1988 Renault 5 Extra Wheelchair Van - It All Made Sense At The Time

[vulgalour]

I have driven it so *technically* it's a conveyance.

[plasticvandan]

I was close then, vulgalour exhibiting autoshite man maths by purchasing 30 year old Renault van as solution to having reliable transport 😅

[M'coli]

As you can imagine, that's been a difficult "like£"#pished" but well done!

 

[2flags]

I also love the fact that the 'reliable' Renault van came home on the end of a rope!

[vulgalour]

If I ever post something along the lines of "I bought a vehicle and everything is fine and it's brand new and I love the touch screen." just know I'm in danger and I need help.

[sharley17194]

When the tent feel on its roof i feared this is what it might look like!

On 03/12/2024 at 22:30, SiC said:

That doesn't look far off the purple 1100 that @catsinthewelder, @vulgalour, me and now @sharley17194 has. 🙃

Thankfully no new damage was done

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 04/12/2024 at 00:52, Metal Guru said:

Didn’t the Montego diesel have an engine supplied by Massey Ferguson? Or did it just sound like it?

Perkins diesel - same brand as Massey - also used in boats and my old AWD lorry. Noisy, thirsty and not a lot of power for the cc

[GlenAnderson]

11 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Perkins diesel - same brand as Massey - also used in boats and my old AWD lorry. Noisy, thirsty and not a lot of power for the cc

Not to be confused with the all-iron 4236 indirect injection boat-anchors.
 

The Montego/Maestro/Sherpa used the Perkins Prima. Effectively a diesel O series I think. Direct injection and pretty good for a naturally aspirated engine. I had both a Maestro van and a Sherpa with them in and they were both peppy (for a diesel) and good on fuel. Lots of them found their way into Land-Rovers in the 90s and early 00s as donor vehicles got to the end of their lives. They went well in SWB 88” ones, but were a bit underwhelming in a 109”. 
 

Pretty noisy though, as direct injection diesels tend to be. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

Just now, GlenAnderson said:

Not to be confused with the all-iron 4236 indirect injection boat-anchors.
 

The Montego/Maestro/Sherpa used the Perkins Prima. Effectively a diesel O series I think. Direct injection and pretty good for a naturally aspirated engine. I had both a Maestro van and a Sherpa with them in and they were both peppy (for a diesel) and good on fuel. Lots of them found their way into Land-Rovers in the 90s and early 00s as donor vehicles got to the end of their lives. They went well in SWB 88” ones, but were a bit underwhelming in a 109”. 

The one in my lorry was 5.5 litres and pumped out an astounding* 150 BHP 
Had a smaller one in a 109" Safari that was just noise and no go - that got a Rover V8 instead and was much better. Still steered like a boat and didn't stop much better but it was OK in a straight line. I also think some of the London Taxi FX4s had a Perkins of some sort in the 1980s?
My Montego was a 1.6 LX Estate - I did test drive a Countryman D but it was too noisy- only diesel thing worse I tried was an early VW Caddy that had a Perspex window in the back of the truck cab - that vibrated badly at all revs such that even the radio couldn't disguise it.

[yes oui si]

48 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Perkins diesel - same brand as Massey - also used in boats and my old AWD lorry. Noisy, thirsty and not a lot of power for the cc

Perkins Prima is a great lump. 

Five minute job to wind up the fuel and pressure for extra clag/zooms. 

[Noel Tidybeard]

perkins prima n/a perks up surprisingly with a gallon of unleaded in the tank when filled up

[vulgalour]

Oof, well it took slightly more than the promised 'within five working days' to get the van recovered but it is finally here now.  I've a (surprisingly short) list of jobs to attend to and I'm not planning to MoT until January so I can spend December sorting it out.  Getting some stuff fixed and ordered is going to be hampered by seasonal events so I've decided not to rush things.

I will post updates here, of course, but I am making a switch to posting on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/NoExpenseSpent first for a lot of my content these days.  I've got to earn a living and since making videos and art and stuff is what I do, that's how it is.  Most of the stuff I post on Patreon does make it out so you can read and watch for free anyway, just a smidge later (or a lot later in the case of the Lanchester and Princess) than real time.

The most important thing to state is that I'm actually pretty happy with this van at the moment.  Been a bit of a saga to get it home because of my health issues recently, that's no fault of the van or @Amelia who I honestly can't thank enough for being so accomodating with the purchase.  I'm looking forward to having a bit more daylight to go through the van with properly, I've not had a lot of time to really dig in because it gets dark so quickly at this time of year.  The only problem I have is I rather like it and I'm not really supposed to be keeping this one long term.

[vulgalour]

Micro-update: the last part for the exhaust just arrived.  I'd like to be out there doing it now, work commitments, the weather, and my health say otherwise today.  Job for the weekend maybe.  I've got a few bits coming in from France to fix a couple of door related issues, and then it's getting booked in for an MoT.  I'm going to leave the windscreen until after the MoT, whether or not it passes doesn't actually matter, the MoT will give me a list to work through either way.

[vulgalour]

That's the parts from France arrived too.  It is *far* too cold to do anything outdoors so it's just going to have to wait a bit.

[vulgalour]

I started with a few small jobs today to see if I was physically up to getting under the car and doing the exhaust since the weather is okay.  Unfortunately I'm not, realistically I should be resting today but I've got stuff that just needs doing so I'm doing energy management instead.  Decided to tackle some little jobs and see how far I got instead.  Good thermostat is now reinstalled properly which was a nice easy job, and then I tried to fit the air filter box properly and encountered An Issue.  Renault use these weird little winged bolts that locate in a couple of brackets on top of the rocker cover, in a spot where water naturally condenses and sits, rusting the nut to the bolt.  Typically, one of them sheared as soon as I looked at it so I've replaced that with a cable tie until I can get a replacement.  At least the air box doesn't jiggle about now.

I also spotted some damage to the rear door vertical seal, looks like something has been chewing on it, that would explain the little bit of water getting into the back of the van when the rain is in the right direction.  Looks to be a generic profile, shouldn't be too hard to get hold of or too expensive.  A new seal might make the rear doors rattle less too, that'd be nice.

Finally, I popped the front number plate off and taped the corner that @Amelia had saved in the Box Of Bits, and put it back on with some nice new screws and caps I had in stock.  A new plate is cheap and I expect it will get a pair, this solution is cheaper still and should be adequate for the MoT.

It's all fogged up because a bit of water is still getting into the cabin past the black gaffer tape repair* which may or may not be enough to get an MoT pass.  I've got to order a new windscreen, that's £200-300 (which honestly isn't that bad really) I'd just rather not spend that until I have to.  The van would definitely benefit from a new set of tyres, the ones on it are okay, they're just quite old and I'm used to having quite nice tyres on the stuff I drive so I don't want to run out of skill somewhere by overestimating the ability of the tyres fitted.

Last thing of note was getting a message from an artist who actually rode in the back of one of these vans when they were new and he was able to tell me the company that did the conversion on this one is Atlas, who are still going.  I've contacted Atlas but they don't have any workshop info on the conversions that far back but did say I could drop in and they'd have a look.  Problem is they're quite a long way away from me, so I'll probably find a different solution for figuring out the missing wiring.

[Amelia]

1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

I don't want to run out of skill somewhere by overestimating the ability of the tyres fitted.

Don't worry too much, there's about 30 degrees of suspension lean before the tyres break traction!

(Don't ask how I know!)

[vulgalour]

The bodyroll is an EXPERIENCE in this.  I can only imagine what it's like in high winds!

[Volksy]

I used to use one of these on my campsite in France. Great little vans. 

It was often used to herd and chase wild boar off the property, which was great fun!