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Commer Camper

Tullamore

Donation Time
Someone in town has a full size Commer bus with a rootes engine, I should rescue it and convert it into a motor home.
 

Pumpkin

Donation Time
Commer Van

Boy,,:eek: if I lived in the UK, I wold be on that :D In a heat beat. There is nothing like that ,,that I know of in the US of A,, What a peach.!!:)

Chuck in wet Oregon
 

RootesRooter

Donation Time
Chuck,

There aren't any Commers that I know of around Oregon, but a fellow by the name of Ray Marti has managed to collect three of the larger Sunbeam Funwagon variants outside of Portland. Two were reportedly converted to a V6 or V8.

Dick Sanders



Boy,,:eek: if I lived in the UK, I wold be on that :D In a heat beat. There is nothing like that ,,that I know of in the US of A,, What a peach.!!:)

Chuck in wet Oregon
 

lemansvk

Donation Time
Boy,,:eek: if I lived in the UK, I wold be on that :D In a heat beat. There is nothing like that ,,that I know of in the US of A,, What a peach.!!:)

Chuck in wet Oregon

Chuck, Where's your sense of adventure. Jon Artz (who some on this list will know) imported a Commer Camper from the UK about 5 years ago. Can't remember what State Jon lives in but I know it's somewhere in the west

Cheers, Vic
 

Bill Blue

Platinum Level Sponsor
Jon is located in Nebraska. The last I heard, he needed to thin the herd due to health reasons and I believe, was offering the Commer for sale. This was quite a while ago.

Bill
 

rootesrefuge

Donation Time
Hi all,

I may be down, but I'm not out! Still have much of my fleet, but will be paring it down a bit. But I think the Funwagon is a keeper.... if all else fails, I can live in it if I have to!!!

I have two campers at the moment, the US "officially" imported Sunbeam Funwagon, and a Brit market AutoSleeper I imported several years ago. Got my money's worth out of the import, if only in spare parts for the Funwagon. I'm parting it for spares, as it's far too rusty to save.

Now, if that bus has a Rootes TS3 in it, I'd be after that in a heartbeat! That engine is SO different, and from all accounts has an unmistakable exhaust note when it's "on song".

But if anybody is in the market for a very rare 1966 Humber Super Snipe estate, or possibly a 1958 Minx convertible or a 1967 Sunbeam Arrow estate, let me know. Not restored by any means, but all are runners. Haven't exactly decided which to sell...

Will make it a point to stop in from time to time, I've been off the grid for far too long.

Jon Arzt
Omaha, NE USA
 

65beam

Donation Time
fun wagon

jon,
your name came up saturday at the bash at carlisle.we were discussing getting the creature up the hill at tiger tom's.another guy was there that also owns one.
bob webb
 

rootesrefuge

Donation Time
Getting it up the hill wasn't half as hard as fixing the oil leaks! Not fun replacing the oil pan, side cover, and filter housing gaskets several hundred miles from home. But at least I was at one of the few places where those parts were on hand!

Jon Arzt
 

65beam

Donation Time
jon,
i had forgotten about that.those were fun days though! we had another fun weekend this past weekend at carlisle.we had quite a turnout of sunbeams.tigers,alpines,imps and two harringtons( my LeMans and rick kellett's type D)
 

RootesRooter

Donation Time
Many (any) Rootes parts or sales lit. to be found at Carlisle?


jon,
i had forgotten about that.those were fun days though! we had another fun weekend this past weekend at carlisle.we had quite a turnout of sunbeams.tigers,alpines,imps and two harringtons( my LeMans and rick kellett's type D)
 

65beam

Donation Time
rootes parts

there was quite a bit of used parts for sale.there was also some NOS parts such as peaked chrome headlight rims,primed peaked rims,tail light units ,etc.i bought two nos head lamp dipper switches for series 2 along with new parking/turn signal lights for the 69.there wasn't much literature but i think i bought 7 pieces ,most of which i already have.i did find a mint man hour schedule book and a sales brochure for the talbot alpine.the number of vendors is a long way from what it was several years ago.they put parking where a lot of vendors used to set up.thanks e bay!i always seem to find something though.the volvo club had their meet on the grounds so there was a tremendous amount of volvo parts.
 

rootesrefuge

Donation Time
Well, here's an open invitation to anyone who owns a camper, feel free to contact me. I've had the beast for many years, and found more than a few ways of working around parts availability!

And most don't involve buying a rusty hulk from overseas and shipping it here... long story, better left unmentioned... WAY better...

Jon Arzt
Omaha, NE (for now)
rootes@cox.net
 
G

Greg Hilyer

Hello All, Ive only been on the list for a few days now, so I'm about a year late to this thread. In the late '80s I owned a Commer camper van with the neatest pop-top I've ever seen. When raised, solid panels would unfold accordion style, revealing small opening vent windows, making for a very snug, weather-tite pop-up [unlike the noisy, drafty and leaky canvas type on Westfalia's]. As I recall, the only "camper" equipment in it was a sink with water tank and hand pump, a 12v florescent light and very nice wood paneling. I'm thinking it was a '67. It was white over kind of a creamy grey and had the Chrysler pentastar at the bottom of the doors. There was a very elaborate plaque on the back of the top from the coachbuilder "[somewhere] on Thames" that did the camper conversion. At 60 someodd thousand miles, it was totally rust free and very reliable. I drove it all over southern Oregon and loved it. In '91, about 2 weeks before we were going to head to Mexico in it, the rear end started sounding like a angry SkillSaw. It was to be a 6 month trip. I had already moved out of my house into my girlfriend's apartment. She had already given notice in anticipation of our April 1st departure. Having no space or time to fix it, I parked it at a friends, bought a VW Westfalia, and off we went. Amazingly, enroute to the Yucatan, I saw another Commer on the road somewhere in Arizona. My Weberized 1600 dualport VW couldn't keep up with the Commer, let alone catch it! That was and still is the only other one I ever saw. After returning to Oregon I still drove the Commer occasionally until it developed a fairly substantial oil leak [probabaly just a bad pan gasket as I recall]. About that same time I had to return to Seattle for family reasons. With nowhere to park it for a indefinite period of time, I put it on consignment with a "speciality" car dealer in Ashland OR. I gave him specific instructions regarding the oil leak including a note attached to the dashboard, key tag, and the title [which he insisted on having in exchange for a consignment contract]. During my time in Seattle, I could never get the dealer to answer my calls. I had a friend try to contact him and he reported back that the whole dealership had "vanished". When I finally returned to Ashland, I tracked the scum-bag down. He told me the sickening story about selling it to a guy who ran it out of oil on the way home, supposedly returning the guys money but not bothering to get my Commer back. His parting comment was the traditional "sue me"! Knowing that his dealer license and bond had been revoked and that you can't get blood from a rock, that was the end of that. Until a couple years later when I saw it parked in a field west of Grants Pass. It was late at night, in the middle of pretty much nowhere and I was still so sick over the whole affair that I couldn't bring myself to stay over to persue it the next day, but it was definitely my old van and I've never gotten it out of my mind. Shortly after that is when I moved down here to New Mexico and I've never been close enough since to go looking for it again... But I have a hunch that it is probably still in that field! These days I have the time and resources to go retrieve it if anyone can confirm its existence - At the very least it would be of some comfort to know that it found a good home. After many, many years, I am obviously not over it! If anyone out there is in the Grants Pass - Cave Junction area of Oregon, I can still give rough directions as to where I last saw it. As a somewhat interesting [and perhaps helpful to some] sidenote, I still have the factory service and parts manual for it. Although I still can't part with it, I would be happy to copy any or all of it if anyone out there needs such. Although my Tiger does give me some comfort these days, I just can't bring myself to try sleeping in it. Besides, it doesn't have a florescent light or wood peneling let alone a weathertight pop-top or sink!
Greg "Lunker" Hilyer
Lunkercars@earthlink.net
Albuquerque NM
P.S. I still occationally think about the '61[?] Alpine I sold to a guy in Medford around that same time. I've always wondered what Oregon DMV made of the Washington title that showed it as a SUNTAN Alpine - Still chuckle about that one as the mis-print was actually pretty appropriate - it never had a top in my ownership.
 
I

impfected

In Seattle ther is at least one Commer van. Mine. A 62 pop top with a 1500.

I brought down another one for a friend out of Vancouver BC. He ended up trading it for work on his other brit car toa local shop in Tacoma. The engien was siezed in it and we couldn't break it free. It did have functioning hydraulics after years of sitting. It was a 67 autosleeper.

There is also another Commer in Vancouver I know of. The guy offered it to me a for $2k a few years back, but I decided to keep mine.
There has been a Commer High top van listed in Hemmings off and on as recently as 3 months ago. He wants $5k for it, and if it is as described, that's not such a bad price. It used to be a race car support vehicle that has fold down bunks and tool bins.

Al
 

RootesRooter

Donation Time
Al -

I wonder if your Commer is the one I used to see parked in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood a decade+ ago?

I've come across about a dozen of the Sunbeam-badged Commer Funwagons around the NW. A notable one became a party van for Univ of Washington football fans for several years, painted in a vivid purple-and-gold scheme. It was last seen about 8-10 years ago at an auction site for abandoned vehicles in north Seattle.

Ray Marti, who used to run a British car repair shop in the Portland, OR area, owns 3 or 4 Funwagons: none running; two with partially-installed V-6's or V-8's. Frank & Cindy Cardiff of Roseburg, OR may still have 1 or 2 Funwagons too.

-Dick Sanders
 
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