What a fortnight it has been.

So we bought the new van home and put it in for a service and Cam Belt change ... £2000 odd pounds later we have: a new Cam Belt, Oils, filters, Brake pads and disks (front), front wheel bearings, brake shoes and cylinders (rear), water pump, water pump pulley, crank shaft seal, x4 Injector seals and the offside indicator lamp cluster (front). So that was expensive. But it doesn’t stop there, there is a bracket for the glide-rite air suspension that has rusted through (possibly). I’m hoping that it isn’t too serious, or that it’s a false positive (our mechanics couldn’t be 100% sure having no explicit expertise in this particular arena). We are prepared for another bigish bill and possibly an overnight stay near to the installers workshop.

Are we regretting buying the unit already? Yes and no. The body work is spotless from the Cills up. Our mechanics say the engine is sound given the mileage, and that the service items mean that absolutely all major consumables have been looked after and are good for several thousand miles (oil needs changing every five thousand) at least.

I started tinkering with the internal space and trim and decided in a very short amount of time that the best way forward was to rip it out completely and start again. Now this may seem like a bizarre thing to do, seeing as one of the buying points was that it had been fitted out already. However, in ripping it out one has revealed pristine internal metalwork (except around the windows mentioned in the previous posts, and way down where the Cills join the main panel work). At this juncture there is rust, and frankly you have to wonder at Vauxhall’s manufacturing process and quality control, that this rust is effectively designed in.

At the points where the external bump trim fixing bolts penetrate the outer shell, they have not provided adequate rust protection, either by the physical fixing, or by additional coatings. On the old Talbot, which was seven years older than this Vauxhall, you could still see the hard glaze lacquer that formed a rim around every single body penetrating fixing, consequently there wasn’t a spot of rust on it. The visible rust doesn’t penetrate to the supporting uprights, but will require some grinding out and then either a  plate or some Isopon P40 fibreglass mat and a skim of Isopon P38 to finish. Fortunately the entire area of rust is under the bump trims that line the side ... not that that’s an excuse for doing a bodge job, it just takes the pressure off when t comes to painting and flatting.

If there is a big disappointment, then it’s the fact that the middle offside window rim is rusted right through and has been patched in a way that quite frankly makes me very cross: One because I’m going to have to fix it, and subtly underneath that, the fact that the unit was an NHS ambulance and we already paid for it to be looked after via the treasury ... and some lazy fucking turd somewhere just gobbed it up with some silicone, then layered on paint  with a trowel... and probably billed you and I for what probably looked like a proper job for a few months.

On from this I’ve made some grand discoveries: The heater is a Mikuni diesel unit, fully plumbed into the main fuel tank. There is a top of the line split charge relay unit and a deep cycle marine battery already installed. The battery provides the juice to the Glide-rite system and to all the secondary systems. There is an electrical distribution panel just behind the drivers seat that provides service to the blue lights, most of it is redundant in terms of terminations, but the board itself and its fuse carriers are re-usable (not that these are expensive items, it’s just good that they are not on a future shopping list). And finally for the electricals everything is run in flexible conduit.

I have now reached a stopping point with regards to what I can do, I need the air suspension to be serviced this is booked in for the 12^th of April. I then have to sort out the bodywork, before I can think about re-insulating and lining the unit with new ply. I can augment the under bonnet insulation and clean in the engine bay ... but to be entirely fair, these are nothing more than “keeping your hand in” jobs. So that’s March 2013 gone, on square forty hoping for a six next throw and no more snakes.

March Marches Past ... again.

We are coming up to the target date for leaving on our grand tour; 21^st March 2013 ... which by my calculations was supposed to be today. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that. It’s over a year since our first post and nearly a year we’ve had this date in mind. Who could have known what slog it would have been ... and some may say “all to nought”. My analogy is Snakes and Ladders, we got to No 98 and had to drop all the way back to the mid thirties. I say mid thirties, not zero or one, because you have to include all of the process that got you to the point where you were ready to “go a travelling”. If it was as simple as getting in your vehicle and driving off into the sunset, we would have been celebrating the anniversary of setting off, and our first year on the roads about now. There are two things barring our way forward at the moment ... albeit ... substantial hurdles on their own: The house hasn’t sold (but we got to enjoy all our labours all winter long), and the big one: we haven’t got a working motor home right now ... but we have that in hand.

Below are some more pictures of Mk2. I’ve already binned the seats from the rear. I was going to try them on Ebay, but then I decided to check Ebay to see how well they sold given their provenance ... it’s a spade is a spade moment ... to whit the seats are possibly piss smelling, bacteria ridden arse breakers that go on Ebay for .99p and then sit there without even a watch for the next ten days. I have no sense of smell so I couldn’t tell about the Pee smell, however I did do the release mechanisms to get the seats out, and after loosening the first one, I retreated to the bathroom for a hand wash and nitrile gloves. Cleary they’ve been cleaned as have the floors, after all it’s an ambulance, but once you’re in the grooves on the floor that the seats lock into, and scales that were small, become perceptively bigger, those clumps of hair and gritty crud in the dark crevices at the very bases of the seats become phage ridden bacteria swarms looking for a new kind of host to infect ... and that’s how Zombie apocalypses start. So the seats went to the dump where all the other phages live and die in a microscopic war of attrition that doesn’t usually result in Zombieapocalypsitis.

Having taken the old seats to the dump, I went in with the big gun ... that’s right total war scorched Earth Armageddon on dirt ... sounds exciting, in laymen’s terms ... hot Domestos on a traditional mop head. Never mind all that thixotropic sticks to the rim even after you’ve flushed shit shit ... what you need to weaponize bleach is hot water and a raggedy mop, followed by some deft footwork and plenty of foam. Needless to say, the water came out black, and my only regret was not wearing a facemask when I was down in the pube knotted micro world of sick or injured people’s faecal matter and bacteria ... possibly.

So today 21^st of March 2013, instead of driving off into the sunset, I’m instead going to go back in, to remove: plastic plates that tell you how to release the seats, a laerdal suction unit mount, clips and tubes that used to pass oxygen from one end to the other, and hopefully the wheelchair access mount (I say hopefully because it’s a big lump of metal held on with many bolts that have been worn so that the bolts may be difficult to hold with a spanner). I’m also going to remove one main ply panel to see what state the insulation is in. Once the insulation is inspected I’ll make a decision about replacing it, augmenting it or just leaving it alone.

On Monday I’m driving it to our usual mechanics, Benchsound in Stanford Le Hope, Essex (www.benchsound.co.uk) for a full service and a Cam Belt change (the first painful bill). I said in the last post that the unit had been well serviced and that it had a lot of service history which I read more thoroughly on Monday, Timing and Cam Belts have been changed previously as have brake pads, wiper blades, oils, coolant etc. However in amongst the lines of service history I did find one thing that concerned me a little, that I didn’t spot on the first run through; at around 200k miles it had a new cylinder head. There are two ways of looking at that; it’s had a new cylinder head that is 100k miles younger than the rest of the vehicle (this is a good thing), or it’s had a new cylinder head how are the pistons and rings? (That may not be such a good thing). However one has to look at the positives. Were the unit to require a full recon, the head should be pretty sound, with new belts and the frosty eye of the guys at Benchsound we should know by Monday Evening if we’ve “bought a pup” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke for those interested in the origins of that particular idiom ... clearly I was J ).

More later.

The deed is done.

On Friday 1^st March after a haggle I managed to get the ambulance for £2500. Pictures below; they are rough as I had to use my phone because I’ve misplaced the charger for my snapping camera … (one suspects it has been boxed in error, and placed in the lockup). They will suffice for examples sake. I didn’t get a second test drive, as the dealer thought my absence since the first look more than a fortnight ago, meant I’d decided not to buy it, so he tucked it back into a corner.

I had hoped to get it for £2300, however he’s done his research as well as I have, so he had a fair idea of the value of the blown air heating system and panelling to someone like myself, and therefore wouldn’t budge. He even had the cheek to say he was going to advertise it as a conversion option on Gumtree … now we’d suggested it. It has sat in his yard for just over a year, and no one could find a use for it. It has too few seats to be a minibus, and too many to be a van, couple that with the panelling and the only person likely to show an interest is me … or a serial killer looking for some sound proofing … hmmmm.

Do I think I’ve got a good deal? The jury is out. We are taking a risk, quite a big one in fact. The equation breaks down like this.

For:

Van already panelled with high quality materials (could do with a valet, but it’s by no means shabby).

No major rust, no rust inside doors seals

Easy access to the rears of the sound proofing/insulation panels, for augmenting the insulation.

Floor already floored.

High level cabinets (not wipe clean medical white … this is a good thing).

Diesel blown air central heating (needs to be shifted.

Four tinted sliding windows in the rear panels

Semi High top with full height rear opening doors

3.6 metres of internal length

Sliding side door (unglazed)

90% of the body is in very good nick (bubbly rust round one rear window, not a biggy)

Secondary 12v systems installed and adaptable

Five pages of service history

Years MOT

Roof light fitted already, direct replaced by the ones we bought for Moho Mk1 last year.

Clutch, Alternator, starter motor, Disks and pads, Cam belt kit all easily available, and relatively inexpensive (and looking at the layout all relatively easy to access).

Parts generally available widely, some Nissan, and Renault parts are 100% like for like (the Renault Master and Nissan Interstar are the same vehicle).

Our man Paul at Blackdown has converted at least four of these units and thinks they make a great base vehicle (as Renault, Nissan and Movano … The unit he’s just built is a 2012 Movano).

Against:

300.000 miles on the clock.

Bubbly rust round one rear window (badly patched up … see line above, to do it properly I need to take the window out).

Poorly removed blue light near and offside rear, and poor patch up of area (needs to be done properly and it’s very visible).

A ding that looks like it could be part of the sliding door run at the bottom of the sill (it would fool a stupid person … ahem).

Air suspension, compressor (this may have to be removed).

One could say that one has a bias towards the for’s (rose tinted glasses), however if one looks at the Against then purely in terms of cost they probably cancel each other out. However if the 300k miles bites us in the arse it could get quite expensive short term. If the worst came to the worst I will just have the engine reconditioned top to bottom no questions asked.

I hope to pick it up on Saturday 16^th march, I’m off for a week after that and I shall root through it with a fine tooth comb, book it in for a service and cam belt change and give it a clean and wax.

Down But Not Out

Yet again we have been quiet for a week or two, but in the background things have been happening. I didn’t have to complain to the highest level of Direct Line, in fact once they pulled their finger out they actually move very quickly. That isn’t to say that it’s good news, the motor home has been written off, as we suspected it would. There were a number of deciding factors: the age of the vehicle, the fact that the chassis is ladder format means that any twisting would require the entire body to be removed, and it couldn’t be assured of being jigged back to form (of course this in itself  would be massively expensive). The damage to the front near side suspension turret was a good indicator that the chassis had moved from square to a parallelogram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelogram (for those that may not know that shape). The ding in the front of the chassis only compounded the issue of the chassis being true, as the front damage is on the opposite corner of the motorhome.

The deal we’ve struck is a compromise, as things always are. We’ve been paid out £500 less than the insured value. We have to buy back the carcass to extract our brand new equipment. Had we removed it prior to the assessment as everyone said we should do, to protect our investment and to re-use it we would have lost all the value, but it does sting that we have to buy back that which we paid over £2000 pounds for less than a year ago. Insurance companies don’t like paying out.
What do we do now? Well I started scheming the very next day after the accident. I was up at our local petrol station, and happened to espy a 13 year old Vauxhall Movano 3500 PTS Ambulance (Passenger Transport Service) in a small commercial van sellers yard. It’s long, very long, It’s white, it’s got 300000 miles on the clock ... that’s a lot of miles, a really huge amount of miles. However research says that a new engine complete would cost £1500 and about the same to fit it. The clutch, Alternator, Starter Motor, Disks and Pads are all under £200, as are the piston rings, shell bearings etc, so a re-build while a big job, isn’t in itself hugely expensive ... he says while remembering he’s skint from last year and all the work on the previous motorhome ... and he wants to start from scratch again ... you’d have thought he’d learned his lesson?

So there’s this ambulance, it’s 50cm longer than the Elddis, though not as wide. It is panelled and insulated, it has a blown air central heating system (they cost between £500 and £1300), It has tinted windows down both sides. It’s a semi high top with double rear doors and side access.
I’m under no illusion that it is a project. However I have already reserved the services of Blackdown conversions for the end of May. Paul was as sick as a parrot on our behalf for the loss of the Elddis, but on the Brightside he says the Movano is a great base to convert from. Our usual mechanic has said don’t touch it with a barge pole because of the mileage. My mate Rob he knows a thing or two about vans took it for a test drive a few hours after I had driven it myself, and said it felt very good for its age and mileage; I to was very pleasantly surprised when I drove it (after speaking to the guy who reconditioned the Elddis, I was ready to give up on the Movano).

The advantage to the Movano is that it has a service history as long as your arm, every A or B service, tyre change, replaced light bulb, brake pad and even the loss of an offside mirror have been recorded. Though this pales into insignificance against the critical service parts “Timing Belt and Cam Belt”, both are recorded as changed ... don’t care ... still going to get them replaced again. Did you see the hint there? The decision has been made, this Friday I’ll haggle over the asking price after taking one last look over the potential new wagon, I want to check the roof rails for rust and I want another drive from cold; that means turning up unannounced which only new car dealers are happy about. I’ll post again when I know more.

Insurance companies, call centres, accountability.

It’s sixteen whole English days and a bit since our motorhome was rear ended. In that sixteen days I’ve called Direct Line seven times that I’ve recorded, and they have called me twice. The initial call was to tell them what had happened. They were incredibly busy because of the snow so wouldn’t take the call properly. They just took basic details with a view to calling us back once they had gotten over their bump.

This process led to our initial claim having a tic box ticked somewhere saying it was an enquiry. This generated an auto mail from some faceless person thanking us for our enquiry and that if a third party claimed via our insurance and we hadn’t notified them we could be liable for costs, loss of cover and we may even be killed and eaten.

That prompted my second call to Direct Line to say, we had made a claim already and that we needed to know what the letter was about. We were duly told it was an error and not to worry our claim was being processed. All good.

We received a note telling us that we needed to take our vehicle to a local Vauxhall dealership and crash repairers to be assessed, however I pointed out that their website stated that they looked after panel vans and cars, and that we would need secondary fixing around the habitation area where the aluminium skin has been damaged. They agreed, but realised very quickly that despite taking on the premium, that they (Direct Line) had no one on their books with the necessary skills to do the repairs, and we should endeavour to find our own repairer, which I did. Phone call three, gave them the details of the specialist repairer, the police incident No and a few more details of the vehicle our vehicle was shoved into. I asked the question: when can we expect and assessor to call us?

This has taken from Sunday 20^th January until the 25^th of January and I’m starting to wonder how busy the assessors are, that we haven’t even had a call?

I’m assured by the call centre agent that the assessors are very busy and know all about our case and will contact us within 48 hours of this call (25th January).  If I haven’t heard a from them after close of business on the 26^th of January I should phone back on Monday the  28^th of January ... you know what’s coming next. On Monday 28^th of January I called to say the assessors hadn’t called the previous week. I was told by the call centre person that the case was with the Assessors, and they would mail the assessors dept to remind them to call us urgently.

I was advised that “if” I hadn’t heard from the assessors by close of business on the 30^th of January, I should call back on the morning of the 31^st of January. So on the 31^st of January I called back to say that the assessors hadn’t called, I was told that the assessors knew about the case and that if I hadn’t heard from them by Friday 1^st of February, call back at any time that was convenient. So on Friday at midday I called back and said I was a bit worried and starting to get just a bit irritated by what was coming across to me as; either lies being told, or a fuck up somewhere in the faceless, nameless, process and script driven systems that companies employ today ... there is a cost to cheap car insurance, cheap telephone bills, and twenty four hour access, and the cost is quality, if you don’t manage your affairs then don’t expect these people to, because they aren’t paid enough to give shit.

The chap at the end of the phone checked out what was going wrong because I said the only thing I was calling for was to check why the assessors hadn’t called me, and that I had no other information to add. Effectively I gave him one task that was a good win for him and a good win for me. He quickly discovered that way back on the 19^th Of January when the initial enquiry was made, a box had been ticked and had never been un-ticked, and in addition to that, because the call had been pushed to the assessors so many times it was now stuffed in the way that only computers know how to stuff things.

At some point on Wednesday 6^th of February (I’m giving until lunchtime). If I haven’t received a phone call from the assessors I’m going into complaint mode. This will entail typing up a diarised timeline, recorded from the moment the second call was made to Direct Line and they “ummed and ahhed” and didn’t inspire any confidence (Time, Date, name of call centre agent and preferably their extension No:).

As with all such letters of complaint I shall bypass all the managers at every level in the call centre and instead find the three or four most senior board members and moan direct to them. This I have found works as well as Kryptonite against Superman. It worked when the Woolwich building society lost some property deeds they had to send two hundred yards to my solicitors. It worked with CountryWide Property Lawyers who really do put the count in country (did you see what I did there?). To be fair to Countrywide they waved their fees for our last house sale ... but by god they took us to the wire with our buyers patience.

So here we are; I have to deal with call centre people every day; in India, in Manila somewhere up North, somewhere in France and somewhere in Poland. The staff aren’t accountable and there is often very little they can, or want to do (other than call another call centre somewhere). The managers may have a pop at an individual over a particular error, but from bitter experience all they are interested in is ensuring that the error that propagated from their subordinate doesn’t head upwards to their own managers, as it just drags on and on and on, and that’s just messy.

So my top tip for kicking up a stink when you are being (for want of a better phrase) fucked around, is aim your complaint right at the very top, and then follow it up. It seems mean, but they are quick enough to take your money, they are quick enough to send you a snotagram telling you that if they can find a way not to pay you out ... they will. Another tip, do not be angry when you write to complain, no opinions, no judgements and no name calling, just the facts and as brief as possible. Remember that, have a splendid week, we’ll post again when we have some idea of WTF we are going to do next. J