortable, i'd (personally) probably avoid the 100bhp and less type configurations.