Hi All. I thought I might do a build thread about my Swamper styled 2015 reg T5.1 T32 140 after a year of fettling and tweaking.

I love reading other folk’s posts and build threads and have found some really useful help, ideas and inspiration so I hope this of interest to others.

So in September 2021 I sold my LWB T5.1 180 BTDi Caravelle and became “vanless” for a few weeks while I hunted for a new project.

It’s surprising how bereft you feel with no van on the drive.

I knew I wanted a reasonably newish T5.1 (or maybe T6), ideally SWB (LWB was a bit big for the driveway ).
Prefered 6 speed ,140, tailgate and air-con. I had a budget anywhere from £15K to £25K depending on the van and work required.

I found ( and then kept coming back to ) a yellow ex-AA 2015 T5.1 on eBay that was fairly local ( only an hour away ), a reasonable price and had a decent semi converted interior with R&R bed although still a hardtop. It had 2 x side windows fitted but no rear tailgate window.

This appealed on a number of counts. It ticked the tailgate, air-con, 6 speed, 140 boxes etc but I also loved the yellow colour!

Having most of the interior work done would save me a lot of time and money but also still give me the flexibility of adding my own touches as well as adding some of the major stuff like a pop top.

I could see in the advert images that it had a quality interior including RIB seat, furniture from Camper Worx in a Vohringer blue grey metallic finish, a solid composite worktop with an interesting radius fridge step out. It looked to have some nice black alloys which turned out to be nearly new Oz 18"'s.

Appliances already fitted were a 12v JustKampers fridge and Dometic 9222 combi sink / hob. It also had a full set of decent internal silver screens, a nice bonus.

The van had a full AA service history up to 90K as well as more recent entries including a cambelt and pump change.
Current mileage advertised was around 110K.

So quickly booked a trip to view, met the nice young guy selling it, had a test and inspection, did the usual checks, bit of a haggle, handshake and bought including a full tank of fuel, screens and an unused matching table, rail and folding leg.

Happy with that as it left me with around £6 to £7K in the kitty to complete the van to my liking, possibly more if required.
















I had a list to sort out from my inspection:

The front driver seat was a bit worn and needed new foam, cab USB wasn't working , the engine warning light was coming on intermittently.

Tow bar not working, a couple of very small dinks and chips, rear bumper had a "lump" under the tailgate.

The roof still had the GPS and aerials attached plus the (supposedly) plugged holes from the AA lighting bar.

The Sargent K115A electrics just needed the external hook up sorting.

But, fundamentally, nothing major so time to crack on.

I had decided ,virtually from the moment I saw it, that the final outcome was going to be more of a Swamper style than lowered "lean ‘n’ mean".

I had downloaded loads of Swamper van images off the Net as inspiration and really like that style of van.

First jobs were some wing decals, black sequential side indicators and wind deflectors.

Big fan of deflectors , even have them on my little Kia Picanto daily now !