[Rusty87]

Hello,

My wife and I are doing an 8 month bouldering trip up the west side of the US and Canada in January. We are looking to buy a small campervan while we are out there, but are struggling to find any contact details or websites of anywhere that deal in small used budget campervans. Does anyone know of any good places to buy from? or have any experience of buying a van in the US? We are preferably looking to fly out to either LA or Vegas.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Alex

[Paul B]

If you have a check through my old threads, my Wife and I did just that (bought, in Colorado). Things differ from state to state, I know another Paul from here bought his van in Canada and generally, that appeared to be lower stress.

You'll need to search for conversion vans - T4 California's and similar don't seem to be readily available. We bought a Ford E150 and bought camping stove etc. to use. Craiglist / Gumtree were useful.

How long are you going for as there are a few companies that rent decent options (but at a not so decent cost)?

[SA Chris]

I think California has tightest emissions controls, which makes buying used and/or old cars there harder than elsewhere (especially Diesel VWs at the moment ). There are a few threads about it as Paul says.

[Ti_pin_man]

I did this for a mountain bike trip in 2000.  I bought it on ebay and picked one in California to make sure it passed the emissions tests there.  I swapped lots of emails with the guy and then had a friend go and check it out for me.  The last bit was the important bit.  I fly in and collected it having paid in advance and have said mate collect.  It was a fab little machine.  Perfect.  When we got back to San Francisco we listed it back on Bay and we sold it for 1000 bucks less.  We'd spent 500 dollars on it during the trip when high altitude driving meant it misfired and needed a tune.  1500 for a 3 month trip was perfect.  You cant hire one for that kind of cash.  The one thing back then that we were surprised by was that actually it didn't have great fuel economy, so the petrol budget was blown apart but hey, still a trip of a lifetime.  Oh, and insurance was via triple A.  Not many insure foreign nationals, or didn't then. 

[SA Chris]

http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php?topic=16740.0