What's the smallest van you can fit a bike in?

[bass gt3]

scorcher said:

loads of room in a connect

But it just fits better in a Vito...

[srob]

Wedg1e said:

srob said:

The obvious question is what size/type of bike?

My old man has a Transit Connect, and you wouldn't get a whole bike in that.

Sorry, you're wrong - admittedly depending on which model of Connect. I take Nursy's 125 Eliminator for its MOTs in my Connect quite easily - it's a T230LX (so LWB and high roof version and the passenger seat folds flat which gives more room for the bike's front wheel.

However... the 'all-new-for-2014' Connect loses 5" off the internal headroom (only one roof option now) so you would (as I will when mine arrives) probably struggle.

ETA: Ah, I see Catso beat me to it

Edited by Wedg1e on Monday 6th October 22:18

Ah, his has a metal bulkhead between cabin and rear, assume yours doesn't if you can get through to the front seats?

I assumed they all did!

[Dog Star]

Lobsta said:

Dog Star said:

You can fit an R1 in a stolen Nissan Vanette.

A now stolen R1?

Indeed - here is said Nissan Vanette stealing somebody elses bike the day after my R1 and KTM went....

[s3fella]

LoonR1 said:

I was warned off Vivaros and Renault Masters as they're the same van and important stuff wears out and costs a lot to replace. I'm not mechanically minded, but am very good financially. If someone says that's type of van is £1500 cheaper than its competitors then I want to understand why. It seems it's because they cost that it more to put right / prevent.

You know about the Vito rust problems, yeah? !!!!

[Fleegle]

s3fella said:

You know about the Vito rust problems, yeah? !!!!

It's easy to spot on the white Vito's, so you just walk away

[jhfozzy]

LoonR1 said:

I was warned off Vivaros and Renault Masters as they're the same van and important stuff wears out and costs a lot to replace. I'm not mechanically minded, but am very good financially. If someone says that's type of van is £1500 cheaper than its competitors then I want to understand why. It seems it's because they cost that it more to put right / prevent.

Fleegle said:

I think they have gearbox issues

crashley said:

The air intake is also rather low on those. I definitely didn't advise "that's only a puddle, this'll be fine" to a mate, that would have been an utterly stupid thing to do.

My brother currently drives a Vauxhall Vivaro (2013) for work, had one previous and has had Renault traffics too. He does about 30k a year, a combination of motorway, backroads and farm tracks.

Gearboxes are poor, not so much breaking down, but getting very clunky.

He drove his previous van through a shallow flood, it was below the sills of the van when he got out, but because the intake was so low and behind the bumper it sucked the water up. Vauxhall wrote the engine off and because there were so many vans doing the same, there were no engines available so they wrote the van off!

His current Vivaro has also just had a new radiator and A/C condenser due to some pretty big stone hits, which they showed him during the stripdown. This however may be a lot down to our recent trip to Germany and his love of the Autobahn.

Saying this though, he'd still prefer his current Vauxhall to the Renault Traffics and one Kangoo (which was a disaster).

Their warranty department has been pretty good according to him with no fuss unlike another van in the fleet, a 14 plate Nissan where there is a problem with the radio where it keeps switching off. "No problem" Nissan say, "it requires a new plug on the radio, that'll be a £xxx.xx repair please" on a six month old van with a flat refusal to discuss doing it under warranty.

[Prof Prolapse]

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

[dapearson]

Prof Prolapse said:

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

Yep. I was staggered by the cost of a decent van when i looked at one for race car transport.

[Fleegle]

Prof Prolapse said:

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

I hate driving. The last thing I would be looking for if I was doing journeys of 200 miles every now and again is a van with no creature comforts. The Vito drives like a car, has soundproofing, a good driving position and a smooth engine. Far flung from the Transit Luton that I drove in 1985 which I think you may be describing

[Prof Prolapse]

I think it was quite generic but my favourite are the LDVs made using obsolete Transit components presumably assembled by fitters with Down's syndrome.

I totally agree about comfort. There comes a point when you're driving an enormous Sprinter LWB hightop, or Transit Luton when you think, a bit of sound deadening might have made the last 1,000 miles less horrendous without adding much weight. Or wondering why you have a radio with a dead medium rather than a CD player. They should just fit fking betamax, at least you'd have a cheap laugh. Once.

I actually think this resurgence by yuppie aholes in VW Transporters and Merc Vitos is a good thing, as they'll demand more from the manufacturers than the current crop of mouth breathers who usually buy vans.

[ZesPak]

Prof Prolapse said:

... Or wondering why you have a radio with a dead medium rather than a CD player.

The irony.

As for everything else, I agree. My parents went looking for a new van to go on vacation with the bicycles and everything inside, there's a reason why a Vito is twice the price of a Traffic.
As a tool, the traffic is a great van. But it's half the car a Vito is.

[moanthebairns]

Prof Prolapse said:

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

Pretty much why I bought a trailer, I toyed with selling the car and running a van as my only 4 wheel option. I was gobsmacked just how little you got for your money.

I ran a works berlingo and a partner, covering well over 100,000 miles and to find out they are now £13 k was a bit staggering.

That said they were still fun to drive when empty, however I grew tired of the utterly st build quality quickly. A tape player in the partner! The berlingo's weren't much better. A cd player, fuel gauge and a rev counter that was it.

[Deisel Weisel]

croyde said:

Back in the 80s when I was a courier in a Honda Acty van, I was told to pick up a parcel from a motorcycle dealers in Surrey to deliver somewhere in central London.

It was a Kawasaki GPz900R still in it's crate. We managed it but at least a couple of foot stuck out the back of the van, obviously having to leave the door open

I remember as a despatch rider, back in the 80’s. Got a puncture on motorway. Squirty foamy stuff didn’t fix it. So a courier from my firm, who drove an Acty van, picked me up off the motorway. CX500 in the back (I can’t remember how we managed it now) and drove me to Coventry to get it fixed. Just Googled Acty dimensions, but can’t find them, but they were smaller than a Rascal. 550cc and 31bhp, gives you an idea how tiny...

[Deisel Weisel]

@OP
The older shorter version of the Berlingo is big enough, but you need to get the front wheel into the cabin area, somehow. I think the passenger seat folds flat on later versions.

[Yamahadivvyrider]

You can get a pw80 into a mini easily

[theshrew]

Prof Prolapse said:

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

Do you think transport managers / rental company's give a feck if the van has all mod cons inside it if it rusts etc ? The main thing they are interested in is service intervals, fuel economy, weight and price. You can buy a van with all the mod cons but not many people do.

The r&d has moved on a lot. Mainly engine wise also manufactures are now listening to peoples views and adding better spec interiors as std

You also have to remember a lot of these vans that are a typical Transit size are fairly new projects with car manufactures jumping into it after the driving licence laws changed - im sure they will get better as time goes on.

As for being reliable - My honest opinion is the service intervals are far to high these days, they are built to price unfortunately that brings problems. Trying to meet emission levels has caused the tech to move on to far to soon and come up with silly solutions to solve the problem. For eg EGR that causes soooooo many problems its unreal, whoever thought it was a good idea to put exhaust gasses into a engine that's supposed to have clean air in it need fking with a rag mans trumpet ! Poor fuel quality also causes a lot of problems these days.

The cost to fix the vehicles is so high because they don't make a lot of money from the vehicle sale, the proffet comes from parts etc presumably that's another reason why quality isn't as it should be.

Edited by theshrew on Thursday 9th October 22:14

[Prof Prolapse]

theshrew said:

Prof Prolapse said:

I have a question. If I bought a van I'd want two things from it;

1- It to be priced for what it is. I.e. Little R&D development for 30 years, spartan interior, and simple parts so make it reasonably priced; and
2- It to be reliable.

Why is it that no manufacturer can apparently offer this?

You basically pay £25,000 for a rot box, which either features an engine in hatchbacks a quarter the price, or one designed in the 1980s refreshed with parts guaranteed to fail every year and costing £1,000s.

Do you think transport managers / rental company's give a feck if the van has all mod cons inside it if it rusts etc ? The main thing they are interested in is service intervals, fuel economy, weight and price. You can buy a van with all the mod cons but not many people do.

The r&d has moved on a lot. Mainly engine wise also manufactures are now listening to peoples views and adding better spec interiors as std

You also have to remember a lot of these vans that are a typical Transit size are fairly new projects with car manufactures jumping into it after the driving licence laws changed - im sure they will get better as time goes on.

As for being reliable - My honest opinion is the service intervals are far to high these days, they are built to price unfortunately that brings problems. Trying to meet emission levels has caused the tech to move on to far to soon and come up with silly solutions to solve the problem. For eg EGR that causes soooooo many problems its unreal, whoever thought it was a good idea to put exhaust gasses into a engine that's supposed to have clean air in it need fking with a rag mans trumpet ! Poor fuel quality also causes a lot of problems these days.

The cost to fix the vehicles is so high because they don't make a lot of money from the vehicle sale, the proffet comes from parts etc presumably that's another reason why quality isn't as it should be.

OK. But how does this alter the fact that my requirements are very simple but not met by the industry? Or is your point it is beyond the ability of mankind to produce a reasonable priced reliable van?

Also, you've not read my second post as you're implying I don't understand how consumer driven development works despite me citing it, and I just plain old disagree with everything else.

[LoonR1]

Prof Prolapse said:

OK. But how does this alter the fact that my requirements are very simple but not met by the industry? Or is your point it is beyond the ability of mankind to produce a reasonable priced reliable van?

Also, you've not read my second post as you're implying I don't understand how consumer driven development works despite me citing it, and I just plain old disagree with everything else.

New vans are primarily bought by lease companies or larger businesses, where they get several dozen tax breaks on them. They aren't targetted at, or designed for, Joe Public. The ones that are, are fully loaded and pretty damn expensive, but then so are similarly equipped cars.

[theshrew]

LoonR1 said:

Prof Prolapse said:

OK. But how does this alter the fact that my requirements are very simple but not met by the industry? Or is your point it is beyond the ability of mankind to produce a reasonable priced reliable van?

Also, you've not read my second post as you're implying I don't understand how consumer driven development works despite me citing it, and I just plain old disagree with everything else.

New vans are primarily bought by lease companies or larger businesses, where they get several dozen tax breaks on them. They aren't targetted at, or designed for, Joe Public. The ones that are, are fully loaded and pretty damn expensive, but then so are similarly equipped cars.

What Loon says really.

They can and do build reliable vehicles.

For vans look at it like this upto 3.5t they are just big cars really. Would you buy a car, do 250,000 and expect it to not have any problems. Vans will probably carry a lot lot lot more weight than a car in every day use which is a big factor on wear and tear + factor in a minimum wage dick head driver thrashing the arse of it all day every day.

[Fleegle]

Prof Prolapse said:

OK. But how does this alter the fact that my requirements are very simple but not met by the industry? Or is your point it is beyond the ability of mankind to produce a reasonable priced reliable van?

Also, you've not read my second post as you're implying I don't understand how consumer driven development works despite me citing it, and I just plain old disagree with everything else.

What you are looking for became defunct at the end of the 60's. No radio, no adjustable seats, no soundproofing, sliding windows, and lights that went dim on tickover

You will no longer to be able to buy anything in your wishlist simply due to market forces and the introduction of the ECU

They not only control the car, but your wallet

I'm very cynical were electronics are concerned. Are they programmed to make a vehicle to suit us....or the manufacturer??