Vk304

1988 nissan vanette 1.5 l, column shift manual, in my price range and reg on hold. got it from auckland. So we went again... at night.. to pick up this van that i had brought on trademe. apparantly drove fine, just needed couply things for a warrant.

Also painted the wheels black because i diddnt like them very much.. diddnt end up looking any better haha, by this stage i had kind of given up on this van and was looking for a donor van that had a better look and maybe later model such as a 2000 + model vanette. Found a bunch of rust and all the things it failed on was too much to bother with not to mention the effort involved in fixing all the bad work.... Soo i was looking for about 6 months for a 2000 plus vanette/bongo/mazda e2000 for around $1500-2000 with a blown engine or something, aaand just diddnt get much luck i brought one on tradedme but just before i left to go pick it up from quite far away i did a background check, money owing on it ... great so i cancelled that sale, as there was no mention of that on the trademe add... gave the seller a neutral feedback, he gave me my only bad one i've ever had :/ so i kept looking, bidded on a few but no luck. Could not believe how hard it was to find a van of that year considering how many i had seen for sale, then i came across the right candidate .

Now i wish i had more photos of this time, but any way, i had done a once over and driven it to work a few times so i booked a cert for it, i told them basically i dont know f-all about it but i wanna see if it had a chance at passing lvvta.... let me know what to fix basically.. and they really did. 3 pages of failures ranging from blown out bushings to more serious stuff like the modified engine cover with modified seats, seatbelt anchorages, raised seats to a unacceptable level (i did wonder why my head was touching the roof). following photos will show some of these things..

Because i like weird stuff and it seemed like a lot of effort went into this van, and previous owner was sad to see it go, i decided to tidy it up and fix some issues like leaking valve cover, handbrake ajust, new windscreen.

So we organised a time and left after work to pick it up at night without a trailer... because what could go wrong?.... All i knew at this stage is that it drives, not certified but on hold, and would probably drive the 2 hours home... probably. So we got there and paid the man, exchanged it and got on the way to go home, only thing is i couldnt see very well due to the pink/green sticker remains on the cracked windscreen haha so i removed that, and it made it home fine.

To start with, I purchased this gem which I found on trademe, and brought for a good price, from a guy who had spent a lot of time and dollars building, nice older gentleman from a coastal town, uncertified but still had live plates.

After years of using forums to find ideas on my various projects, I have decided to give back and document this build, '88 Nissan vanette, to s15 sr20det conversion. will upload as I go, hopefully it interests some people.