well lads and lassies im new to this site and i thought you might like to hear about my latest project it has finally arrived , after months of speculation and head scratching and with a huge thank you to declan rafter ( black magic ) i am now the proud owner of what is believed to be the only sierra van in exsistance , now i know the sceptics among you will say " ah sure thats just a feckin estate with panels instead of glass " !!!!! but you'r wrong , from what we can gather from the first owners they wanted a mid size van from ford and something " a bit different " ,the local ford dealers here tried to sell them an escort van and a small transit but it wasnt what they were after so after a lot of searching they came up with this solution ,three of these vans were produced in-house by ford as an experimental demo vehicle to see if they would take off ,as you will see in the pictures it has a proper bulk head divider and a full flat floor , they were shipped to ford in cork and this one was delivered to sligo in january of 91 and subsequently bought by barton smiths of sligo , the other two vans dissapeared , maybe shipped back to england because they didnt sell , who knows , just ask yourself this " have you ever seen one " ???? the van has led a bit of a chequered past up until now and the most up to date info we can get on it is that she ended up in the hands of a sheep farmer ( hence the big pile of shite in the back of it ) but again thanks to declan, he was aproached and a deal was done , it suffered a snapped timing belt in 2003 and it has been off the road since , dumped in a field !!! so enough talk, here are the pics i took of her as she was being delivered .













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keeping the blue oval alive in the northwest

 

bit of an update lads , spent all day yesterday shoveling and taking off a lot of bits off the van to see what the actual shell itself was like , turns out its not too bad at all despite twenty years of dog and sheep piss rotting away into the carpet and the sound proofing , it came out in chunks instead of one piece !!!! bit of a nightmare getting out the seats and the rear door was siezed shut but plenty of WD40 and brute force shifted her , we found and managed to remove five rats nests from the back of the dash , id say there is more in there just have to get the dash out first !!!!!! we also had to take out the rear floor because the amount of gathered under here was unreal and we would have not been able to clean it properly other wise , anyway after a lot of stripping we got it o where it was ready for a blast of the power hose , its in the shed now drying out and we will start the body work soon , couple of sills and maybe a passenger floor might do the trick , fingers crossed , here are some more pics .

















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www.nealeganrun.com


keeping the blue oval alive in the northwest

 

Oh, my god! Thats... Unusual in every way possible!

Good luck with the build... You are obviously needing it and will need a lot more

 

thats a rare one,.. i wouldnt like to be the guy who had to clean it all up tho lol

 

Christ there was some shite in there!

 

Wow that was neglected
good luck with it

 

Nice one i have seen a sierra van before but it had been 2 doored i think it was a diy job owned by a stero shop either norwich or ipswich

 

I think that looks kool as fuck! Without all the shite in it though

 

nice find. good luck with that

 

Bloody hell you,re not scared off takin a gamble good luck with the resto brilliant project

 

seen that on pf, welcome to the site! Where you from, silgo?

 

Bl**dy friggin hell u have guts to clean that shite away I tell ya careful when removing that dash cos I guess you'll be finding the owners of those nests

 

X2!! Mad man for taking it on!!!

 

quality find and i'm sure that the only thing to do is do it justice 1 more for the revival section and the only way is forward good luck and well done look forward to the finished product.........

 

you say its not just an estate with the windows welded up but judging by those mig welds around the window apetures id say thats exactly what it is with the front section of a p100 rear bed tacked in where the seats used to be! why else would it have rear doors lol
anyway good luck with the resto and that is just crying out for a cossie engine

 

change the pillar about and get some 3dr doors on it lol

fairplay be nice to see it back to its former glory

 

well lads here is one for the books ,
i got a call from a man in roscommon last week saying he knew the whereabouts of another sierra van !!!
took a chance yesterday and went down for a look and ended up buying , its in better shape than the white one and i actually had it running very quick despite it being parked up for over ten years !
the fun stated when we tried to extract it from its resting place , took about four hours enlisting the help of a chainsaw , sledge , pickaxe and numerous garden implements ,

oh and a very tasty bit if off road driving by declan rafter ( blackmagic) in his trusty landcruiser ,
demolishion and road building complete we finally faced her for the road and got her loaded on to declans trailer ,
she is now home and awaiting a good cleaning to see the extent of the restoration that awaits ,
as you will see in the pictures a dog took a liking to the interior and its fooked but i bought a donor car yesterday aswell with a good interior so we should be alright ,
a huge thankyou to padraig noonan ( the frog ) from roscommon for helping me source the van and also to declan and jonny nitro for thier help in getting it home here area few pictures .

 

good luck mate

 

Are you going to make 1 good car out of the 2?

 

good luck mate, never seen one before!

 

Very Intresting Project you got there Look Forward To Reading The Up dates

 

interesting find!

 

So they made 3 of them, and you've managed to buy 2? Wow, now that's exclusivity!

Good luck, very cool project!

 

All thats left is to hunt down the third one! Well done

 

i think it was white and had a disabled vehicle high style roof on it didnt it?
still about i think but it could have been a normal estate

 

u so need to get both running... etc and call the heritage centre

 

hi all , just a quick update , i put a bit of a push on both of the sierra vans over the weekend because we have a big ford show ( Neal Egan run ) coming up on the 5th of august ( ( sorry bout the plug !!! ) ) ;D

anyway i got great help from a few of my mates and we got the red van converted to power steering sourced a new interior and got her running

it went out to donkeys then for a full valet inside and out while me and my ould fella the brother gus and jonny nitro got stuck into an engine swap on the white one ,

while we were at it nitro stripped out the remainder of the dash and found some more rats nest's and took out what was left of the wiring loom ,

i managed to get the engine swapped over very easily from the blue car and within a half an hour we had her purring away nicely .

here are some pics .

 

That red one scrubbed up bloody well!!

Strange the way so few were made though

 

The red one has come up mint!!

 

here is a video of the white one running at last !!!! first time in ten years ,,,,,,

 

Nice work mate.
Good luck with the rebuilds

 

What countries were the vans available, if id have known about these i would have had loads to be fair!

cracking affair going on here lads, keep up the good work and fuck me do they scrub up well!!!

Sean

 

p.s i know the irish are big on "van" vehicles, low tax for non-passenger cars etc as loads of southern cars have coloured painted/stickered out glass.

UK should adopt this ASAP

Peace out

 

wow, amazed how many there are over there,never heard of them in this country.Red one looks good too

 

Top cars/vans.The red one looks nice and clean now.

 

Great work!

 

I cant belive how well the red one cleaned up keep up the good work mate

 

i love um lol but i would go down the cossie route and build a fast one lol

 

are they similair years ?

funny how they have different stickers on the boot

 

looking good now all ya need is build a cossie version