How high would the mileage

Pudsey Bear

Pudsey Bear

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have to be on a prospective van purchase before it is too high, and puts you off buying, I suppose it will have to be average overall miles per year.
 
Diesel engines cope with much higher mileage I guess and service records would be important the higher it is. What u can afford I guess? Have to allow for potential repair factor.
From some people’s stories though major problems not uncommon at not necessarily high mileage!!!!
 
I am more put off by high mileage on newer diesel engines then older ones. All the emission control stuff does not seem to last anywhere close to the engine life but can cost more to fix - plus with a much lower MOT fail threshold on newer diesels, I reckon a newer high miler may not be a good buy :(
I bought my T5 with 167,000 miles on the clock. It ran very nicely but within the full VW service history, it had around £3k worth of repairs in the previous 2 years around the emissions area (and I had over £2ks with of repairs for the camshaft 18 months later).
Put me off both high miles AND new diesels. I now have a petrol car and a 15 year old diesel van with about 80k miles and no DPF nonsense.
 
I agree a service history is important but not just a stamped book, ideally invoices/documentation showing the correct oil grades have been used. I'm not a fan of the long service intervals either. Bought a T5 which had fsh but it had extended service intervals, cam shaft went within 12 months, 2.6k to repair :(, For the cost of an oil change I think is false economy not to change the oil at least once a year or 10k miles.
 
Grouchy said:
I agree a service history is important but not just a stamped book, ideally invoices/documentation showing the correct oil grades have been used. I'm not a fan of the long service intervals either. Bought a T5 which had fsh but it had extended service intervals. For the cost of an oil change I think is false economy not to change the oil at least once a year or 10k miles.
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I would agree with that. In my T5s case I had every invoice showing what work was done and the parts. It also was serviced as part of VWs Extended Service Scheme which I don't think helped the Camshaft :( (although that is a known weakness on the engine I had). Mine was serviced around every 20k miles, which was in fact every 8 months in this vehicles case.

My current van was last serviced 12 months ago (a year ago tomorrow in fact) and has only done under 5,000Km (3,000 Miles) since then. I'll be doing an oil change in next week or so, but because of the low miles, I'm holding off on another 'proper' service until next April to coincide with when I can get the MOT done.

(as an aside, my current van had NO stamped service book and NO invoices or documentation with it as it was a ex-council vehicle. But a call to the Council Vehicle Workshop got me a 4 page PDF of a Excel spreadsheet detailing every time the vehicle was in the workshop, had a flat battery, failed lightbulb, etc. so depending on the source of a van, more info may be available then initially obvious)
 
Beware of LOW mileage vehicles!
How long has it been standing on the tyres without the wheels turning?
How often has the engine got hot enough to regenerate?
Remember a cam belt needs changing on age NOT just mileage.
 
If a motorhome has done less than 3000 miles a year it may have suffered from a lack of use. I doubt there is a maximum annual mileage that would worry me, as long as it has been serviced properly.
However there is a top limit on total.mileage that would make me look closely at the condition of all wear items (definitely not just the engine). For a Mercedes (manual gearbox), maybe anything over 800,000 miles needs careful looking at. For a Fiat, anything over 300,000 wants similar checking.
The problem is that all the bushes and bearings will cost more to replace than simply swapping an engine
 
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