Looking at picking up a T6 and wondering if I am being dangerously stupid...

[williecba]

It is not so much the vehicle mileage as how the mileage was or was not accumulated. My 3 year old T32 kombi that has just completed its 20 thousandth mile might look like a good low mileage vehicle if you didn’t know that when I go to work it is a 40-60 minute long 10 mile journey at speed restricted 20mph across inner South East London and that I go over 56 speed humps every day and never get higher than the 3rd gear out of 7.
Best van I ever bought was from a painter (so no heavy loads and no filth) who drove Windsor to Kensington along the M4/A4 and back every day.
I would hate to buy a van used by a delivery driver for someone like Hermes or Amazon. Stopping and starting, low speed, lots of turning and braking, doors opening and closing umpteen times a day. The mileage would not be extremely high but oh the wear and tear! What you want is a well serviced van that has spent its time wizzing up and down the motorway, say Manchester to London and back every day. Try to be certain that you know what you are looking at has been used for.

 

[dotcodotuk]

In the interest of not being one of those people who never finish a story, thought I would wrap this one up.

In the end it turned out that the T6 I was looking at with the high mileage had a particularly iffy history. An evening spent researching the van led me to the previous owner's twitter feed where he had spent many hours bemoaning the reliability of his newly-bought T6 that was drinking oil and had conked out multiple times on the side of the road, leading to VW recommending that the engine was replaced.

Turns out he sold it on to the person I was talking to who bought it in good faith, then found out it was a bit of a lemon and wanted to shift it on again sharpish. Fortunately a reverse image search and some Twitter stalking found me the van's history and saved me from a potential nightmare.

No wonder it had a sheath of paperwork accompanying it... looks like it had spent more time with the local VW dealer than it had on the road in the last 12-months!

All of which tells me that while I might get lucky with a low-priced, high-mileage T6... I probably shouldn't.

 

[JOG]

In the interest of not being one of those people who never finish a story, thought I would wrap this one up.

In the end it turned out that the T6 I was looking at with the high mileage had a particularly iffy history. An evening spent researching the van led me to the previous owner's twitter feed where he had spent many hours bemoaning the reliability of his newly-bought T6 that was drinking oil and had conked out multiple times on the side of the road, leading to VW recommending that the engine was replaced.

Turns out he sold it on to the person I was talking to who bought it in good faith, then found out it was a bit of a lemon and wanted to shift it on again sharpish. Fortunately a reverse image search and some Twitter stalking found me the van's history and saved me from a potential nightmare.

No wonder it had a sheath of paperwork accompanying it... looks like it had spent more time with the local VW dealer than it had on the road in the last 12-months!

All of which tells me that while I might get lucky with a low-priced, high-mileage T6... I probably shouldn't.

Good work, very good work! Saved yourself a headache there