Club 80-90 Forums

Naughty me! Did a little detour on the way to work and had a drive past, I think its cute
I would love to come and show you my van when the darn thing ever gets here! Still no word about what day this week it will be, if this week at all?????!
See you soon, hopefully

you cheeky bugger

it's alright, 6 months mot, a months tax, recon' gear box, newish clutch,
a working non leaking pop top, fridge cooker ect,
with an electic water pump & even an underslung gas bottle thing with gas actualy in it!
it really is ready to go & the kids love it!

it doesn't have any more/less rust than a vw of its' age & the interior's pretty clean,

i love my Sherpa i especially like the door handle on the back door (off a bedroom door or something) that
doesnt actually do/turn anything,. comedy door handle,

going to be torn between taking that or the high top with the beautiful new laurie engine to vw events




i really hope you get your van this week man,

I have to admit, one of the first vans I would always avoid is a Sherpa / LDV Pilot, Convoy etc. They were awful vans when they first came out (they had the right idea of bodywork design), which was typical of anything made by British Leyland (designed by ignorant accountants). Gearboxes/differentials always went wrong, overheated, dangerously underpowered and the bodywork fell apart like falling masonary !!

I actually flew past a K reg Sherpa minibus once in my Y reg 2.0 litre Aircooled hightop camper. My camper made hardly any effort at all and the Sherpa minibus was quite literally revving it's nuts off with a small hint of black smoke !!

There's a few other vans I would also avoid too such as Daihatsu's Hi-Jet (unstable and very slow), Bedford/Vauxhall Midi-van (rust and pretty slow), Ford's transit (rust), VW Type 2 T4 (rust and very cramped), VW Type 2 T5 (full of electrical problems, expensive to fix), VW LT (rust, unreliable), Fiat Ducatto (rust, gearbox problems), Merc Vito/Sprinter (underpowered, rustbuckets, poor handling), Renault Master/Traffic (unreliable, very expensive to fix)....

Not meaning to put anyone off, but I had only found out about stuff like that from my own personal observations and doing quite a lot of research (using Google, asking people in the know, etc.) about what common faults exist in different vans and how frequently they go wrong.

Can't go far wrong for £200 i reckon. I'm not at all snobby about VWs, I like any camper with a bit of character. It's those huge white modern coachbuilt things I don't like. There's an unloved bedford CF pop-top down the road from me and if I didn't already have the VW in bits on my drive, I'd be interested.

The CF's not a bad van to get. They are usually pretty reliable, bodywork parts can be a pain to get but having said that most of the mechanicals are common to other vauxhalls and there's a great CF website too http://www.bedford-cf.co.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'll soon be having the fun of fabricating a small section for the top of the front N/S wing of my fiance's CF2 horsebox and replacing it's windscreen rubber (I'll either have to fork out silly money for one or to make one out of a roll of screen rubber).

There are some parts of the CF design I don't like, which makes working on a VW beetle seem pretty easy such as tightening up door mirrors but having said that nearly all of it is fairly straight forward.

The best CF to get I think is the 2.0 litre CF2. Hydraulic tappets and no cambelts to worry about since they use a timing chain. Avoid the CF350L extra long wheelbase models since leaf springs can be very hard to come by if they go.

that's how we feel, & were surprised that more people didn't,
we love our t25s but we like all classic campers really.
The Sherpa is so bloody ugly but it's grown on me,
it's got a bit of individuality simply because they're fairly rare,.
search t25 on ebay & i can't remember how many there were on there,
search sherpa & you might get 1 or 2,
i've found aswell by searching parts that they're cheaper,
brake calipers half the price of t25s for example!
it's got some rust but i don't think it's going to fall apart any time soon,
& the engine's pretty good, it's a 2 litre & it flies (once it's up to speed anyway,.
can take a while getting there..) it's got a recon' box in it so don't think that'll
give me trouble any time soon either.
it's the interior i mostly like, you have to be so minimal in a t25 to be able to move around in it,
& those wardrobes that get in the way of the engine bay p!ss me off!
the Sherpa has everything our t25 interior doesn't & you still get to use the full length of the van



to walk down & the back door's great


only bought it for the price really, (£200 road legal ffs) to run around & sell on with a new mot, not a huge earner but a small
profit,

but it might be sticking around for a while


cf's are nice, ca's even more so!

well here he is

Therunner wrote:well here he is

Nice Auto-Sleeper roof you've got there. It's the one used on the VT20 (later known as the Trooper).

that's a good buy at £200, but man it's ugly. If you removed the bull bars and big bumpers it might not be so...well, ugly. Maybe it would grow on you though, like some old cars are so ugly they are strangely appealing (can't think of any examples right now)

yeah, i don't like the kiddie killers but i think i'll leave it there for the time being.. it hides the rust under the headlights.. sssshh

he is ugly but i love him & he has grown on me, Melvin didn't want to even go & look at it when i told him i saw one advertised,
but i think it's grown on him now too

the interior's quite tidy considering it's original..

So it's not just the roof that's Auto-Sleeper, the whole vehicle is one of their conversions. Wall to wall light oak vinyl & veneer.

I love those purple seat covers in the back And yes the door handle is pretty cool too!

yep, it's a Shlerpa autosleeper

i'd love to know what posessed them to stick a non-functioning door handle
on the back