The Mercedes Vario 814D has arrived

If you haven’t already, go check out The Idea to see what this is all about, and what our plan is.

But if you have seen our drawing board, the ex MoD, 2004 Mercedes Vario 814d that we were eyeing up, it turned out to be an absolute steal, being a no brainer to be the base van of this van conversion.

Without much hesitation we put our offer in and then boom, we were 7.5 tonnes heavier. This thing is huge, our plan is to be able to sleep up to 5 people, so it has to be really.

It’s not in great condition at the moment, but the key to finding the gems is to look past the rough, or in this case, rust. The fact its only got 50,000 miles on the clock is a massive bonus, as we don’t plan on this sitting around for months on end. We want this to be on the move constantly, so the low milage gives us confidence that this has lots of life left in this.

Firstly, we’ve got to see what we’re working with. This particular Mercedes Vario is an ex Police vehicle, so it has lots of solid racking in to house all their gear. For this purpose, it’s no good to us, so it’s going to be removed and repurposed as our racking in our Driift Store!

We’re stripping this right back, removing the tailgate, meters and meters of unnecessary wiring, and removing the flooring to expose the chassis to see what we’re really working with. There is the obvious surface rust, but nothing too serious, something we can sort ourselves. Right now, it’s a case of getting it through its MOT…

But for now, its early stages, and now the real planning can begin, deciding what next to purchase, what order to do things in, and what direction we want to take this in.