So we’re actually making progress! Not only had we dug the 144 out of the corner, but we’d actually started some work on it! Mark, whose car it is and I started to figure out what we wanted to end up with. We share a workshop, together with a couple of other people and we have a healthy choice of parts accumulated over years.
The interior in the car isn't terrible, as they go, but the seats date from the era where Volvo seemingly started to make their "Vinyl" out of re-cycled vitamin C reinforced with banana skin fibres. Added to which the car had a horrid wooden dash kit fitted to it. Nasty, nasty, nasty!
Some of the spec was determined by decisions made years earlier, we had the engine and gearbox, we had the exhaust, and we had the springs and shocks. We decided it wouldn't have standard wheels. Armin, a Volvo nut in Germany happened to come up with a set of 5,5J Kronprinz. And since I happened to be in Stockholm that seemed to me an ideal opportunity to nip off past Berlin on the way back to Calais
It's less than a 400 mile detour and the 940 likes a little run on an Autobahn!
I took the bridge from Malmo to Copenhagen, and the followed the E20 across Denmark turning left to head towards Hamburg.
I made Berlin in good time and here is the 940 sitting outside Armin’s place in the old East Berlin. You always know you’re in the East once you spot a Karl Marx Strasse or you get off the beaten track and the streets are still cobbled.
Once back from Germany it was time to crack on with finding parts. The first decision was to fit a 164 interior. The one we found is less than perfect and will require some TLC, unless someone has some bits of perfect maroon interior kicking about? We’ll also make it some new maroon carpets, the ones it has are bright red and won’t look right.
We also decided we’d change the instruments and the steering wheel.
Meanwhile the body progressed nicely, and was painted in its original grey. It was painted with all the glass out and the panels off. We drew the line though at pulling the engine and just painted the front of the engine compartment. We did paint the inside of the boot as well as the door shuts.
The bonnet hinge repair came out nicely.
The 940 was looking on in the background, it keeps grumbling it isn’t fair the 140 gets painted at less than 100K miles and that its bonnet needs doing after 220K hard miles; it isn’t wrong but I’m not listening!