I really need to find a cheap van. I don't intend to do many miles per year but it will need to be road-legal.
I found a van near me and it is cheap enough, but it failed the MOT on the things in picture below.
Is this vehicle to be avoided? I would need to pay someone to do the welding for me, is this job too much and should this van be at the scrapyard?
Thanks for any help
There is a difference between spending money to fix your own MOT failure, and buying a vehicle which has failed its MOT test and needs fixing.
The first case is a risk item: is it worth spending money on an old vehicle, or is it time to replace it? This was discussed in a previous question:
which was closed as being "opinion based".
It's another matter buying an MOT failure. If it were economic to repair, then the previous owner would have done so, obtained an MOT, and either kept it or sold it. Otherwise, it will be bought for breaking and/or scrap.
The ground rule is
Generally, the people who do that are skilled at repairs, have made a thorough inspection of the vehicle to establish the feasibility, and intend to sell the vehicle on.
Note too, it only just passed the brake tests, a hint that you'll soon have to spend money there as well, perhaps a complete brake system replacement.
So no don't buy it unless you are an expert. The vehicle is "shot".
It is definitely going to need welding, rust has eaten through several areas and the only way to repair it is to cut out the bad metal and weld in replacements.
It's impossible to say how much work is involved, however translating the UK MOT weird jargon into normal human terms (nearside is passenger side, in this case the left, off-side is the driver side, in other words right) you can see that there's rust bad enough to fail in 6 places:
That sounds like a hell of a lot of rust, and the front right sounds like Swiss cheese. Although I cannot say with absolute certainty from an MOT printout previous experience indicates that this is very likely an economic write-off if this is a cheap van, and that it would not be a smart purchase.
The corrosion could be a very small amount of work or a massive amount of work.
For the UK MOT, even the smallest hole within 30cm of a suspension component will be a failure.
You would really need to take it somewhere to get a quote, but the fact that there are numerous possibly small or large holes in important areas would suggest that it is not going to be a cheap fix, especially if it is repaired correctly so that it will also pass next years test.
My ex went looking for a cheap van recently. We've split up, she's about to buy her own place, and she needs to move her stuff. Renting a van is fairly expensive, so her plan was to buy one, use it for moving in stages over a couple of weeks, then sell it again.
It turns out that with Covid restrictions ending, a lot of trades have started back out again, and that's pushed up the prices because everyone wants vans. Vans which would have gone for £500 a couple of years back are now £1500-£2000. Long story short, you simply are not going to find a cheap van right now. And if you do buy one now, whatever you get will be at least £1000 over the "proper" price.
However, what you will find fairly easily are MPVs, many of which are derived from small vans. Zafiras, Kangoos, Berlingos and all those kind of MPVs have reasonably large load bays. You could put the rear seats down; or if you're definitely going to be using it as a van then you could remove the rear seats altogether. Prices for these are still running normally, so you won't be paying over the odds for one, and its resale value won't drop off a cliff.
Of course the load bay isn't quite the same, so it really depends on your requirements. Think about whether you genuinely need all that space.
If you've got a towbar on your current car, a horsebox/trailer could be a more cost-effective option. I used to provide PA equipment. A double-axle trailer gave me more load space than a Transit van, for very much less cost and maintenance. If your application for this is something like gardening or construction, you may even find that an open trailer is more useful when it comes to loading/unloading than a van would be.
