Thank you everyone. So I have to weigh it up myself really. The car in question is a beautiful trailer queen with very little use. I expect I won't do more than 500-1000 miles a year too. I'm a retired engineer and enjoy the hands on part, am not averse to welding in some additional strengthening gussets if need be. So my only real concern is would I ever be able to sell it again if for some reason I decide its not for us.... And that probably comes down to price. I've seen them from £27-37k. mine is £25k and that's all the budget I have so no expensive chassis changes for me.
Congratulations on your purchase.
For the mileage you expect to do, if chassis is currently sound then you should be okay.
Pre 2014 do crack at the upper forward chassis - the cracks are very hard to see when at early stage unless you know where/what your looking for. I have seen one car with the tube totally failed.
Although some early chassis have been upgraded (and the quality of the upgrade welding is in some cases quite poor due to difficult access) they still crack. And for the untrained eye its very difficult to see the difference between an upgraded early chassis and the later post 2014 chassis - so you can never be 100% sure if on an early car that its chassis may have been changed.
To reinforce the early chassis requires extensive welding - its not a simple job just plating and gussets etc as the access to the required areas to
do the job properly means an engine out as a minimum and ideally a body off too. m3wservices offer this service for their EU owners as its at least 50% cheaper than getting MMC to change the chassis and in our opinion makes the front end far stronger/stiffer than the later post 2014 chassis.
