Type approval, the MOT and the first reservation

After eight months of work, the campervan was practically finished.

Only the final step remained: the homologation.

Without her, everything I had built with my own hands was still just a converted campervan.

It could not be legally used as a motorhome.

I couldn't rent it.

And above all, I could not begin that for which I had worked for so long.

I took the motorhome to the mechanic.

He checked it in detail, took photographs, checked the windows, the skylights, the furniture, the electrical installation and all the modifications carried out.

There were a few minor details to correct, but I already explained them in the previous chapter.

After the inspection I took the motorhome back and the engineer began to prepare all the necessary technical project for type approval.

That project would be the one that would subsequently be submitted for the MOT.

The hardest wait

I thought the most complicated part was already over.

But I was wrong.

Then the wait began.

Every two weeks I used to write to the engineer to ask how the project was going.

The answer was almost always the same.

There was an awful lot of work.

It was summer.

A lot of people were on holiday.

And there was still a little longer to wait.

That wait was probably the most exasperating part of the whole process.

The motorhome was already completely finished.

I had shown photographs to my friends.

I had published some images on social media.

People started messaging me asking if they could rent it yet.

And my reply was always the same.

Not yet.

The documents are still missing.

I watched the days go by as summer progressed.

August was already very close.

The motorhome remained parked, unusable.

I could have been generating income.

Yet I was still waiting for a simple administrative procedure.

That was when I realised the importance of the whole legal side of things.

You can build an excellent motorhome.

But as long as it doesn't have the correct documentation, it remains merely a project.

The day I'd been waiting for for months

In early August I finally received the message from the engineer.

«The project is finished.»

I'd been waiting months for those words.

The project was sent immediately to the MOT test centre.

Three or four days later I received another message.

He was already able to go to the inspection.

Although he was confident in the work he had done, he couldn't help being nervous.

Before setting off, I checked the whole motorhome one more time.

I checked all the lights.

The water installation.

Electricity.

I cleaned it completely.

And I took her as well presented as possible.

The MOT

First they carried out the usual technical inspection of the vehicle.

Afterwards, they began to review the whole transformation.

I preferred to stay away.

I didn't want to intrude.

And, to be honest, I didn't want to hear every little comment while they were inspecting the motorhome either.

They used to call me from time to time.

They needed me to show them some type-approval plate.

I especially remember that they spent quite a while looking for the certification plate on the seat swivels.

When they finally found her, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The inspection lasted approximately two hours.

All that time I was just waiting for one phrase.

When it was over, one of the inspectors walked up to me and said:

Everything is correct. You can come back in three days to collect the paperwork.

At that moment I realised that I had achieved it.

There were no observations.

No defects.

Quite the contrary.

They even told me they really liked the motorhome.

When I was asked if I had really built it all by myself and answered that I had, I felt an enormous sense of pride.

They see projects of this type all the time.

And yet they had liked my work.

The documents finally in my hands

Three days later I went back for the MOT.

My new documentation was delivered to me.

I went out to the car park.

I looked at the motorhome.

And for the first time I had the feeling that I had really done it.

At that instant I remembered the whole journey.

The sailing boat trip.

YouTube videos.

The people who tried to convince me that it would be impossible.

The hundreds of hours of work.

The dust.

The chips.

The days when I didn't feel like leaving the house to keep building.

And yet, he went out.

Because I knew no-one was going to do it for me.

It was then that an idea was born that still stays with me today.

If someone else has been able to do it, why shouldn't you be able to achieve it?

The first booking

I arrived home that very same day.

I told my family.

And I published the first listing on Yescapa.

At that time LSR365 it didn't exist yet.

The website would arrive several months later.

Only two days later I received the first booking.

It was a family with two children.

At first we communicated in English.

However, in the middle of the conversation, we discovered by chance that we both spoke Russian.

And there was another curious coincidence.

They lived very close to my house, in Torrevieja.

So it wasn't necessary to travel to Alicante airport.

They were hiring a motorhome for the first time.

And it was the first time I was renting it.

We were both living a completely new experience.

I confess that I was more nervous about whether they would like the motorhome than anything else.

Up to that moment I had practically not used it.

I didn't know how a family would react during a royal holiday.

When they returned, everything went much better than I expected.

They loved the experience.

I got my first positive review.

And it was then that I realised something very important.

It wasn't only me who liked it.

Other people liked it too.

Afterwards, new bookings arrived.

Then the first Spanish customers arrived.

And with them came more positive feedback.

Then I realised that the first assessment hadn't been a matter of luck.

Thus began the story of LSR365

When I received the paperwork, I realised that I had managed to build a motorhome.

When the first booking arrived, I understood that I had just built something much more important.

That was how the story of began LSR365.

If you have arrived directly at this chapter, I recommend starting with the complete history of how LSR365 was born, where you will find all the stages of this diary in chronological order.

If you want to see the motorhomes that were born thanks to this entire project, you can visit the LSR365 home page.

And in the next chapter I will tell what the first rental season was like, from August to December 2025: the first customers, the first reviews, the first problems and all the lessons I learned during those first months of activity.