Reviving a barn find P1800ES

[P1800 ES]

Thought I'd start a thread on here to document my latest project. The car is a 1972 P1800ES that's been sat untouched in a garage for 20+ years.

It belonged to an old friend who realised he's never going to do anything with it and after some gentle persuasion passed the baton on to me.

This car is 100% complete and the bodywork and interior (albeit filthy dirty) is in fantastic shape. However, mechanically it needs A LOT of work. I plan to take my time over this project and I'll use this thread to post updates as they happen.

This weekend we managed to roll it and inspect it further. Even though it was left with the parking brake off it took 4 of us to rock it about and crack it free so that we could roll it out into the daylight.

I have never seen one on the metal before, in fact, I never knew these existed until now so I am completely naive to these cars. I have totally fallen for it's glorious looks, it's super retro styling and interior, the hefty 50 year old Swedish engineering and the wafty soft suspension that should make for a hilarious driving experience.

Here it is as we found it.



And after we managed to roll it out of the garage.







So, there are plenty of good points about this car....

The bodywork is in top shape and should clean up very well. I have had a good look around and underneath and there's no rust other than some very minor surface blemishes on the front wings. The interior is also in very good order, totally complete and with a little love should look fantastic.

The car also comes with lots of spares including a new rear boot glass and even a genuine Volvo workshop manual.

However, there's a lot that's not good and largely a consequence of being parked and untouched for 20+ years, so essentially this is a recommissioning project rather than a restoration.

The brakes are seriously pitted and need a complete overhaul. I got a borescope in the petrol tank and the fuel is jellied and the tank rusted from the inside out, so it's going to need an entirely new fuel system.

It has the Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection system. Whilst that's a good thing, I'm slightly dreading having to diagnose this if it's at fault.

I plan to be methodical and steady about recommissioning the old beast, so the first thing we did was pull the plugs and spray some Marvel Mystery Oil into the cylinders.

Next plan is to give it a proper clean up and then we'll move on to the fuel system, working our way forward to the ignition system and eventually attempting to fire it up.

After that it'll need tyres, shocks, coolant system overhaul and who knows what else?

There's plenty to do, but Autumn is fast approaching so I won't be able to do much mechanical work this year, but I'll be sure to update this as I go.