Chris Hadley isn’t the first to make a rash eBay purchase after a few beers.
And when he first drove his LT31 Westfalia camper, he thought he’d made a terrible – and fairly expensive – mistake.
But five years, a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun later, the 48-year-old says his impulse buy has been worth every penny of the £7,001 he bid while on holiday in the Peak District in 2017.
After travelling across the Pennines to collect the VW in Manchester, Chris decided to proceed with the purchase despite some serious misgivings about its condition.
There was even more soul-searching when the handbrake cable snapped on the journey back to the family’s hotel.
‘What have I done?’
“I’m driving left hand drive, the gears are upside down, it’s really hard to get a gear, there’s no handbrake, and I’m not used to driving big trucks,” he says. “I’m thoroughly pissed off, and thinking ‘what have I done?’
“But when I’m cruising and the turbo kicks in I’m starting to think ‘I quite like this’, and that’s when it all changed.”
Since then the van has been a running restoration project and provided Chris, his wife Jenny and teenage sons, Tom and Sam, with memorable camping trips.
“It’s a memory creator, and it’s certainly done that over the years,” he says. “Whatever I’ve put into it, it’s paid it back in spadefuls.
“It’s given us a lot of adventure, and it’s not diminishing as I get older – it’s getting worse if anything. I’ve got plans to go wild camping in Scotland, and we’re planning a big trip next year to Holland, Belgium and Germany.”
Camping has become a way of life
Camping has always been a way of life for Chris, with fond memories of childhood holidays in Salcombe in Devon.
“So as soon as my kids were old enough, it was camping straight away,” he says. “The problem we always had was that the beds always deflated. We spent hundreds of pounds on the best double triple flocked whatever lilos and they always went down. It’s the one thing that used to wind me up.
“But getting a camper van was always an itch I wanted to scratch.”
That itch became impossible to resist when things came to a head on a camping trip to a VW festival at Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk.
“We got there late, the head torch is on and I’m setting up this tent,” he remembers. “I can’t see what I’m doing and I’m getting stung by nettles while hammering tent pegs in. I’m getting a bit pissed off, and there’s my mate who’s got this LT31 van and he’s set up and the lights are on, the table’s out, the kids are sitting down. He is helping us, he’s not just sitting there…
“But it was at that point I started to think ‘I need to do something’, so I gradually introduced the idea to Jenny, picked away at her, and she came round to the idea.
Enjoying the VW vibe with the Westfalia
“We always used to go to the VW festivals, and I like the scene and the vibe, even in a tent, so I wanted a VW.”
Then came that fateful trip to the Peak District in October 2017, with the family staying for the weekend on a cheap deal in a Premier Inn.
“I like to treat my family now and again,” he laughs, with discussions in the hotel turning to camper vans. “We were looking at some online and saw one that was called a Joker, which was similar to this one but smaller, and Jen said ‘yeah, I’d like one with a toilet inside’.
“So we thought about my friend’s one, which was a big cumbersome thing, but did have a toilet. The boys were getting bigger and it’s got that roof space, so we thought ‘maybe’.
“One came up on eBay just outside Manchester, and the auction ended the following night.
“I got in touch with her and her reserve was £7,000. It was a bit more than I wanted to dip my toe in, so I left it.”
Putting in a bid for the VW Westfalia
That was, until the following night and a few beers.
“The auction was coming to an end and it was on £6,980, so I knew if I put in an extra £30 or so I might win it,” says Chris. “I like to swipe auctions at the end, and there was about 30 seconds left, so I put in a bid of £7,001, fuelled by beer.
“I was thinking someone’s still going to beat me, there’s still time, that’s generally what happens, and the internet wasn’t great so I was refreshing and nothing was happening.
“The screen went blank and it came back ‘congratulations’. I remember that moment clearly – I can’t believe what’s just happened, no. I’ve just bought a van. I’d not even seen it, what am I doing?”
On turning up to collect the van though, things weren’t quite as they had seemed from the “lovely pictures” on eBay.
“We get there and it’s been left outside and the roof is almost green,” says Chris. “Inside, there were parts all over the place, and the sliding door panel was sitting on the side.
“I was asking ‘how does the bed work?’ and she said ‘I don’t know’ – it was flopping about – and the tiles on the floor were all coming up. I thought ‘I’ll go with it’, and went for a little test drive.
‘Somehow, I’ll make this work’
“There was a slight screech, but I paid her and thought ‘somehow, I’ll make this work’. I drove off, went about a mile and the alternator belt was making a horrendous screeching noise. It sounded awful.
“We took it to the nearest garage, which happened to be the one she MOTd it, and they said ‘we’ll fix that for you, give us 10 minutes’. I went over there after half an hour and they said ‘we’ve done the alternator belt, but we put the handbrake on and the cable snapped’. I called up this lady who I bought it from, because I was going to send it back, but she didn’t answer, funnily enough. So I thought ‘this is our fault, I’m just going to swallow this and get on with it’.
“I called my mate and said ‘what do you reckon?’ and he said ‘that’s a specialist part, you’re going to have to drive with no handbrake’.”
With Jenny following in the couple’s Touran, Chris set off for the Premier Inn, at one point grinding to a halt going up a motorway slip road.
“I was in third and losing power, so I thought I’d better get into second, but by the time I get into second that’s no good, and I’m trying to get into first when I come to a stop,” he smiles. “Luckily Jen’s behind me, so it wasn’t such a big deal, but it wasn’t ideal stopping on a motorway slip road.”
Everything changed
Once on the motorway, however, everything changed.
“By the time we got to the hotel, they were all worried – what sort of mood’s dad going to be in? Then I get out going ‘it’s brilliant!’” says Chris, then faced with a handbrake-free, 200-mile journey home to Norfolk.
The LT31 Westfalia, a 1990 model with a 2.4-litre turbo diesel engine, was pressed almost straight into action, with Chris and his LT-owning friend John Pearsall embarking on a running restoration project that would take several years.
Running an Apple Mac business, Chris knows computers inside out, but he was never into cars or car mechanics.
“I was never really a petrolhead, not into the mechanical side of it, although I am now getting into that,” he says, partly down to John’s guiding hand.
“I’ve learned painting, removing rust, a bit about plumbing and loads about electrics, and some things about the engine.
“John works in the RAF on Typhoons – at the time it was Tornados – so he’s pretty handy, and the van was small fry to him.
“He does things very methodically. He’s disciplined and I’m not (I am with computers) and maybe somewhere in the middle is about right. He’ll paint a part that’s never going to be seen again.”
Running restoration for the VW Westfalia LT31
As befits a running restoration, it was used in its sorrier state for some time while repairs and upgrades were carried out when time and money allowed.
Originally boasting a porta potty and non-fixed shower, Chris installed an electric flushing toilet and fixed shower after campsites closed their facilities during the first lockdown.
Both are supplied by a 100-litre water tank under the rear bench, with hot water provided by a boiler powered by an underslung LPG tank, which also powers the fridge and gas hob.
“The one thing that worked from the off was the gas boiler, and that’s been amazing,” says Chris. “The LPG tank is one of the best things about the entire van, and it fills up for about £13 and lasts all year.”
On the outside, the baby blue LT was stripped down to bare metal by friends of Chris’s at CV Engineering, with a few bits of welding on the wheel arches and sills, and resprayed green – “not the colour I wanted – it’s almost key lime, whereas I wanted a bit more of military type green”.
The engine needed only a little attention – some coolant and a glow plug, with more recent work including new cam belt and alternator belt, but it’s largely untouched.
As well as the toilet and shower, Chris made several upgrades to the inside, and suffered mightily for it.
‘Most stressful thing I’ve ever done’
“The floor was the biggest and most stressful thing I’ve ever done,” he laughs, discovering that the flooring near the sliding door step was completely rotten because of a leaking window.
After a bit of fibreglass patching, Chris laid some membrane and a marine ply base, before trying to get someone to fit a new piece of lino.
“I took it to a number of people, including to a place where they do camper conversions,” says Chris. “He took one look at it and said ‘no, I’m not doing that’, though he did give me a contact for the lino. I took it to another guy who did the carpets in our house, and to a carpet store, and they both said no. It’s a small space and it would have been a nightmare job, and they all just said no. So I had to do it myself.”
Armed with the flooring from Altro cut out using a template and some spray adhesive, Chris got to work, with some trepidation.
“I put down the adhesive and it says it cures in 30 minutes,” he says. “I’m laying the lino down – by this time it was 30 minutes in – and it didn’t quite fit. I was pulling it up and it was sticking and I was sweating. It was just horrible, but eventually I did it, put weights on it and it’s been great ever since.”
Putting an extra skylight in the roof was the “second most stressful” part of the improvements, which also included fitting USB sockets, getting the full-size roof bed to work properly, replacing the “disgusting, falling apart” front seats, and fitting a solar panel to supply the leisure battery.
“The skylight was stressful because the roof is one part of the van which is completely pristine and I was just thinking, ‘please don’t crack’,” says Chris.
“It came with a stencil and I’d measured and measured outside and inside. I was about to make the first cut when a customer turned up, which was great because my hand was shaking.
“Eventually, I put the stencil on top, the sun was beating through and you could see the outline of the stencil aligning perfectly with the measurements inside – it was like the Lord is telling me that this is right!”
The LT31 Westfalia has proved a useful mobile office
As well as family camping trips around East Anglia and up to the Peaks and Lake District, the van has proved a useful mobile office.
“Once a month, I have to do my business accounts, which I’m bored of doing, and months would rack up and I’d have to sit and do three in one go,” he says. “I remember we were on a campsite and my sister had to go off to a doctor’s appointment.
“I said ‘I’ll bring my accounts, I’ll sit and do that’. I sat there and did it in the sunshine and I rifled through it. So now every month I take my van to a new campsite, I choose the day and the weather, go out there and do my accounts. They’ve never been more up to date – I can’t wait to do them!”
The van has also accompanied Chris to Download festival, when the embroidered ‘Betty’ sign hanging in the window (a legacy of the previous owner) is replaced by ‘Lemmy’ – a figure of the late Motorhead front man also adorns the dashboard – for more street cred.
Lemmy is joined by a Lego model of the LT, which was painted matching green with some leftover paint.
“I took it apart and did a proper job on it – what am I doing?” he smiles. “I don’t know. I like it, but I don’t know why I did it.”
The fact that there are so few LT31 campers around ensures it creates a minor stir on the road and at campsites.
LT31 pandemonium
“When you see another LT it’s fantastic, it’s just pandemonium,” says Chris. “It’s happened to me twice, and it’s brilliant. And whatever campsite I’m on, someone will always talk to me, without fail.
“We were at Waxham Sands and this chap comes over and starts chatting to us and says ‘I love your van’. I said ‘do you want to come in and have a look?’ So we sat in the van and then some other people came over and started talking to him and saying ‘I love your van’. Hang on a minute…
“I was driving through Norwich the other day and this guy sidles up to me in traffic and says ‘great bit of kit mate, I love it’ and as he’s driving off his hand comes out the window with a thumbs up.
“That’s not what I’m in it for, but it’s always nice when people talk to you about it.”
Five years on from his virtually blind eBay buy, Chris hopes to keep the van for many years to come, eventually upgrading to something more modern.
“The eventual plan is, maybe when I’m 60 and semi-retired and I can’t maintain it, to get something with less maintenance and we can go on big trips around Europe,” he says. “Maybe pass it on to the kids if they want it. I’d hate to sell it, that would be horrendous.
“I’ve enjoyed the whole doing up process – it’s stressful at times – but it’s all been worth it, 100 percent.”
