When Simon Evans was looking to buy a VW camper, he kept thinking about a birthday holiday in Cornwall in a rented bay window.
“I realised that once you’ve made the bed and pulled it out, there’s nowhere to even put your shoes,” he says. “You have to throw your stuff on the front seats and I thought ‘I can’t be dealing with that, too frustrating’.”
That’s why he set his sights on a larger vehicle, finding a 1984 LT31 for sale in Surrey and parting with just £400 in 2012.
“Go big or go home”: finding a 1984 VW LT31 camper
- Simon’s LT31
“I thought ‘if you’re gonna do it, go big or go home’,” he adds. “The benefit of an LT is I can pull up at a campsite and get a beer out – I don’t have to put a tent up or set up my awning. It’s got a full size kitchen and you can fully stand up in it.”
But first things first: the LT was in a sorry state, as befits a £400 van. Things didn’t exactly get off to the best of starts driving it home to Sudbury in Suffolk – perhaps not surprisingly as it had sat motionless on the previous owner’s drive for eight years.
- Room for a large bed in the LT
“It soon became apparent that there was an issue,” says Simon, 38. “It turned out that the carb float gasket was shot, letting in air, but I didn’t know that at the time.
“Being short of money I refused to get a tow truck, so proceeded to kangaroo this massive LWB beast down the hard shoulder for two hours until the police finally pulled me up and made me pay £150 for a tow.”
Rust was the biggest enemy
The engine was actually the only part of the van the previous owner had refurbished, and Simon soon discovered that rust was to be his biggest enemy.
“The bottom 18 inches were basically rotted all the way around, and it had been well covered with filler over the years, and four layers of paint, one being exterior masonry – that stuff sticks to anything,” he says. “We had opened up a can of worms.”
- The LT as it was when Simon bought it
After paying £800 to a rogue mechanic who did some poor-quality welding before vanishing, Simon placed his trust in Emerson Large at Emo Engineering, who has been restoring VWs for more than 20 years.
“The process was long and frustrating,” he remembers. “I swear this van didn’t want a second life – every job was never straightforward.
“There was no budget. I tried to look at it as a college course and learn on the job, working on it every day off and almost every night at Emo’s unit for about three years. Overall it was probably about eight years from start to finish.”
- In the course of restoration
Other work included some modification to make the van, previously converted into a minibus, a little more stylish on the eye.
“With the bottom metal off, it allowed us to have flushed front bumpers, flared rear wheel arches, and we blanked off the indicators and moved them lower down,” says Simon, “adding better styling to what was a basic workhorse brick designed for builders back in the day.”
Having completed the filling and primer, Simon approached a sprayer used to tackling large vans, lorries and busses, who brought round some paint colour swatches.
“I don’t care what colour”: trying to save money on the VW LT31 camper
“I said ‘I don’t care what colour as long as it’s cheap, because this thing’s costing me a lot of money’,” he says. “I picked some random colours and he had some mismatched paint which he then tried to make as close to one of the colours that I picked – so it doesn’t have a name. Smurf blue is what I call it.”
- With the Smurf blue paint on
Stretched along the side of the van is £700 of bonded glass, ordered in from Italy – three pieces which looks like one, and giving the camper a limousine style appearance.
Simon, who worked as a furniture maker after leaving school and already had four house renovations under his belt, kitted out the interior himself.
Finally, the van was ready for the road and, ultimately, to hit the VW shows, which Simon had already been attending with friends and their campers, sleeping in a tent.
“That’s the main reason for having it now,” he says, “for socialising, hanging out with friends and going to party.”
In the last few years, he’s attended most of the local festivals, including Whitenoise, Alive and V-Dubbin, and Elemental, plus various trips to Santa Pod.
Travelling around Australia in a camper
Three things combined to spark Simon’s desire to get a van: the ability to go away for a short break and control when you come home; friends with campers of their own; and a memorable experience travelling around Australia in a camper van – albeit a Mitsubishi L300.
He and an old school friend bought it out there and, starting in Sydney, circumnavigated the vast country before it gave up the ghost just before they were due to fly home.
- Mitsubishi L300 camper with broken piston
They made their way around the country running pub crawls – “taking people out to get them drunk and getting paid for the privilege – kind of an ideal job”.
A short stay in Perth on the west coast was interrupted by a request to attend a birthday party – in Surfers Paradise, about 2,700 miles away on the east coast.
“We left Perth straight away and drove non stop across Nullarbor to get there,” says Simon. “It was quite an adventure.”
Having been all the way round the coast, they decided to travel up the centre towards Ayers Rock (Uluru) before returning home, only for their van to break down at a place called Threeways.
“It was in a garage on a car lift, and we spent a week living in it, climbing up a ladder,” he says. “They let us stay there because we had no other option, but eventually we decided to leave it in the scrapyard.”
Back in the UK, Simon started working with his father in the shoe repair and key cutting industry, and still runs the Cobblers & Keys shop in Sudbury.
Striking 1976 late bay pick up truck
Which brings us onto the striking 1976 late bay pick up truck, bought to replace a T4 Razorback used for moving shop stock.
Bought in August 2016 for £4,500 from a stablehand in Newmarket, the pick up started life in Sweden as a Forestry Commission workhorse.
- The pick up shortly after Simon bought it
It would have originally had drop-down metal sides, which probably rotted away many years ago and had been replaced by plain flat wooden gates when Simon bought it. These, in turn, were then replaced by stained shiplap planks.
Painted cream, with a few bubbles and blisters here and there, the pick up was used as a daily driver for several years.
“That sped those blisters up, and it was definitely time to get it done,” says Simon, who sent it off to Emerson Large and his business partner Ollie Scammell during lockdown in the spring of 2020.
- Under restoration
The pick up was stripped down and sent off to be sand-blasted, then new wheel arches were welded in place, plus a few other patches put in.
Using the pick up to sell gifts
The plan is to use the vehicle to promote online business Katie’s Custom Gifts, a sideline selling engraved personal gifts, taking them to VW shows, markets and Christmas fairs.
“We’ve gone with a custom canvas with hoops and bows on the back, which lifts up an extra 2ft so you can stand up inside it and carry taller things,” says Simon, “as well as run our DJ out the back at events.
“It also has the potential to be a coffee wagon – my partner, Laura, used to be a barista.”
Fed by a powerful leisure battery, the music and rear lights can run for “a very long time”, and Simon says “Woody” can be hired for events and festivals.
As well as getting the pick up sorted, Simon imported a 1977 Jurgen camper from South Africa during lockdown – another project that might one day replace the LT, which had a for sale sign in its window at the Whitenoise festival in Norfolk, as his main camper.
“There was lots of interest,” he says. “It was more to do with ‘would I part with it if someone waved the money in front of me?’ I was testing the market and myself, really.
“I admit I don’t like getting rid of anything. The LT is almost irreplaceable – you won’t find another one like that.
“They’re pretty rare and few and far between, especially a decent one that isn’t rotten, as they’re renowned for being rusty and unloved.
1977 Jurgen camper project
“If I fall in love with the Jurgen as much as I did with the LT, the LT will go. That was the agreement I made with myself when I bought it.
- South African Jurgen – Simon’s next project
“And if it does sell soon it’s not the end of the world, because I can camp in the pick-up until the Jurgen’s restored.”
Although larger inside than a standard bay window, it won’t be quite as roomy as the LT. Simon may need to find somewhere to store his shoes again…
