A wheelie great Father's Day gift

We've been eyeing up alloy wheels for the van for a while now.

It's the next big (and expensive!) step in our quest to convert our commercial van into something more worthy of a T5 Forum member sticker.

We've spent hours trawling through google, eBay, the Forum and numerous VW shows looking for the holy grail of alloys.

Some we liked, some we loved and others we had to agree to disagree on.

We've looked at deep dish, mesh, stormers, turbines, 18 inch, 19 and 20. We even checked out bandeds.

Finally, when it felt like we would never find a set of wheels we liked (without having to remortgage the house and feed our entire family on beans on toast for a year) we came across a nice set on eBay.

The husband liked them. And they came with new tyres, which meant our wallet liked them too. Get in.

Now I was a bit mean here and pulled the 'we can't afford these as I am still on maternity leave' card. But I was hatching a little fathers day related plan ;)

The next day I secretly ordered the wheels over the phone, but not before being given an A Level physics test first. What was the load rating of my van? What kg per rim was I looking for? Did I want to run them on 255/40/20 or 275/40/20 tyres. Next question please!

Thankfully, with a little help from the Forum and the dealer, I order what I think is right.

The new wheels arrived next day whilst hubby was at work. They were so big I didn't think they would fit, but the delivery guy (who was a Transporter fan) looked under the arches and assured me, 'There's bags of space love. Transporters look great with fat alloys like these.' Phew. Glad you approve. Hope the husband will! 'Let's hope he gets you more than a box of chocolates next year, eh?', he chuckles.

Luckily, our local Halfords Autocentre could fit us in that afternoon to get the alloys fixed on. Cheers guys! The plan was falling into place nicely ready for the big reveal when daddy got home from work later.

With the sparkling new alloys gleaming in the sunshine and a big grin on my face I put the van onto full lock to swing out of the car park. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

What the hell was that? My grin was replaced by a champion gurning face and a couple of mechanics came out to take a look under my front arch. 'Just rubbing a little on the plastic weather cover' they said, 'just don't use full lock'. Right.

Terrified it would rub again or that I would kerb the new alloys I drove home like a granny, parked up outside the house, decorated the van with daddy's day banners (I would say the kids did them, but they are all my own work. Physics and art were never my strongest subjects at school) then we waited.

Daddy pulled up with a look of bewilderment on his face. 'What's all this for?' he says pointing at the banners.

'Happy early Father's Day' I say, smiling. Surely he has noticed them. How can you not notice them? They are flipping huge!

Still a look of puzzlement.

Luckily at this point our toddler pipes up 'Wheels, daddy.'

And then he clocks them. And he likes them. Result.

And here they are.