Van driving challenges

I drove my van to work on Monday 18th July and haven’t touched it since. I know I need to be braver, face the unknown and wait for the unfamiliar to become familiar, but it’s a little scary.

Swapping from a car to a van and the difference in size was one challenging I knew I had to overcome but I never thought about car design. I have been a firm favourite of Ford for over 20 years and thought about buying a Ford transit but it seemed a little too big. I wanted to start van life in something smaller.

Now I am driving a Mercedes.

After 35 years of driving with a handbrake between my seats, now the handbrake is a peddle. I have four peddles instead of three.

The clutch is super sensitive. I only have to lift my foot of a fraction and the van is ready to take off. My old pedal had a much higher ‘bite’ and I find myself stalling a lot or shuddering along until I change to second gear.

There are 6 gears now and they’re fairly close together so sometimes when I think I am in fourth I am actually in sixth gear!

The windscreen wipers are near the indicator so they often start up everytime I am turning a corner.

Don’t even get me started on reversing!!!

These are little things that I will get used to the more I drive and I am going to start using my 2 hour breaks to take short trips out so I can become more familiar with my new home but in the meantime it has been sat outside doing nothing.

I am still trying to find someone that can do the insulation and carpet lining for me. Most places do VW or larger vans but not the Vito.