T3 syncro - Built not bought!

I bought this in 2016 as a completely bone stock panel-van. It was a really straight, clean unmolested example with just 78,000 miles on the clock.

Shortly after getting it home I began insulating and lining it ready to convert into a camper for Hanna and I to use for music festivals and holidays. I’d never built an interior before and it was a challenge sorting out the wiring and design, but we settled with the design you see today. It’s very basic and has the bare minimum to be registered as a campervan on the log book. We’ve been to Busfest for many years, and Hanna fell in love with the syncro T3s that were on display and said, ‘I want one of those’ and I eventually suggested converting ours.

After much eBaying, we found a set of 15x7 Ronal Pentas with 215/75 BFG all terrains, which looked amazing, I also built the rear bumper and welded up the full length roof rack and mounted a Fiamma awning to it. I ran it like this for well over a year and then my dad stumbled across a well used and relatively cheap, ‘91 2.1 petrol syncro on Facebook, which we then had the mammoth task of recovering from East Sussex back to South Wales. My dad hired a transit and a vehicle trailer and drove the ten hour round trip to bring it home.

This apparently ‘repairable’ syncro turned out to be anything but. The chassis was completely rotten, the seams were rotten, even the roof was rotten. Although, it did have a good Multivan interior and besides, I only wanted the running gear!