Well... how did I get here.
I dont know if its a mid life crisis or what ever, but I wanted a different car. The van I had was a Merc mb100, it had a basic deck out, queenbed, fridge, sink with running water, like a Wicked Camper but without the tasteful graffiti. It took my wife and I for a quick 6 week trip around Australia free camping all the way (gotta like the 'camps' books), and also many weekends away. Its good but the ground clearence sucked. I had previously owned a swb Maverick and most of the time I didn't need to engage 4x4 to get to the places I wanted to go, but with limited ground clearence the Merc has had to get pushed out a couple of times and dug out once. There is only one picture of me digging out the sand from beneath the beached Merc, 50ks off the main road across the Nalabor, apparently I was a little grumpy according to Sharon, but we did get to the beach and the mighty 'Bite' eventually.
The Ford Falcon RTV ute was on my radar, with good ground clearance and a diff lock, I thought changing to a camping set up with roof top tent was the way to go, but to cut a long story short, Sharon wasn't going to sleep in a roof top tent and in all honesty it would of hindered our style of traveling (Maccas is a great place to stay overnight on a long run, clean toilets, free internet and a good breaky).
So a van with ground clearance, hmm... You guessed it, the mighty Mitsubish Delica was the next candidate. There is great info on the Delica thanks to the members of delica forum. The diesel is great as long as you get the head done, the fuel system is fantastic once its been rebuilt and they aren't that big inside especially the swb. So if it was going to be a Delica, it was going to have to be a V6, LWB, 5 speed manual, preferably with the large sunroof in the back, do a search. I did get quite intrested in one that had the cool bonnet, it was auto but the owner said he had fixed the usual things, and the air con, it had an extra fuel tank, duel batteries and a cool spare wheel and jerry can carrier, it was a cool rig.
It sold before I could really think about. It did make me realise that I would have to buy a car sight unseen because the likely hood of finding the right one in my back yard was low. So lets factor in a flight to Brizzy, which isnt to costly with the Prossy airport only a 40 minute drive away and then there is the 1080k test drive home to Airlie Beach.
The search continues.
De li ca (space) L wB, and search. I started thinking I could build a pod that would side out the back of the of a delica, hey I could now consider a SWB. I also thought i could create a small 'pop top' by getting the one with the big sunroof in the back, providing a small area with head room. Mate, I had bits coming out and poping up, actually I thought it could work well. I would of used a full roof rack on top of a 'Dellie' with the pop top built into it, big zippered openings in the canvas so I could get to the extra spare on the front of the roof rack and extra jerry's on the back, but it was still going to be smaller than the Merc. Sharon and I have done a good amount of travelling in van's. Across america, around western eroupe with a little side trip to Prahg, almost 2 month's in NZ, of course around Australia in the Merc, and I certainly can not leave out a year in a Bus complete with two kids, a dog (BD - Bus Dog), and a XD Falcon in tow. Its fair to say we have an idea when it comes to what we want out of a van and the size of the delica wasn't cutting it.
Roger, my brother in law, has a truck wrecking buisness called 'Lorry Land', if you are thinking England sorry it's NZ, its there that I saw a Daihatsu Delta Van. We were visiting while on our NZ adventure in 'Kozi', a ex Britz hiace hightope, Sharon said I would be pushing the next time we got stuck, and I did. Maybe it was because of the off road adventures that my eye was drawn to the Delta as it was being delievered to Rogers yard. The ground clearance was good and was as big, maybe bigger than Kozi, so with that in mind instead of typing the usual search into gumtree, in went 'daihatsu delta'. I didn't think I was serious about one until this one turned up on gumtree...
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