So I've been falling in love with a vehicle in the last week in a way I really haven't since the first time I drove a Saab 900...far too bloody many years ago. I refuse to do the math!
So I've been spending a lot of time finding excuses to be sitting here...
...and going out for all manner of errand runs.
To be fair though, the poor old thing has only done a few hundred miles in the last five years and more than anything else has been in absolutely desperate need of some use. Having not touched anything mechanically (well, did an oil change today), we've gone from just about being able to maintain 45mph up the one hill nearby here, foot to the floor in fourth the day I brought her home to now quite happily bounding up there in fifth at 60 plus with more to give. The difference having blown the cobwebs out is startling.
Now she's a two tonne plus change old bus with 78bhp by the books so still can't be hurried...but once up to speed it really doesn't feel like you're holding people up. Not like the guy in the VW T2 Transporter I got stuck behind yesterday! You quickly learn that she's chosen the pace that she will pick up speed at, and that's that. It doesn't matter if you absolutely thrash the engine to death or drive with suitable mechanical sympathy - it really makes very little difference to the rate the speedometer climbs at!
You know what? I'm okay with that. I'm more than content to bumble along at a nice relaxed pace, rowing gently through the gears as needed - double declutching isn't in any way necessary, but somehow just feels right. Between the size and angle of the steering wheel, the gearlever sticking out of the floor at an odd angle with a lovely spherical bakelite gear knob to hold on to (the plastic one on the Riva is the one thing I was never a fan of, always wanted to swap it for one from the earlier cars), coupled with the way it very gently bobs and sways along the road just makes my brain think I'm driving an old coach rather than a van. Seriously - the closest thing I've to compare to for general driving "feel" is an old Bedford YNT coach...
Funnily enough, John always had a devil of a time getting me out of the driving seat of that too.
As you'd expect from a vehicle which has suffered such tragic levels of dormancy of late there have been a few gremlins. Most of these have been the usual silly things like dodgy light bulb contacts, a clogged fuel tank breather making it nearly impossible to get more than 2/3rds a tank of diesel in (thankfully not a massive problem with a 75 litre tank!), and a perished vacuum hose making the brake servo a bit lazy. Oh, and the exhaust system which has more leaks than sound metal and which rattles so much at idle that it makes more noise than the engine.
We have had a couple of more dramatic ones though.
The first was the day after I picked the van up, when suddenly (in the middle of the pickup/drop off area at Milton Keynes Railway Station!) turning on the hazard lights as I was about to start backing out of the parking space, instead of giving me flashy lights...gave me smoke gently wafting out from under the dash in the general vicinity of the indicator stalk.
Cue hazards being abruptly turned off. The smoke stopped - within about thirty seconds the fuses for the hazards and indicators were both removed from the fuse box and stuffed in the ash tray. I returned home indicator-less pretending to be driving a modern Mercedes rather than a proper one...
This actually turned out to be down to someone having managed to yank the whole positive terminal from one of the indicator repeaters out of the housing, leaving it dangling inside the inner wing. It was only a matter of time until it shorted out. Easy enough fix - even though I did have to remove the grill, offside headlight, offside front indicator and move the washer bottle to gain enough access to get the wire back through the hole into the actual lamp assembly. Still... it's a van, so all that took all of about ten minutes and required the grand total of a single Philips screwdriver and 10mm spanner in terms of tools.
The second incident took more figuring out.
I was on the way back home from a shopping expedition, and had just dropped to fourth to save losing too much speed on the last few hundred yards of a hill. Suddenly all hell seemed to break loose somewhere that sounded roughly like under the passenger seat. Based on prior failures in other vehicles my guess was that a propshaft universal joint had just exploded. Drop it into neutral and start scanning for somewhere to pull over...
Suddenly it occurred to me that the noise had stopped after only a couple of seconds. Odd. Tentatively went for fourth gear again and even more tentatively let the clutch out to see if I still had drive. I did. Picked speed back up a bit (being in the middle of some S bends at this point really not in an ideal stopping location), no vibration, no unusual noises... suddenly everything seemed quite happy again. What the?
I knew there was a fuel station less than a mile down the road, so just took it easy until I could pull in there. My main theory at that point was that a part of the horribly rattly exhaust had decided to come adrift and had touched the propshaft before either falling completely off (didn't see anything in the mirrors) or managing to wedge itself in place. Second one was that one of the rather rotten splash guards or similar had managed to get itself eaten by the belt driven cooling fan.
Pulled into the garage and had a quick crawl around. Given the violence with which the "event" had happened, I expected to find evidence of it, and pretty clear evidence at that. Exhaust all still present (and rattling). Nothing obviously missing, no visible damage to the fan or anything else amiss that I could easily spot. Only thing I did spot was a slight weep from a fuel return line (like one drop every five minutes - it's on my list for this week). I was baffled.
Two days later I worked it out, when crawling around under the van (it has Niva levels of ground clearance, so that's easy to do without needing to worry about ramps or anything) trying to see if I could silence the idle speed buzz of the exhaust (not really, it's snapped a hanger off the expansion box and it looks knackered enough that I doubt I'd get it off in one piece - new system time really!), when I realised I was staring at the cause.
The front sliding joint on the propshaft has a rubber gaiter on it, just like a CV joint. Or rather it should have - approximately 95% of this one was missing, the fresh looking fan of grease telling me that this was a relatively recent event. Apparently the boot had disintegrated - the reason it sounded so violent from in the cab is because only an inch or two directly above said slip joint is the handbrake cable. I reckon that as the boot started to come apart it had flailed around, and on each revolution whacked the handbrake cable, which would have reverberated through the cab quite nicely.
It fits all the facts anyway, and I've been unable to repeat the event, which stands to reason given that the remains of that boot are now finely atomised I think and somewhere on the A420 just outside Buckingham.
Hoping replacing that won't be too big a headache.
This week the plan is to get stuck properly into recommissioning the services in the living area.
If you see this out and about, give me a wave!
People seem to like it. I've been really surprised by the cheery response from other drivers and the general public. I thought that was reserved for motorhomes only made by VW...
Personally, I reckon a Merc T1 is far superior a vehicle than any VW van with the possible exception of the LT from this era...though the Merc wins on looks and dash layout I reckon. LT wins on noise if it's the six cylinder version, that I do concede - the straight six TD engine they put in the LT must be one of the smoothest power units to ever find its way into a commercial vehicle.
Anyhow, I'm going to have to quit faffing around finding reasons to drive it this week and actually concentrate on getting it ready for a weekend away at the end of August.