DURAVAN 1.0

A little bit of history on the machine that takes us everywhere!

Duravan is a 1980 GMC Vandura cargo van that has been converted into the sweetest camper-van anybody
has ever seen. Bought in November of 1999 from Ryan Boyer and Neil Brewer (Goolie's older brother) by
ourselves for the whapping price of $2750.

She was stored in the Vail's garage on Church street for the winter where it was worked on constantly for
4.5 months in the freezing cold. At first it didn't even look like it was going to fit in the garage but
eventually it was parked sideways. Immediately the stripping began....

Click on the images to enlarge!

	This is a shot of Duravan when we first got it.		A front profile.
	This is the inside after we stripped it down to the metal!!		This was the floor of the van after we took out the seats and carpet...disaster!
	This is the inside of the van after we finished.		And the outside with her sweet paint job.

Her maiden voyage was scheduled for March of 2001 for West Virginia on a rock climbing road trip. This was canceled
when Geoff decided to go snowboarding in Sunday River with the Lawson's. However, she did come out of the
garage on the first of March and was registered and insured for the road (insurance per year costs more than the
van's worth!)

During the months prior to her venture across the country several alteration had to be made to keep her in
running order. NEW JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING!! Well that's not really true but a lot of stuff had to be done.

Despite all our hard work, as soon as we pulled out onto the Trans Canada Highway it started to shake like a
tire was going to fall off. That certainly didn't stop us though...we just kept on givin'er. The Conversation

However, it did make it all the way across the country with only and additional $300 worth of repairs. And
it turned out that it was only a tire and then later a transmission mount. We drove the van for about 20000km
before we got it looked at again and apparently the transmission was about ready to fall off!

This is Duravan on February 8 2001...not in Whistler, in Vancouver. We woke up to about 5 cm of snow
and it continued to snow all day, this is a rare occurrence for Vancouver!



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