This Weekend it was Raining again, its done this a lot recently, so as working outside on Rosie is to risk drowning (this is North Wales rain). What better time to think back to a time of long and even sometimes dry days of June when we first saw that little truck….
It was Friday night, a weeks work done and we were idly looking online for that “ideal” “sensible” Sprinter 416 LWB (2.7 5cylinder engine etc. etc.) and we found one but it was 4×4 ah well….look at the scrolling gallery of vehicles for a few seconds.
There was something about the pictures of the little library truck in that gallery that was appealing and then click! all the details, lets have a look why not. Not too long (7m from end to end), low mileage, 9 years old and a walk through from cab to the back a rare thing on a 7.5 tonne vehicle, i wonder if its still available…maybe message the dealer…maybe just have a look…
So the next day we drove from North Wales to Heathrow and spent 2 hours prodding, driving and looking over the truck on a hot sunny day providing a certain amount of free cabaret to the patrons of The Green Man pub.
Well there were clearly solar panels on the roof, an inverter and some very large (and very dead) auxiliary batteries, a lot of a lot of wiring, CCTV, a suspicious mushroom growing out of the floor……
Things we liked: 3 big rooflights, nice big windows, cruise control, air suspended seats, a good selection of belly lockers, Eberspacher heaters the walk through….
Things we didn’t like: the mushroom growing out of the floor (more of this later), the failed double glazing units, the fact that the auxiliary power system (and hence all the interior lights and equipment heaters etc.) was dead, the wheelchair hoist…
But after a certain amount of haggling we knocked off some money for the things we didn’t like and drove off with a large truck.
Typing this now I have to say it sounds like a pretty daft decision!!!
The journey home was not without incident as a late lunch stop at Beaconsfield services turned into several hours of stress as my not deeply loved but very useful Honda Civic was reversed into by an articulated wagon and written off. Fortunately no injuries and after the Civic disappeared on the back of a recovery truck we carried on our journey home in the truck. Its probably fair to say at this point we were not in the best of spirits!
On the journey home we learned:
- The windscreen wiper blades were perished (it started to rain)
- There was something wrong with the emissions control (a light came on)
- fuel economy was around 19mpg (not unexpected)
- It was quite fun to drive (in a slow trucky sort of way)
- It was really hard to put diesel in (angle of the filler behind the flap on the body)
- it was only just possible to get the truck down the track into our yard (especially in the dark and the rain at 1 am after a very stressful day)
- we thought we might have made a big (7500kg GVW) mistake!
On the journey we also decided to call the truck Rosie…..
A day that certainly had elements of type II fun….. Types of Fun
Renovating Rosie 