The Van

So I'm sure by now you are all wondering how in the world we are traveling around NZ. Maybe you're not, but this is how:

We researched the situation and decided before we left home that buying a car would be the best way to see NZ. We planned on buying a beater in Auckland, travel the country, and return to Auckland in December and sell the car. December is the time of year when NZ gets a huge influx of tourists and travelers, and they all fly into Auckland. So we figured it would be a good time to sell; we may even make some money.

After checking out the car markets in town, we found a place that we might be able to get a car or van, but for much more than we were planning. This was not a huge concern though, because if we kept it in good shape we would be able to sell it. We decided to find a hostel close to the car market so we could get there early every morning until we found our vehicle. This hostel ended up being Conner's (see previous post). The man who owns the hostel told us while we were checking in that he had a van that he was trying to sell. It was a 1989 Isuzu WFR, all wheel drive, 4 cylinder, long wheelbase. It had a mattress in the back instead of seats and plenty of room for all of our stuff. This is exactly what we were looking for. A van that we could comfortably sleep in and basically live out of. It was Japanese, so we trusted the motor, and in NZ, a Warrant of Fitness generally means that the vehicle is good for about 10,000 kilometers which is enough to see the country.

So we staying in Auckland at the hostel while the owner fixed up the van and got an updated Warrant. Great deal we thought! We were wrong.

We drove the van around enough to be satisfied with it...it was in fairly good condition and sounded/drove great. We bought it, thinking we got a good deal. However, the day after we left Auckland, it began to overheat...badly. We were lucky enough to be close to a town on a Saturday morning, so we hit a few mechanics before they closed. The first one told us that the motor was in horrible shape, it overheated, blowing the seal on the radiator cap. The engine probably had a blown head gasket or a cracked cylinder head (both fatal) and that we needed a new motor to the tune of $1200. Needless to say, we got a second opinion.

The second guy we went to was really nice, and spent all day on the van and let us look over his shoulder the whole time. I know a little about cars so appreciated being able to watch him work. Turns out, the previous owner had neglected to put a thermostat in the engine. The T-stat is designed to slow the flow of coolant in the motor so that it only flows when it is needed, and the rest of the time the coolant is in the radiator, cooling off so that it can continue to do its job. Without a t-stat, the coolant constantly runs through the motor and never stays in the radiator long enough to cool off.

Fortunately, he diagnosed the problem pretty quickly, and gave us a pretty thorough tune up. I was a little embarrassed about bringing a van in that was over heating to find out that it had no thermostat, but then again I have not tools and no way of working on it myself.

So we get the motor running much better that it was, but not as good as we'd like it to. Either way we take off, and do our traveling. It has done well over the last month. We have been sleeping in it and driving the hell out of it. The but is getting worse. There are a few stories to tell in between then and now (which you will get to read later) but at the moment the van can't go very far w/o us having to pull over and put coolant in it. In the words of one police officer "that's why you don't buy vans."

Broken or not, the van has been a great investment. We have seen a lot already, and have done it very freely w/o having to ride buses and be at the mercy of tour guides. We have also saved a lot of money by sleeping it it, very comfortably I might add. This is definitely the way to see NZ.

More van stories to come!