Duetto Swindle

Good for you, I too get fed up with people who are not honest and upfront, a naive view maybe, not  what the younger generations are used to. so perhaps they have no yardstick to go on.

A few years ago I believe a seller on eBay had a vehicle I think it was, ( perhaps someone will remember this and confirm one way or the other /)and he pulled it to bits and said something like you must be mad to want to buy this junk, it was unbelievable how many did want to buy it and at stupid prices, he was being honest and it paid off. he got a fantastic price and the buyer knew exactly what he was getting. 

So hang in there and the very best of luck,
Margaret

leonardo1776 wrote:the cess-pit of half truths and innuendoes that seem to be the norm today; at 79 I come from a different heritage.

You seem to remember the past in a different way than I do. From my personal experience, bodging up cars and selling them with hookey MOTs has been going on for at least half a century. I can still remember my sister's first car from the 1970s - a lovely metallic blue Ford Escort which had been bodged repeatedly, and which was mainly held together with chicken wire and quarter inch thick body filler.

When the rust came through yet again, it was bought by a dealer and it was back on a forecourt in weeks, with all the old bodgery skinned over, yet again.

Whatever, if you want to put up an advert in which you tell the buyer a load of stuff that they don't need to know (like the history of how you bought it), that's up to you. In all probability someone else will profit, again.

Update: I have found an HONEST garage!!!! He has just given me a 40hr to 45hr costing of £2,500, including taking ALL of the rear 'van contents out, ie shower/wc cupboards and some of the middle contents, and anything else needed to make the welding safe; do the welding to MOT standards, replace all the innards, do the MOT and return the Van. They have a specialist Motorhome guy who has done this before. I will loose the £2,500, but at least I can then resell the 'van with a HONEST MOT and chassis. Any comments welcome.

Don't re-sell it - get it welded and keep it!

Or have you found another van to replace it with already?

In principle I agree with you entirely. Who could fail to applaud such honesty, but I fear your gesture is but a drop in the ocean.

In practice I also have to agree with Mojo. Chicken wire and body filler was so common when I was buying my first cars that I always took a small magnet with me, as well as the screwdriver.

Its annoying to be ripped off, might be worth keeping now though, for a total of around £11500 you have a good van that you could start enjoying.

Dave

My wife is severely disabled and we decided after using the Duetto, that the shower was far too small for her. We want to motor down to near Malaga where we have a static caravan for the entire winter, so a comfortable loo etc. is essential for her. When we had the trouble with Duetto, we decided to go for a Hymer and now have a Classic S580 automatic, based on a rock solid Mercedes chassis AND a separate shower. If we were younger and fit, we would have considered keeping the Duetto. The garage guy said that the Duetto was a lovely motorhome, slow, but as long as he drove it the 10 miles to Cardiff with the absent rear shock absorber and suspension in mind, it was an enjoyable drive. This has been an expensive learning curve, but I now know about the MOT history availability, and won't be caught out again.

Incidentally, £2500 as an all-in quote would not be a bad deal, IMO.

A/S conversions are notoriously difficult to dismantle, because they are built only with ease of assembly in mind. When I dismantled part of my Flair for welding I found some things that were very labour-intensive to overcome neatly. The shower area in a Duetto has a special reputation for being difficult to dismantle - there are a few threads here from the past where this has been described.

So - if it's a firm quote, it doesn't seem too bad. Then again, if it's a costed estimate, who knows where that would end (or more pertinently, how much that would end up costing)?

That sounds reasonable to me, labour charges are not cheap, if it makes a good van, what have you to lose, surely you should be able the get the cost back on selling? , after all it will be a solid van.and you could prove that.
Best regards,
Margaret.

I feel for you and understand your anger but if the van can can be repaired correctly I would bite the bullet and repair then sell with a clear conscience.  It minimises your loss overall. Old Transits rust but are cheap to repair  , costs come with ensuring the thing does not go up in smoke while welding!!  I have seen terrible rust on Mercedes around late 90 's to 2000's too so dont think they are immune! FAR FroM IT! C class and e class were rusting  at 5 years old!
     I have repaired a car bought by a friends son as his first car. The lad had saved for over 2 years and loved the new body kit applied by the garage. Garage mot'd it THAT day before he picked it up and suspension collapsed on the way home. A cheap fibreglass body kit hastily applied covered missing sills and chassis legs that dissolved when poked with a finger! Area DVlA testing station we reported it to  while having sympathy quoted that mot is really valid only at time of doing it as anything could happen later but privately admitted that the garage was known to them. 
       I ended up  spending 6 weekends with his son repairing the underside to get him safely on the road. At least he is now fully aware of the mechanicals of a car!  You have unfortunately been caught by Mot testing rules that testers cannot do more than prod with the official tool lightly against suspected areas. Gone are the days when our foreman took a 2lb ball pein hammer to 'test' chassis for rust. Any tester seeing fresh thick underseal applied with a trowel if reputable would 'iinvestigate further' if only to cover his back.
        I have had a tester question my welding around chassis as not being continuous but when I scraped back the coating he saw it was actually so neat that the weld was invisible ! Car passed but proves there are thorough testers out there but I agree there are still many cowboy garages turning a blind eye for a fast buck.

Right folks, after nearly six months (I did tell the welder that there was no rush, as I had bought a Merc S580 Hymer), but the Duetto is finally home. Its still got advisories, but I can trust the welder when he said that if I sold it, I could sell it with a chassis that was solid where it counted and had fibre glass reinforcements elsewhere, plus he had waxoyl'd it on all other surfaces, and that if I kept it, I would have a superbly traveling MH, that would last me for years if I kept an eye on the chassis. I now have the terrible conundrum of what to do with two MHs, the Duetto, RH drive, total cost £11,830 and the S580 StarLine HYmer LH Drive, cost £16,000.

If it were mine, I would probably go with whichever is the nicest to drive, all other things being equal. It sounds selfish (as the driver) to place the emphasis on driving pleasure, but if you're going any distance it can mean the difference between feeling relaxed when you get there or feeling totally exhausted. The only camper van that I've ever sold in a hurry (keeping it less than a year) was shifted purely because it was - for me - ghastly to drive.

However - if your wife still won't fit in the shower of the Duetto then I would imagine the choice will probably be made for you?

Sorry to here your troubles with the duetto leonardo 1776,it’s so frustrating when this happens.
I would imagine the homer is a better drive than the duetto & having had all the problems with the duetto I would myself get it gone because it will always be on your mind.

AA inspection, every time
Know this is being clever after the event, but I always have an independent AA inspection.

IanH wrote:AA inspection, every time
Know this is being clever after the event, but I always have an independent AA inspection.

At the very least, even if you are unsure about having it done, tell the seller that you will be having a full AA inspection, plus a full independent habitation check.  Then watch his/her reaction.  It will tell you a lot!

One private seller nearly had a fit when I said this, while I was looking at a very expensive van.  He as good as refused to allow the checks, then he suggested that the last thing he wanted was a check finding something and having to renegotiate the price, then he finally said that he wasnt happy having the habitation check done, but that I should buy the van, pay for it, then have the check done afterwards!!!  That reaction told me everything I needed to know.  I walked, then later, purely by chance, I discovered things that showed just how near a miss it was.

Rolyan wrote:

IanH wrote:AA inspection, every time
Know this is being clever after the event, but I always have an independent AA inspection.

At the very least, even if you are unsure about having it done, tell the seller that you will be having a full AA inspection, plus a full independent habitation check.  Then watch his/her reaction.  It will tell you a lot!

One private seller nearly had a fit when I said this, while I was looking at a very expensive van.  He as good as refused to allow the checks, then he suggested that the last thing he wanted was a check finding something and having to renegotiate the price, then he finally said that he wasnt happy having the habitation check done, but that I should buy the van, pay for it, then have the check done afterwards!!!  That reaction told me everything I needed to know.  I walked, then later, purely by chance, I discovered things that showed just how near a miss it was.

I've never had inspections and suppose i've been lucky to an extent though always had knowledge of whatever vehicle type i've been buying and where the known faults are etc. I've bought many cars at auctions and each been very good. The one time i very nearly came a cropper was a really nice BMW 3 series i'd seen on Auto Trader which looked immaculate and very low mileage. The price also was pretty low. I spoke to the owner on the phone who told me he'd bought it for his wife who only drove it a few times and found it 'too big'. I arranged to go and view the next day then suddenly had a light bulb moment....."if it sounds too good to be true then it generally is"!

I ran an HPI check on it which showed it had been Cat C damaged. No mention of that in his ad so i phoned to tell him i wouldn't be viewing and why!

Prompted by Leonardo's other thread about gas taps, and as the owner of a 1996 Duetto, I thought I would revisit this thread.

Our Duetto was bought for a similar sum to Leonardo's three years ago and then needed a good deal of welding underneath. The wheel arches are now bubbling a bit, and we recently took it back to the bodyshop for a further estimate.

We could now afford to replace our van now for something newer, so we also had a look at newer (2004 ish) Duettos, Symbols, and other makes. The new Duettos have a bigger shower compartment but at the expense of the wardrobe which is smaller than ours. The Symbol is shorter than the Duetto, and so less roomy.

Newer other makes seem now to be 6m long, longer than our Duetto, so unsuitable for our drive and the road on which we live.

Every time we got back into the Duetto, we realised that she ticks all our boxes and apart from the wheel arches, she is in great nick.

More importantly, on a lot of the vans we looked at I was able to do an MOT check, where the dealers photos include the reg no. In a lot of cases, the MOT history showed a history of corrosion.

So if we changed the van, we'd lose a shedload of money, and unless we pay a great deal more, we could easily end up with another problem van. So we are going to do up the one we have got, and continue to enjoy it, hopefully for many years to come.