Greetings fellow Vanners!
Back in 1977 I bought my first Chevy van (a '75, photo below) and, being a kid, I did what kids do and ran that thing into the ground having many a good time in it. All these years later, I still remember those days like it was last month.
Mom passed a while back. The last few years before, she was always commenting about selling everything, buying a small winnebago and traveling the country in it. Since then, I've been thinking about her, and doing something like that myself, in her memory. Every once in a while, mostly after a few adult bevvies [:)], I'd pull up Pittsburgh craigslist and do a quick search for Chevy vans. None ever really got under my skin, although I ran thru many a listing and saw lots of fair to ok vans that maybe I could do something with. That is until about 4 weeks ago.
4 weeks ago came across a listing with photos that was so exciting to me, I barely read the listing past the part where it said, 'no rust, AC works' before clicking the contact link. That van was for a 1982 TransVan!
I waited impatiently for 4 days for a reply. I asked if I could get more details, where it was at, when could I come see it etc. I got a reply with details and got in the car the next day to go see it, in a rush. I didn't want to miss the chance.
Long story short, I bought it. It was owned by a man in his late 70's who owned it for over 25 years. Garage kept, only used it to drive from Ohio to Presque Isle on weekends with the grandkids, never drove it in winter. He had removed most all of the interior furniture and cleaned it up enough to make it comfortable for the kids to get to the beach in.
I've spent the past few weeks updating everything mechanical to make it properly road worthy for Pennsylvania inspection. Tires, brakes and wheel cylinders, shocks, sway bar bushings, full tune up, cleaning up the engine compartment wiring and so on, to get it at least running properly and legal to drive, for this year. Although I don't plan on any traveling in it just yet, I want to get it legal and put it away in the garage I just rented for it, until I have some more money to dump in into it, next spring.
I drove it home from Ohio when I got it, and it was loose on the road, lots of swaying, and slow running engine. I felt once I got into it, I could sort a lot of that out, and I did.Yesterday I dropped it off for inspection. The garage is 15 minutes away and during the drive I felt afraid to drive it. Still lots of sway. Although the motor now runs and sounds good, I did not touch the carburetor. I'm sure it needs a rebuild. All the parts I removed looked like they were over 25 years old too.
Anyway, when I got back home I went online to look for ideas on how to solve some of this swaying and somehow came across this forum, so here I am!
On a side note, I've been running and managing many forums since early 2000, I'm in Web Hosting. I haven't registered or used a UBB forum in MANY years and this place brings back so many memories for me. When I saw this was UBB, and was an active Vanners forum where I could chat with fellow vanners about my new project, I didn't hesitate for a moment to register. I don't know who runs this forum of course, but thank you for being here!
Sadly, the threads with any mention of Transvans here have all gone dark due to photobucket changing how they do things. There is one thread here with lots of photobucket placeholders I would have liked to have seen. I've been doing lots of digging for Transvans stuff, nothing specific, just people with them etc. There aren't many, anywhere really. That's annoying, but it's also exciting in some weird way as it gives me a real sense of pride to have one of only a few left out here.
My apologies for the lengthy intro! I'm happy to have found this forum, I'm glad you'll have me, and I'm looking forward to taking part here a bit and maybe even share some of my journey with this Transvan, with anyone interested.
I started vanning in 1977 and it has always been in my blood, since then. I'm back in it now many years later, and I could not be more excited to be here and I'm looking forward to the road ahead of me.
Thanks for having me!
A few photos of my van for you: