Caravan Crash Course

Hi Peter,
Vans in that price bracket will be those made in the late 70s/early80s.
Anything much younger than that I would treat with a fair amount of caution. They may have been flooded or otherwise damaged and could possibly be moneypits.

Some of the older names that spring to mind are the older versions of Millard, Modern, Coromal (all made in WA) and Viscount. These are generally solid reliable vans of that period. They all had re-incarnations in later years but were not as good as the originals

I have a 1982 82 Viscount "Grand Tourer" which was allegedly one of the best made in that period which I bought a few years ago for around $6500. It was a 1 owner unit and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to snap it up.

A word of warning about some models of that era...
A number of companies made what was usually termed "UltraLight" with various spellings. Most of these units were extremely light in both chassis and body comstruction and didn't last too well on anything other than good bitumen.

Most vans of that era were the usual leaf spring, rigid axle suspension and I can't think of any with independent systems but there may well have been

Looking for a suitable van involves visiting van yards and asking about trade ins, local newspapers and shop notice boards. Even Gumtree and ebay are worth a look

Hope you find what you are looking for

Disco.

We had a Golf van of around that vintage and it was very well built with good quality components. Was still going strong when we sold it a few years ago.

We just bought a 97 coromal seka 535, tandem poptop we paid 12k not in spotless condition but being a family and not wanting to spend 30k we knew we were up for some work. It is aluminum framed and hs independent suspension ours was a trade in at George day, nothing fancy but tidy and the work that needs to be done was minor.
Good luck

This thread maybe of interest to you.

http://caravanersforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12286