144 (Jane) off to the restorer's on Monday for surgery!
 

So on Monday my project 144 finally goes off the restorers for her body work and respray! Should take about a fortnight according to the guys.

After getting her running and then getting almost everything working (see my list of posts below) we have spent the last week stripping as much as we can off her. We can't take everything off as we need to be able to drive her to the restorers, though that is only about 3 miles away on some nice lanes.
I have obtained a load of metal work from Amazon Cars, sills and inner and outer rear arch sheet metal and drivers door.
Anyway after stripping her down we have found a few nice rusty patches that were previously hidden.
So I thought I would upload some pictures of her as she is now so you can see how she progresses. (The restorers have promised me a load of pictures of the restoration)

good luck we are 6 months into our Gracies restro and now counting days till we get her back

Ok, so the restoration is taking longer than was first hoped. The retorers seem to be swamped with VW camper vans at the moment! Well anyway I have been told that the Welding will be done by Thursday next week, which should be good.
However the bad news is that the two bulges visible on the inside of the wheel arches turned out to be holes the size of tennis balls. Most unfortunate! Oh well in for a penny in for a couple of grand! :-) Looking forward to having her back though!

That all looks very familiar to me!

This page shows very similar rear wheelarch rust on my 164 and the repair process I used

http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showth...t=60815&page=5

Make sure you get photos and post them up!!

Good luck with it

John


Edit, actually I just realised that the VOC thread omits the repair process - I must have lost an update. It can be seen towards the bottom of this page:
http://retrorides.proboards.com/inde...d=58505&page=1

Hi John, that is identical rust to mine, we had no idea it was so bad as the inside of the wheel arch felt so solid! Well we are going up on Thursday to take pictures, though the restorer has promised that he will give us a stack of photos of the progress so I am pretty confident that we will get a proper repair job.

We have also decided to fit new carpets to her, my mum is fairly confident that using the old ones as a pattern that she can cut and fit them properly. That and all the sound deadening that we are having shipped from America should make her a lot quieter ride!

Not sure what I am going to do before she comes back though, seriously running out of little jobs to do on the parts that I have left!

Just remember the most important part of any restoration is finding and dealing with the water that is getting in the car. If you don't stop the water getting in it will fall to bits in no time. You don't want to be going through that again

Hi Guys,
Went up to see the car today! They have got it in the workshop and seem to be progressing well on it! Apparently it has caused quite a bit of interest as people have seen it in the workshop. I can only assume that is a good thing! :-)

So the good news is that there is no problem with the windscreen, the chrome wasn't hiding anything nasty at all. Looks like the only place water was getting in was on the rear quarter light (hopefully some good sealent should solve this as New rubbers aren't available) and a hole in the offside wheel arch.

The bad news is that I have had to get a new near side wing!
I could have got one from Brookhouse at a not too expensive price but I would have to have waited 10 days, not ideal as it is being worked on now. So I have had to go with Amazon cars which was quite a bit more expensive but it can be with me by Tuesday! (I should say that Amazon Cars did have used wings available at a cheaper price)

Anyway enough of the good and bad news.. here is the exciting bits - The photos.
They should all be self explanatory, I only wish I had taken a few more! :-)

Popped into the restorers today to give them the new front wing. And thought I would take a couple more pictures.
Looks like the rust in the rear wheel arch was more serious than we first thought! In their hunt for good metal they seem to have created quite a hole!

know the feeling i popped in yesterday to see gracie and at the moment we are on the last few weeks and it feels like months, have just updated our post

Yeah, there is always more rust than you think. At least they are cutting it back to ensure they have dood metal to join to, which is the right thing to do of course.

Your first photo shows clearly why the wheelarces rust. Any water inside the boot (e.g. leaks, or just surface condensation in cold weather) runs down the inside of the wing and the inner wheelarch and collects in between the 2 layers of metal at the wheelarch rim. And makes it rust!

When all your painting is done, it's vital to get plenty of rust proofer down into that join (from inside the boot) to seal and protect it before any water can get there.

Also, ask them to clean off and inspect the seams at the back of the wheelarch, visible at the bottom left corner of your first photo. On mine there was hidden rust there when I chipped the underseal off.

John