Hi!

[Conrod]

Hi all.

In over 50 years I've only owned one French car - a Renault Laguna estate bought new in 1992 which survived a sudden broken cambelt after just 12000 miles. This was repaired under warranty, but it rather put me off French cars!

Last January I bought a three year old Vauxhall Vivaro C (basically a rebadged Peugeot Expert/Citroen Dispatch van) with the Peugeot DV5 100 BHP 1.5 BlueHDi engine, and over the next nine months I converted to a campervan.

I had some initial stop/start battery "economy mode activated" problems which were resolved with a new battery. I then had a refrigerant leak from the A/C condenser, and my local Vauxhall dealer quoted me nearly £500 for a new one, plus labour. I took it to an independent A/C specialist, who fitted an aftermarket condenser (with an anti-corrosion coating, unlike the original) for £300 including labour.

This was followed by a slow coolant leak. The local Vauxhall dealer claimed that the cooling system was holding pressure OK and that there was no sign of a leak. I bought a pressure tester on Amazon and straight away found that it was indeed losing pressure. My local independent garage confirmed this and traced the leak to the EGR cooler. A new cooler would again have been nearly £500, but they couldn't find any in stock anywhere in the country - with not even an estimated availability date. Fortunately I found one on eBay from a 2021 crash damaged Peugeot 3008 which had covered only 18000 miles for £38 including postage - I couldn't believe my luck! So that was fitted and all is now well again with the van.

So, a bit of a shaky start, and I'm far from impressed by my local Vauxhall dealer's capabilities - but hopefully this year I can finally enjoy touring the UK and Europe in the van!

During the electrical side of the conversion it would have been very handy to have access to some wiring diagrams, and I also had several queries regarding part numbers (for example there were two different part numbers (with a huge price difference) for the A/C condenser, which I finally discovered related to the new and the Stellantis SUSTAINera remanufactured versions.

I'd given up on trying to find a source of technical information on the Peugeot DV5 engines, but this forum could be just be what I've been looking for!

Cheers,

Alan

[mickthemaverick]

Hi Alan and welcome to the forum, you will find plenty of help and advice on here, though not from me on that vehicle. The forum is a great place to spend the odd spare moments so have a good look round from the board index above and join in wherever you fancy.