Buying a used van around Beddington Lane
A lot of what changes hands around here is commercial. The industrial estates along Beddington Lane, the recycling and waste sites and the energy recovery facility keep a steady supply of vans, pickups and crew cabs on the local market, and plenty of them are sold privately once they have done their time. A van that has carried weight for five years is a different proposition from a car of the same age, and the parts that give out are not the ones a test drive tells you about.
So on a van we spend extra time on the things load does: rear springs and bushes that have sagged, a clutch and dual mass flywheel that has pulled heavy loads from standstill, brake discs lipped from constant stop-start work, and corrosion in the floor and around the rear door shuts where water sits. We also read the mileage pattern across the gov.uk MOT history, because a van with suspiciously flat annual mileage in its working years is worth asking about before, not after, the money moves.
For cars, the questions are different but the method is the same. Paint depth readings panel by panel show where filler or a respray is hiding, the ramp shows the sills, jacking points and subframe mountings, and a scan of every module shows stored faults and whether the emissions readiness monitors have completed. Monitors that are not ready often mean codes were cleared very recently. We measure, photograph and write it down, and the report belongs to you whatever it says.
Practically, the car has to come here: a proper inspection needs a ramp. Most buyers hold the car with a refundable deposit on the condition that the sale depends on the report, then either drive it over or arrange for the seller to. From the village it is Church Road onto Croydon Road and north up London Road, a mile and a half. We would rather see it cold, so ask the seller not to warm it up beforehand.