On the day I took my previous campervan in to the garage for it's MOT I noticed that Chapel Motorhomes had just listed a Citroen Berlingo single berth conversion on their website. I looked at their two berth conversion a few years ago, which was OK but not right for me. I've been looking at the market for a while considering whether to change or not, but had just about decided not to. That changed when the Daihatsu failed its MOT with emissions problems. It was one of those things that could be very simple to sort or I could spend a lot of time and money and still not resolve it.
Initially I intended to have a trip down to have a look, and phoned to arrange this, but further thinking made me decide to take a bit of a gamble and buy it sight unseen. I'd checked the history online and everything checked out OK, and the company has been around a while with no bad reports, so I was happy to go for it. If I hadn't there's a chance I would have lost the opportunity and I couldn't find anything much else suitable.
Overall this camper was a little older than I wanted but I just didn't have time to keep looking or to buy a vehicle and get it converted so I considered it fate that this one came available on the very day I needed one. Finance, insurance, etc. were easily sorted and my brother offered to take me down to fetch it. I'll admit first impressions were slightly disappointing. Some of the interior is a bit more worn than the mileage would have suggested (I'm not suggesting anything untoward, someone had rough hands!) That feeling passed though by the time I got it home. It drives really well, especially as it has the 1.6 high power petrol engine.
There are a few, resolvable, issues with the conversion. The table is really too big, especially when you add the leg and its tripod base. I'm guessing it's the same as the one for the two berth conversion. There is also nowhere sensible to store it without taking up much of the seat locker space. I've got a couple of options to resolve this, the simplest being to leave it at home! There was a similar storage issue with the board that makes up the bed to full length, but I found a simple solution to that. A bit of work with some strapping and fittings mean it now stores at the end of the seat until needed. It does slightly obstruct the underfloor storage compartment that's there but I'll only use that for rarely needed items.
The biggest flaw in the conversion is the lack of an interior light. My original thought was to manage with the vehicle interior lights in the short term, possibly with LED bulbs, but these only work with the ignition on so that's not viable. It's an odd omission considering there is a leisure battery fitted but it won't take too much sorting. An LED strip light is on order and I've got a cunning plan for some mood lighting.
I did have one serious problem on the run home. I'd taken a couple of CDs to listen to, then found there was a radio-cassette fitted! I spent a fair bit of the weekend replacing this with the Kenwood DAB radio retrieved from the previous camper. That's all working (eventually, I had to run a separate ignition switched feed) but there may now be an issue with the original clock display. \it's working but seems reluctant to let me reset the time and has locked up a couple of times. It needs sorting somehow. There will be a little bit more wiring to do - at the moment the radio only works when the ignition is on, I'll add a switch as I did previously so it can be used when I'm camping.
The final job of the weekend was spending lots of money! I'll describe the individual items as they arrive and are fitted.
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