Sk8ermaiden
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- Apr 21, 2020
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Hi, I've been reading through pages and pages of old posts on this helpful forum! After we rented a van for a three week camping road trip with our kids, my best friend and I decided to seriously consider buying a 12-15 passenger van and modifying it for future trips.
Our dilemma. We know virtually nothing about cars. And this is pure recreation so we can't spend a lot. We do have a repair shop we really trust, as well as a friend who's excellent at fixing cars we could probably bribe to look at a potential purchase.
My friend is always willing to try her hand at car repairs, but isn't terribly experienced at them.
Whatever we get - it has to have at least 7 belted seats (or be modified to have 7 belted seats,) so we're likely looking at a situation where we're buying a van, pulling out back rows and mostly only modifying that area. We'd be open to a small class B too, but those seem more expensive and usually aren't suited to our needs.
The stuff in our budget appears to mostly be 15-20 year old 12-15 passenger vans with 80-200K miles on them. Is it reasonable to expect one to keep ticking for long past 100K? (We would only use it occasionally, but that trip of ours was 32,000 miles all by itself.) Are there certain make/model/years that are generally a good bet? Or ones to avoid? I have read many times on here to just forget about Sprinters. I got excited about a Winnebago Rialta until I read the consensus on its VW engine.
There was a '99 Dodge Ram 3500 15 passenger, single owner, with under 75K miles on Facebook marketplace for $3,200 and i think that's the most tempting one I've seen. It looked great inside too. Right now I'm just gathering info, but WOULD that be a decent deal?"
Thanks all.
Our dilemma. We know virtually nothing about cars. And this is pure recreation so we can't spend a lot. We do have a repair shop we really trust, as well as a friend who's excellent at fixing cars we could probably bribe to look at a potential purchase.
My friend is always willing to try her hand at car repairs, but isn't terribly experienced at them.
Whatever we get - it has to have at least 7 belted seats (or be modified to have 7 belted seats,) so we're likely looking at a situation where we're buying a van, pulling out back rows and mostly only modifying that area. We'd be open to a small class B too, but those seem more expensive and usually aren't suited to our needs.
The stuff in our budget appears to mostly be 15-20 year old 12-15 passenger vans with 80-200K miles on them. Is it reasonable to expect one to keep ticking for long past 100K? (We would only use it occasionally, but that trip of ours was 32,000 miles all by itself.) Are there certain make/model/years that are generally a good bet? Or ones to avoid? I have read many times on here to just forget about Sprinters. I got excited about a Winnebago Rialta until I read the consensus on its VW engine.
There was a '99 Dodge Ram 3500 15 passenger, single owner, with under 75K miles on Facebook marketplace for $3,200 and i think that's the most tempting one I've seen. It looked great inside too. Right now I'm just gathering info, but WOULD that be a decent deal?"
Thanks all.