Just got back from our first trip to France in the Reimo. It was quite an interesting trip with many short journeys spent wondering if the van would actually make it to the top of the next hill. It always did. After a few slow moments I finally found out how hard I needed to push the van in each gear to get it moving. We made it to Arras….

For this trip I removed the bike carrier, it was just a little low at the back and would have been on the ground on and off the ferry, some adjustment needed there.

The van was really good when we where camping, first few days had some rain and the extra space inside compared with our Westfalia was really useful.

In the roof box we had two tables, four chairs, the Fiamma ramps and some table tennis stuff, so that proved to be a good investment, none of that stuff inside the van.

After a few days of getting used to the van on the flat and on the hills it was obvious that it was going to be useable rather than just slow. We went from Dover to Cambridge in under three hours, mostly at around 55 – 60mph and the van gave us about 24mpg even though we had crappy supermarket diesel in it, probably go further on some decent BP stuff.

Where are we going next….?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted any progress on the LT, there has been a lot.

A couple of weeks ago I got the registration number through from the DVLA and had the three number plates made up. It’s come back as B registration, I am happy with that. It’s taxed for 6 months, lets see how far we can go. I think it’s done 248,000kms so far on the engine.

The interior is almost complete, the rear kitchen section has the fridge, cooker and sink installed and all working, leisure battery is installed with the new split charge unit.

I managed to get some left hand drive LT carpet from Caravantechnik Dobrinski in Germany, they look great and reduce the engine noise a little too.

We have been on a few short trips around Suffolk and Cambridgeshire but nothing more than a few miles at a time, I was slightly concerned that with no turbo and an old engine 45mph might be the maximum, if so the van would be almost useless. I got Dad to take a look at the injector pump and linkage, after some minor adjustments we can now to 60mph quite easily, happy to run along the road between 55mph and 60mph without any problems, acceleration is better, but I am used a 1.6TD Joker and a 2.4 T4, so some turbo and lighter weight van, anyway, the speed is fine.

The first longish run has been to Cromer in Norfolk this weekend, we went along quite nicely in the traffic and didn’t hold anyone up for long. We are off to France and Belgium next week….