Transit Tales. Owned or rented.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

The two Transits we had: a 1986 D short wheelbase low top Transit Mark 3 2.0 pinto. Not a bad van but it was rusting at three years old. I fitted a good used bonnet and changed it from scabby white to Gentian blue.

Then came an 18 month old G plate Transit 80, short wheelbase low top 1600 pinto in black. Bought at Blackbushe auction, I absolutely stole it. Literally half its actual value. The MT75 box had no third gear so I fitted a Ford exchange box and I waxoyled the fuck out of it. I found it in a scrapyard in 2006, battered but rust free.

I preferred the 1600 to the 2000 and it was just a really good van.

Those were the proper Transits, not the fwd shit.

[JimH]

We have a 12 plate Mk7 crew cab pick up that was bought as a tipper and converted using the body off the LDV400 it replaced which includes the half ton RSG hydraulic tail lift which is the most useful thing in the history of the world ever. Morrison had it for some road patching contract so it was covered in tar inside but that cleaned up quite nicely once I took the seats to bits and washed the covers. In the end we only bought a new cover for the driver's seat squab. Mileage is a tad on the high side at 190K but most of those appear tp have been on the motorway. It only does a couple of thousand miles a year anyway so there is probably a few years of life left in it.

There certainly is now since No2 piston got scored so we rebuilt the engine. It had steel paneled doors in the rear but a few quid got glass fitted to them and a set of rear seats and seatbelts (they were using the back as tool storage) turned it into a six seater which is handy.

Seems like a happy thing.

[paulplom]

All transits after about 2013 can fuck right off.

[paulplom]

You know the tale with mine. Plasterer I work with has had nothing but problem after problem with his 2016 one he's parked jt up fpr now with it hiccing in and the mil lit again.
Builder has a 2018 one that was off the road for a year needing a new engine at less than 30k. Cost him over £8k. Someone nicked the cat while it was parked up at the garage too.

[Warren t claim]

In other news, today was the day we bridged our Stars In Their Eyes Transit Supervan.

We bought this 56 plate SWB FWD Transit last September with not tax or test for not many £s because it needed work, namely a fuckload of welding. Looking almost tidy from ten yards in its metallic blue paint it was pretty obvious on inspection that this van had originally been bought by an owner driver who'd happily ticked all the options boxes including aircon. I didn't collect it from the trader friend selling it but on the afternoon we got it I received a phone call summoning me to come over and drive it as, and I quote, "a right fucking weapon!" I arrive to find the others giggling and demanding that I take them all out for a spin. I get behind the wheel with my two passengers alongside me and head off for a blast. Fucking hell this thing is rapid! Due to the non functioning TCS it happily spins its front wheels in the first three gears three up and on dry tarmac! A previous owner has clearly had it remapped as it doesn't just go like fuck when booted, it also pulls hard from 25 mph in 5th to the point where I'm checking that I've not put it in 3rd by mistake!

Sadly, in the cold hard light of day we discovered that getting it through a test wouldn't be economically viable. Along with a metric fuckload of welding it'd need the ABS/TCS sorting, two wheel bearings and two new front tyres that somewhat unsurprisingly it didn't need the day we collected it. The final straw was the DMF deciding to shit itself despite the clutch being OK.

With a heavy heart, we loaded it with whatever scrap we could find and took it through the Mersey Tunnel to Norton's weighbridge and frag yard at Liverpool docks. To give it a decent send off, and the fact that the weighbridge had a long queue, all three of us took turns to leave burnout skid marks along Regent Road until the DMF totally gave up to the point where the starter wouldn't engage.

[M'coli]

I've only driven 3.
First one was a mk3 (?) hire van in late 2000 to move me from Cambridgeshire to Yorkshire. It was ancient, and fairly fucked to the point that I had to reset the ignition timing from ATDC to BTDC... That and the usual fucked Ford radio cassette so a very long boring drive.
Second one was a works van in 2016, memorable for overtaking a police horsebox and then suddenly remembering the dual carriageway limit for a van is 60, not 70... Also, it had a USB stereo in it, and I know fairly surely that was the first time it had encountered a memory stick full of Acid Croft.
Third was a works Transit Connect, which means it's a Mondeo in van's clothing. Not a bad thing, bar it going into limp-home mode on the first motorway sliproad I took it on...

[mercrocker]

It does disappoint me how Ford managed to relegate their market-defining vans from bombproof, if rusty, paragons of reliability into shivering useless fragility. Probably not unrelated to transferring production from Southampton to some sand-pit......

Beats me how they flog 'em to the Yanks, they must be missing their Econolines.....

[bub2006]

A chap I know is in his 70s now and always had a transit from the 70s. Before that was a j4 van. He runs them till they collapse and then scraps them. Usually last for 10 years or so before going over the bridge. Except his last 2. He had an S plate that was reliable yet kept needing welding so he bought an 05 plate and said it would outlast him. After massive welding and another engine over the 4 years he had it he replaced it with a 58 plate and that is about dead now. But he won't buy anything else. I've said before that what he's spent on the 05,engine and welding then purchasing the 58 and maintaining it and welding it he could have just kept the S plate and had one of the tidiest smileys around.

[mercrocker]

A good mate of mine has a G-plate MKIII SWB hightop made into a camper. Full of plod (which also describes its usual progress) and powered* by a 1.6 Pinto. He paid less for the thing than my last round of welding cost on the T25, spends about £150 each year on patching it up and it will, by his own admission, probably outlive him. Other folk take the piss out of it but I think he is bang on for something he is only going to use a few months of the year.

[Jerzy Woking]

We had a 1987 2.0 petrol back in 1993 as bike transporter when racing. It would cruise happily at 75 mph loaded with two bikes generator, etc. Without a load, it was very rapid and tail happy

Loved it, but then we got some sponsorship from a large logistics company, and they lent us a Luton van and free fuel. The diesel Iveco was not a patch on the Transit. That lasted a couple more years with a mate, before the welding needed was too much. It still flew!

Edit: There is no shortage of early 1980's Transits in the south of Morocco. Seen at least two in every town we have ridden through