It’s a long shot I know, but does anyone have any experience with a Ford A04x series camper? I’m looking for cues into reliability, maintenance, rust, etc
Not something I’ve ever heard of. How old are we talking about?
This particular van is 49 years old, they were build in Langley, Berkshire according to wikipedia which made me reach out to the forum wisdom 
It needs a bit of love obviously 
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Well it’s still here so that’s good. 
The first thing is to get it on the ramp and check for rust with a big screwdriver 
Can you weld? 
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No expierence other then my first year at Uni long long time ago. It had a motor swap last year together with many thing in the drivetrain. My assumption is that it should be ok rust wise (why bother swapping engines otherwise) but that needs to be verified though.
We like the looks of the Ford a lot; were previously looking into buying a Mercedes 508D FireTruck but they are so loud…really something elae altogether
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I would look for well established motor caravan dealers in the U.K. and ask their advice. The Ford would probably have been a common base and they also might know about the converter company.
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It appears they were mostly sold on the continent and lost the battle against the other popular vans at the time. There is a well regarded specialist in the NL but not in France or Germany.
We’ll have a look tomorrow but the MB 508D or 409 is probably more appealing long term as an oldtimer
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We had a 1998 Ford camper. It cost us hundreds in welding every year to get it through its annual inspection. We got rid of it when the garage couldn’t find anywhere else to weld the rust to! Looking for a replacement, every Transit had rust issues. We got a Renault Trafic which never had a spot of rust anywhere - I was told they galvanise their chassis.
Decided to not go forward. Much harder to get parts compared with the Dudo vans and it would have cost us 5hrs drive for just a test drive. Going forward with 508d