Hello! We're a new member of Team Orange / RAC

[Dalesrunner]

Hi! My husband I bought an ex-RAC T6 this week to do a van conversion. My husband organises running races in the Dales and the idea is that the van will act as a transport for all his race gubbins, a day camper and his day-to-day transport. He's quite handy, but I am not and we are both clueless when it comes to vans/cars. so this could be quite a challenge for us!

The van is currently full of RAC racking, which we're trying to remove, but after that we have no clue where to start. What would you do first?

Here are some of our current quandaries, if you'd like to steer us in the right direction:

• Do we swap out the wheels for alloys? If so what size and type? Our main criteria is that he wants to be able to go off-road sometimes when he's setting up his races.
• The headlights are next to useless, but what do we swap them out for?
• Where do we put the windows and how many? Presumably there are pros and cons of their positions and maybe other considerations?
• He quite fancies some black rails on the roof, but we could also do with some kind of awning. Do we go with temporary awning and what kind of attachment is best? Will that interfere with having rails?
• Once we remove the decals, are there any cheapish, quick wins to pimp its aesthetics?

Here are some photos of the wee beastie:

 

[Bigsidavies]

Love the orange vans.
There’s quite a lot of recent info on converting ex RAC vans so you should probably start by reading those. Especially all the info about removing all the RAC-specific redundant wiring as maybe the first job.
Then:-
1) wheels are a personal thing, but there’s recent threads on the swamper-type off road wheel and tyre choices
2) swapping to the caravelle H7 units is a good step up in headlights and they can quite often be picked up 2nd hand for just over £100. More expensive are the aftermarket THQ and similar which are the wrong side of £500.
3) windows deffo start behind the driver’s position ie slider and opposite and then decide on your layout and what you want to achieve in terms of amount of ambient light versus ability of people to see your running kit etc. so maybe you won’t want to do the tailgate etc. it all depends on your use case.
4) you can get an awning rail from Funky Leisure amongst others, that will fit underneath a set of roof rails and give a neat look with the ability to fit a canopy or drive away awning etc.
5) have a look at team orange on the forum for ideas.

 

[Bav]

Pimping the aesthetics? That commercial look and the vibrant orange are already doing it for me tbh (minus the decals, of course).