Introducing the Sharkbait VW T4 Campervan

My lik­ing of Volk­swa­gen vehi­cles has been with me since my school days, I remem­ber the excite­ment every time a new issue of Volksworld was released. I was sure my first car was going to be a clas­sic Bee­tle, I real­ly liked the Cal­i­for­nia look at the time (mid 1980s).

As with so many things in life, my dream of own­ing a VW as soon as I passed my test was dashed. When I sug­gest­ed to my par­ents I want­ed a Bee­tle for my first car I was quick­ly told that would not hap­pen, “Son, you need some­thing more reli­able and easy to fix!”, I end­ed up with a 1984 Ford Escort 1.3L which I did actu­al­ly like. Of course being able to dri­ve and the free­dom that went with it was no doubt the main rea­son for my lik­ing towards it.

By now, I was in reg­u­lar work. My jobs usu­al­ly required a need for a sim­ple prac­ti­cal car so I moved to a 1992 Ford Fies­ta, then a 1989 Ford Escort fol­lowed by a 1995 Vaux­hall Cav­a­lier GL, a 1997 Renault Lagu­na, a 1997 Peu­geot 306TD, a 2001 Lexus IS200 Sport and final­ly a 2004 Audi A4. The A4 was the first time I had bought a vehi­cle with my per­son­al life more in mind than my work. By this time I was camp­ing away a bit, hav­ing not long been intro­duced to surf­ing. Prob­lem was, it was a 1.8T petrol, it would cost a for­tune to trav­el to Devon and the surf­boards end­ed up on the roof any­way so I could have got away with some­thing much small­er. Besides, I nev­er real­ly got attached to the Audi, it was plagued with prob­lems since I bought it.

The A4 was bought in sum­mer 2010, but it was sold at the begin­ning of 2011 when I final­ly decid­ed I hat­ed using a tent but want­ed to con­tin­ue going to North Devon for the week­ends and learn to surf. The deci­sion was done and with the Audi sold I was run­ning around in an old Nis­san Almera I bought for a few hun­dred pounds while look­ing for a van. I have to say, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with that car and made a cou­ple of hun­dred pounds when I sold it, result!

After a cou­ple of months of scour­ing eBay, Auto­trad­er, Gumtree and the like, I came across this white T4 in Not­ting­ham which looked tidy and ticked near­ly all my box­es. I did­n’t want a van which had any mod­i­fi­ca­tions, being that I want­ed to see that through myself. I had pre­vi­ous­ly ren­o­vat­ed a flat, land­scaped my gar­den with koi pond and now need­ed a new project. The advert read “The first per­son to offer me the full ask­ing price can take it”, the price was £2,800 and hav­ing seen a fair few vans about I went for it. Offer accept­ed and I planned a vis­it to pick it up on East­er Sat­ur­day 2011.

My friend David drove me up to Not­ting­ham, we took a look over the van and it seemed all ok. The sell­er, who used it for his mobile dis­co, had told me he had sub­se­quent calls offer­ing more than his ask­ing price, I believe he would have, the van was real­ly tidy. The only thing that did con­cern me was the brake warn­ing light on the dash­board but the brakes seemed fine and I took off back to Wiltshire.

The dri­ve back from Not­ting­ham was fan­tas­tic actu­al­ly, I have to say from that point on I knew I was going to love this van. Apart from the alloy wheels there was noth­ing mod­i­fied, the sus­pen­sion was high and it did tend to roll a bit but the new dri­ving height was excel­lent, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the A343 between the A34 and Andover. The one box the van did­n’t tick was the engine, ide­al­ly I would have gone for the 2.5tdi, but I was soon over that as I thought it was a lot bet­ter than I feared.

First thing I did when I got home to Ames­bury was put some fuel in, it was after doing this that I was wel­comed to the world of a “reli­able” Vol­skwa­gen T4, not! The words of my dad from buy­ing my first car rang in my mind. I tried start­ing the van but it just would­n’t turn over, noth­ing, nada. For­tu­nate­ly I had arranged break­down cov­er and it was­n’t long before the recov­ery truck arrived. A lit­tle bit of tin­ker­ing and the recov­ery chap dis­cov­ered there was no pow­er get­ting to the starter motor, he got the van going using a piece of wire and I drove it home, know­ing I would need to look over the van first thing in the morn­ing, it was now dark and quite late.

Next morn­ing I was out tak­ing the van apart, I had already dis­cov­ered the web site “VW T4/T5 Forum”, and I knew it was going to be a sav­iour for me. On a bit of diag­noses I realised the igni­tion switch was faulty. Just a few quid and a day lat­er it was fit­ted and my trou­bles were over, or the first one was anyway.

I already had ideas of how I was going to con­vert the van, but now I had the actu­al vehi­cle which meant I could start tak­ing mea­sure­ments and plan­ning for real.

The over­all look of the van was inspired by some­thing not Volk­swa­gen at all, in fact it was the Range Rover sport. When look­ing for ideas I came across a pho­to of Range Rover sport with a black and ivory inte­ri­or, I real­ly liked it and decid­ed to base my build on this.

The build began, start­ing with iron­ing out a few prob­lems and then craft­ing and design­ing my way to a full camper­van. The full build thread can be found on the VW T4 Forum site (Click here).

Below are some images of the inte­ri­or which were sent to DVLA to reg­is­ter as a motorcaravan.

As I write this arti­cle, I have not had the van for sev­er­al weeks. The build was com­plete last year and I have cov­ered many miles since, enjoy­ing great week­ends and longer away expe­ri­enc­ing the camper­van lifestyle. The only prob­lem with this is the less pleas­ant side, the fact that vehi­cles need main­te­nance and fix­ing. Since the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary 2015, the van has had a gear­box rebuild and is now hav­ing a leaky fuel pump fixed. Hope­ful­ly though, it will be back on the road by this com­ing weekend.

Next plan is to add some Autosport side skirts and to get the odd knock and ding touched up before I do a full pho­to shoot all around the UK.

I will be using this site to post fur­ther devel­op­ments with the van, includ­ing updates on loca­tions, mod­i­fi­ca­tions and gen­er­al camper­van lifestyle views. I hope any­body read­ing this finds it use­ful and inspir­ing, just as I found many that lead me to this point.