165 wagon

[saintjohn]

Hi all, ok the rear of the car is just about complete now we are onto the floor and front sections and a repair onto the left gutter section regards John

[john h]

Loving this!

[saintjohn]

All the gutters are now on just need a bit of dressing up.Next we are onto the windscreen sections and firewall.Getting there regards to all John

[saintjohn]

Hi all, we are now onto the front windscreen section. Brought the new mould clips from Brook house but the problem is that you require something for them to clip into, but l must admit l have seen cars in Australia were there is'nt even a panel for the screen to sit in, so i'm reasonably lucky.
Max [the panel beater] looked at what i needed, umed and ard and thought he could make up some inserts, cut out the old ones and weld in his fabricated ones which you would have to say have worked a treat [maybe we should go in to production with them].
It just goes to show you can never have enough tools regards John

[laptoprob]

won't metal clips create exactly the same rust problem as the original construction?

[saintjohn]

Fair enough question and l suppose my answer would be the original ones have been there for almost 40 years and im only repairing them now, and with the way primers and anti rust procedures are now l would hope that these will last another 40 years.
As lm restoring this car to near enough factory, l dont want to have to take short cuts and be glueing the chrome moulds in, it then makes it a pain in the butt to take them off again if l ever have to do a windscreen. regards John

[saintjohn]

Ok the windscreen clips are now all in place, primed and cleaned now we move onto the fresh air intake panel. The rubber seal channel has almost disappeared with rust, so we are repairing the base and obtaining new channel through Volvo, yes they are availiable.
Its just as well we took this panel off because i reckon we took out 3 kg of sandblasting material as well as leaves and other assorted who knows what out of the cavity, and unblocked the drainage system.
We will prime and paint this area because once its all back together it will be impossible to do this.
I had a visit from one of your country men who has been following this topic and was in Australia for a visit so he called in for a chat and photos.
Regards to all John

[MikeMS]

As said countryman, I did indeed visit John's Volvo garage with my son as we were in Melbourne and he was only just down the road.

John made me feel welcome and showed us around his garage with some interesting vehicles in it and outside. It seems odd seeing 140s with air con. Not something I have ever seen in the UK. He also very kindly gave me a book on Volvos in Australia.

All the best with the rebuild.

Kind regards,

Mike MS

[FredrikNyblad]

Hi!
Forgive me if I´m stealing this thread! But one of my purposes by writing this is to get in contact with yon, Saintjohn. If a moderator sees this post and would be kind to allow me to send pm:s I would highly apreciate it!
To make a long story short: I´m a swedish automotive journalist and I have written several articles about Volvo 165 - the car that doesn´t really exist (including the wikipedia-article that someone quoted earlier). I write for a classic car magazine called Klassiker (www.klassiker.nu) and in our publishing house we also have the biggest car magazine for new cars in Sweden, Vi Bilägare. In 1972 Vi Bilägare published a small article about a Volvo 165 built by Yngve Nilssons Karosserifabrik in the soutern city of Laholm (they normally make hearses, ambulances and limousines). Three years ago I found the pictures from that article in our arcive. I soon found out that the car still existed, but it had been resting in barn for 20 years. One year ago I was able to buy the car and like the very special car in Australia it is now undergoing a big restoration, currently it is in the paint shop.
The specification of my 165 was quite special. It had a sun roof, jaeger instruments, roof rails, from the inside adjustable rear mirror (from BMW) and had a door covering the fuel cap, custom built stainless trim and black leather interior. All this on a car that was brand new 1972.
I think the australin built 165 is the moust intresting 165 there is, and if the car that rumour has it was built in South Africa and South America(?) exist they would also be very interesting. A designer at Volvo has confirmed to me that Volvo in Gothenburg actually built one or two 165:s - just because they could. But the cars where suppousedly scrapped and not saved or sold on. When I realised that the australian-built 165 existed and was undergoing a restoriation my heart jumped! This is fantastic! And I hope that saintjohn could get in touch with me!

Here you can se a video from last winter when I got to test drive my 165, since then the car has been torn apart totally:

http://www.klassiker.nu/video/projek...ovkorning-1793

/Fredrik

[foggyjames]

Interesting! It looks like it has these instruments in the video...
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...c00683jfv.jpg/
...or are they different again? Even those factory accessory ones are extremely rare!

Regarding PMs...just pop a post in here: http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=99800

cheers

James