Campervan Conversion - Part 1 - The Original Vehicle

We've decided to build ourselves a camper van, or rather to buy a van we could then fit-out as a camper.   

The initial idea is to retain much of the very useful functionality of a large van and so any major camper items in the load space (e.g. the bed) can be removed if required.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at a few vans to get an idea of what we wanted for a base vehicle - one of our neighbours has a relatively new Transit but it's of standard height so immediately we climbed in the back we knew we needed a high-roof version.

In the end we bought a 2007 Ford Transit Mk 7 350 medium wheelbase (MWB) high-roof model, or the L3H3 version (length code = 3 and height code = 3) - many van configurations from other manufacturers are also described in this same way. 

That's what we think is our van specification - there are many references online for transit van layouts, but having measured ours we still can't quite reconcile the actual dimensions with the information we found.  In particular, the length of the load floor is around 3,200 mm but in the references this should be matched to a shorter wheelbase than the 3,750 mm we also measured.   

Anyway, we've now just about surveyed the vehicle to find out exactly what we have to work with ...

So this is 'definitely' the medium wheelbase version, although at just under 6.0 m only the jumbo vans are longer.  It's rear wheel drive and fitted with a 2.4 litre turbo diesel engine.

Garden Casualties ....

In the early hours of last Friday morning, just before I was off to bed, I noticed our cheap-and-cheerful 4-channel digital thermometer was reading -12.2 degrees C from the outdoor sensor.

It's hardly a precision instrument, more of an ornament than anything else, but its greenhouse sensor was also reading below -10 degrees and so it was worthy of further investigation.  I dug out a torch and went outside to the bottom of the garden, where I've a 'proper' mercury max-min thermometer mounted on the shed wall.

Sure enough, it was cold, -10 degrees at that time and when I checked again during the day it had been down to -11 degrees C, a record low in the ten years since we've lived here, and by quite some margin.  

coldest temperature recorded here in 10 years ...