intothewild
Adventurer
Finally, after many headaches, and wasted days looking at Astro/Safari vans that turned out to be nothing like they were advertised to be, I have finally found the ONE.
My criteria was obviously it had to be AWD, it had to have dutch rear doors, it had to have 2nd row captain seats (I have one kid, this lets me remove one more seat for extra space), and I wanted as much maintenance history as possible and it had to be clean.
My search finally ended when I had exhausted craigslist looking from my area of seattle/tacoma to the north border, to idaho and oregon. I finally thought well "Why not check eBay"? So I did, I found 2 within 250 miles, and only one I was interested in. He is an older gentleman who is the ORIGINAL owner (Score!), the van is in Vancouver, WA, so the distance wasn't bad. He sent me tons of pictures, was very upfront and willing to discuss the van in depth down to the little details.
For the first time since I started searching, I knew in my gut that this was the right one. I was more or less looking for a 96 or newer for the facelift/newer style interior. This one is a 95, with 143k on the clock, and super super clean.
That being said, I am excited! Nobody understands why I am so excited to get an Astro van or why I searched so long for the right one, but I knew you guys would get it.
Here's a few pictures (The ones that he sent me), but I will get some more this weekend when I have a chance to play with it a little bit. The first item to be addressed will be finding some new wheels and tires as these tires are near the end of their life. (Any tire suggestions?), What's the best size tire for a stock height van? I may do a 2" in the future, but it will be a ways down the road.
My criteria was obviously it had to be AWD, it had to have dutch rear doors, it had to have 2nd row captain seats (I have one kid, this lets me remove one more seat for extra space), and I wanted as much maintenance history as possible and it had to be clean.
My search finally ended when I had exhausted craigslist looking from my area of seattle/tacoma to the north border, to idaho and oregon. I finally thought well "Why not check eBay"? So I did, I found 2 within 250 miles, and only one I was interested in. He is an older gentleman who is the ORIGINAL owner (Score!), the van is in Vancouver, WA, so the distance wasn't bad. He sent me tons of pictures, was very upfront and willing to discuss the van in depth down to the little details.
For the first time since I started searching, I knew in my gut that this was the right one. I was more or less looking for a 96 or newer for the facelift/newer style interior. This one is a 95, with 143k on the clock, and super super clean.
That being said, I am excited! Nobody understands why I am so excited to get an Astro van or why I searched so long for the right one, but I knew you guys would get it.
Here's a few pictures (The ones that he sent me), but I will get some more this weekend when I have a chance to play with it a little bit. The first item to be addressed will be finding some new wheels and tires as these tires are near the end of their life. (Any tire suggestions?), What's the best size tire for a stock height van? I may do a 2" in the future, but it will be a ways down the road.
There are an endless array of ideas out there for these things so dig deep for info and always feel free to ask. As t.low mentioned for astro specific info check out astrosafarivans.com it is a great resource with out much bs.