Mk2 Caddy Van - Daily Beater.

[BT]

Hello Chaps,

I hope this is ok in here, they ran this model from "96 to "04 I think, they seem to fall 50% into the RR spirit of things, and 50% not. If its not welcome get rid of it, its all good with us!

Anyway, I used to own a Ford Ranger King cab, but it was a bit overkill, I was using it for my work commute and that was about it, I have a 1967 cooper I am restoring and some big dogs, the truck was ace for that but i never used the back seats and it was kind of dead money. So I sold it in the hope to free up some money and buy something smaller.

I wanted a TDI van, but was struggling to find one, I then found one on a classic ford forum. It was down in Andover, I am not that far from London, a few phone calls were made and I had a chap go down to pick it up for me. Paid via transfer and it got brought up to me, hadn't seen it and if I had I probably wouldn't have bought it. About a week later my ranger went to a new home (which i miss massively)

Anyway here it is the day I got it.




Complete with all of this inside...



Still shocked at how rancid it was inside there. I scrubbed that thing for hours but where it was so filthy its semi-impossible to get it looking like new. This is something that i will come back to a little later on.

The van was a non-starter but with a new battery it started straight up. Annoyingly the previous owner put no papers or previous MOT's in with the van, i keep meaning to check MOT history on the V5 number.

I've always liked the Seat front end, so I set out and tried to see if I could get anything cheap enough and I found this.



Managed to nab it at £100 i think it was due to the knackered gearbox and the fact it wasn't registered with the DVLA. Paid the same chap who got my van £20 to bring it home as well.

Got it home and tucked it away.



From this I am taking the...

Front doors
Wing mirrors
Power windows
Front seats
Complete front end (will get a cupra bumper online)
Carpets (to replace the horrible ones above)
Complete Dash and door cards
Steering wheel
Front ARB (explained later)

I drove the van around for a month or two standard, took it to a few places and was overall very impressed with how it performed for a 200k dirty white van.



I picked a guy up for work one evening and as i turned off a big hill into his road it sounded like someone threw a hammer into the side of my van. Was pretty sure the spring on my drivers side had snapped. Not giving a curse word I continued to drive the van until the rattling got on my wick. Sure enough the spring had snapped and had got caught up in the spring seat.

I saw this as an opportunity to lower the van, managed to get some front coilovers from a MK2 golf. They were seized solid so with some smashing and pulling they came loose, got greased up and they were sorted. I then wanted to find a complete replacement lowered rear axle. I got offered one by someone on here, when i went to fit it we hit problems.

The rear axle was sold to me as a late axle, turns out it was an early one. No problem I will put the whole thing on. went to check the bleed nipples were free, nope, snap. Went to replace the cylinders, nope insides were shagged. So i went about rewelding the rear saddles.

Anyway before.



I then ran out of time to do the backs, so just put the front on with the hope of sorting the rears out soon after. Doesn't look that bad here.



The guys I work with kept mocking it, i thought it cant be that bad. Then I saw this...



it was then aptly named "The Wedge"

[calla]

 Liking this.

[autoverse]

I do like these, look forward to seeing more of the Ibiza transplant.

[hamps]

i miss my caddy van, i had a tdi slammed on porsche wheels, great vans, book marked this one nice

[mortcars]

loads of potential with these vans look forward to the progress

[BT]

Thanks very much for the kind words! I already have a fair few plans.

Jun 15, 2015 21:00:36 GMT hamps said:

i miss my caddy van, i had a tdi slammed on porsche wheels, great vans, book marked this one nice

Thanks Hamps, I remember your old one was for sale shortly after I bought mine. You are, or were if you've moved, local to me, did you not have a escort van, tiger decals, yellow cossie wheels with a MK3 front? I used to see that about all the time. Always wanted it!

A few weeks ago now I managed to get round to flipping the rear axle, the already flipped axle I bought was to be frank, shagged! The only reason I bought it was because it meant I would have a spare rear axle which is what I wanted but that back fired.

So I whipped the old axle out, welded the saddles on the other side and plonked it back on the floor.



Problem now is the rear end is far too low, mud flaps were scraping everywhere, sparks and all sorts of stuff coming out the back (according to the guy who followed me through the tunnel the other morning) and I couldn't carry any weight in the back. great.



To raise the back on these vans you need to use adjustable shackles. So I ordered some up and waited for them to arrive, until then the van was put to one side as it was pretty unusable!

[VWPowered]

Looking great that dude

[ryanc]

Big thumbs up from me love these things looking forward to more updates

[dikkehemaworst]

Love to see the seat nose on it.
bookmarked!

[hamps]

Jun 16, 2015 14:49:07 GMT BT said:

Thanks very much for the kind words! I already have a fair few plans.

Jun 15, 2015 21:00:36 GMT hamps said:

i miss my caddy van, i had a tdi slammed on porsche wheels, great vans, book marked this one nice

Thanks Hamps, I remember your old one was for sale shortly after I bought mine. You are, or were if you've moved, local to me, did you not have a escort van, tiger decals, yellow cossie wheels with a MK3 front? I used to see that about all the time. Always wanted it!

A few weeks ago now I managed to get round to flipping the rear axle, the already flipped axle I bought was to be frank, shagged! The only reason I bought it was because it meant I would have a spare rear axle which is what I wanted but that back fired.

So I whipped the old axle out, welded the saddles on the other side and plonked it back on the floor.



Problem now is the rear end is far too low, mud flaps were scraping everywhere, sparks and all sorts of stuff coming out the back (according to the guy who followed me through the tunnel the other morning) and I couldn't carry any weight in the back. great.



To raise the back on these vans you need to use adjustable shackles. So I ordered some up and waited for them to arrive, until then the van was put to one side as it was pretty unusable!

Yes mate that's me no mk3 front on the escort though, it was a mk4 I also had the s1 rs turbo pick up

[BT]

Oh I see, has to have been the same van either way. I do recall a pickup, but cant remember it so clearly. What do you have now?

I finally got round to ordering some adjustable shackles for my van to try and sort the rear end out.

When I got them it said this on the packet...



I was concerned about them not fitting but my van was being awful, so I have to give it a go. Thankfully they fitted well.



Thanks Al for those. Where my van has a tow bar fitted it was blocking the original shackles from coming off. Rather than remove the whole tow bar to get the old shackles off and new ones on I removed the nuts off of the old shackles, pushed them all the way over and slit them off with a grinder, If you start with the bottom bolt first you can then twist the old shackle 180 degrees and take the top bolt out. Saves you having to pull a towbar and exhaust off.

Drove it home and then remembered I never cut the studs down, I totally forgot, so I had a look a and oh dear.



Also, The second leaf. When I flipped my axle I left this on, should I have taken it off? You can see it in the above photo.

Van seems to sit much better now. Far happier, but the front is now too high. So I need to wind the front down around 15mm-20mm. I also need to attend to the camber on the front.

[hamps]

Do yourself a big favour and get onto Darkside developments and get a shallow sump kit ordered up, I paid the hard way! once i bought one though i was well happy

[BT]

I would do Hamps but I have other plans! (Which I will probably reveal with my next update) I think I may try and look up a sump guard/skid plate. I do like some of dark sides stuff, I would have used the to socket my ECU but they are too far up the country.

They built an awesome mk2 caddy van for Seth at SRS breakers, did 220bhp or there abouts on a ALH I think it was.

[hamps]

Yeh I had it sent to me, its steel too on the bottom so if you did hit it you would dent it rather than crack it.

Yeh iv'e seen there caddy, proper quick thing

[BT]

I used the van last weekend for a 450 mile round trip to wales. Cost me the grand sum of £45 to fill up with the old Tesco discount and when I got back I still had a quarter tank left, cant grumble. Came home with this little guy.



As you can kind of see above, I fitted some heated black VR6 leathers. Love them and super pleased with how they are.



Now here is the reason why I haven't bought a shallow sump.

Ever since I went out to the ring a few years ago I've wanted to go out again, in a budget hodge lodge of fun, I have thought about buying a clio cup, TU4 engined something, but then I thought maybe there is another option. Use the van.

Anyway, my weekend fun car is a 3.2 V6 German wagon, I love the thing, and after having owned a few 1.8T, big power Bams, lower powered ones as well, I love the V6. I got looking, asking some questions and wanted to try a VR6 swap.

I was telling a good friend about my VR6 plan, he has a VR6 that is going in his MK2 golf. A few weeks passed and he asked me if I wanted to buy his old engine, he had to call his swap off after a few things. I know the engine, knew the car it came out of, drove it, saw it go, and even pulled the engine out with him. I thought why not, and at the money I saw no reason to say no. This is how it was when I went to get it.



Pulled it out



Got it set up and started splitting it from the subframe, suspension and other parts just so that I could load it into my caddy.



Turns out, you can fit a VR6 engine and gearbox, two boxes full of loom, pedal box, effectively a whole VR6 conversion, front subframe, rear beam, slam panel, radiator, exhaust, suspension, engine crane and a few other bits will all fit in the back of a caddy, to my surprise.




Can anyone tell me what power steering parts I use on the VR6 swap?

[BT]

Tried to tint my windows, top went alright, bottom looked like curse word, do I need to put a bit of heat on there?

[BT]

Took it to the beach and had some fun.



Got it booked in for an mot tomorrow, need some input.

Will it fail on the following.

The spring on the rear that goes the the bias valve to adjust the breaking effect when a load is in the back is not there.

The car I bought the car from had damaged the bonnet catch somehow and the bonnet pull would not work. I have managed to bodge up a external bonnet pull which consists of a bit of blue rope.

Are the above things cause to fail the van?

[BT]

Took it for an mot.



Failed on

Track rod end no biggie.

Imbalanced rear brake effect. 200 one side 80 the other.

Shagged upper steering column bearing.

Problem is I can only find a lower steering column bearing. And I have no idea what the problem is with the rear brake balance. The side at fault has had a new cylinder fitted.

[hamps]

I see you took it to my very good friend Matthew for the mot

You can do away with the rear brake valve and hard pipe it, I can't remember 100% how but the caddy forum has all the details

So you are big into the vw's I now run about in a 1.8 turbo golf wagon, you may have seen it ?

[BT]

Hey Hamps

Yeah they are just over the road from me, seem a good bunch of guys despite him saying " your van is curse word" haha

I quite like the Vw, mainly the German marque in general. My van still hasn't got a ticket on it as I have been away and I can't help but think that the caddy is a little too small for what i want it for (surfboards, big dishing rods, kayaks and the like. So I have decided once the mot is sorted it will be returned to standard and sold to fund either a T3, T4 or a Vito Van. Just hope they are as much fun as this little caddy has been

I may have seen your mk4, what will I be looking out for? If you see someone in a van,more a blue V6 TT flashing and waving it will be me.