What's the Plan?

My over-riding initial thoughts are that I don't want to spend too much money until I've established how viable it is to keep as my everyday car. Having said that, I've bitten the bullet and sold my much newer Peugeot, as I don't want to have to insure two cars and also have limited parking in the street, so I am fairly committed to trying to make it work. I do feel like I have a fairly decent fighting fund to pay for any small bits that need doing though before it becomes a money pit.

I also don't want to go to town on fitting it out as a camper. My plan is, for the first year at least, to use as little new stuff as possible until I have a better feel for what will work and what will be a waste of money. I'm not trying to recreate a fully fledged motorhome; more a posh tent ☺.

So the initial list on the vehicle itself is:

Deep clean interior and dehumidify. I've already made a start on the mats and they came up really well. I think I'll probably hire a "Rug Doctor" machine to do the main parts though.

 

Fit new heater blower resistor, which is the likely cause the blower isn't working

Fit new roof aerial - most likely cause of the wet seat as directly above 

Paint the bonnet. I don't think I'll be able to match the paint on such a big panel, so I'm thinking that I might do it satin black and with some sort of white graphic on it. The satin black should fit well in the context of the black band running around the windscreen and up over the roofline of the van. Something like this, but with a graphic on it:

Hopefully, it will look a bit better than that!

Rub down above windscreen and repaint. Not such an issue there about blending in the colour.

Respray the wheel trims with silver wheel paint. If I keep it long term, I'll look out for some Honda alloys off a Civic or Accord. They are fairly cheap; less than £200.

Repaint the rear bumper and add a rubber bumper protector strip.

Fix rear tailgate release. Add an extra release so I can operate it from inside when camping. 

Repaint towbar.

Sort out inoperative fog lamp.

Fix sliding door hinge (replace rollers). Repaint damaged cover panel.

Then it needs a thorough service. Initially, oil and filters. Then a bit later I'll do the pollen filter and replace the auto transmission fluid.

Most of this is TLC and time rather than lots of money. That lot should get it fairly presentable and mechanically "stable". I won't be surprised if there are a couple of other mechanicals to deal with in that phase as well though. 

In terms of using it to camp, the inside is super-versatile and goes a long way to helping me.

Firstly, a nice surprise that I discovered was that the front driver and passenger seats swivel to face the rear. That creates a much more open cabin space when camping. The two rear rows of seats can be configured in loads of different ways, e.g.

These two seats folded down will be the basis
 of my bed, with a topper on. I'll remove the other
rear seat and the small "jockey seat" that you can
see folded up here. I'll make a storage unit with a 
padded top to fit in the missing gap to support the 
mattress.

In "day mode" you can effectively turn the second
row seat around like this.

Or you can fold row 2 seat down to make a table
between row 1 and row 3.

And for general use, that row 3 seat also
folds up out of the way to give a huge space.

I'll make a small unit to contain my camp stove etc that I can temporarily fit in the back (probably in the space vacated by the removed row 3 seat and using those fixings to attach it securely).

And then I'll make a storage box with a padded lid that can fit behind row 3 seat, but then move around to fill in the gap alongside the seat when I make up the bed.

I'll probably get hold of a cheap cool box for now, and also I'm just getting some rechargeable LED strip lights that attach magnetically to the roof area. If it all works well, these will be areas to upgrade in future, possibly with a leisure battery and solar panel to power it all.