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1971 145 Express Competition Service Rally Car Restoration Project

Awesome project; I remember that R&T article from back in the day. Great that you have provenance on the car and are rescuing it!
 
jack said:
More!
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Things have slowed down due to the weather getting quite cold and the likelihood of another move. I'm also still waiting for some brake parts to come in. The good news is that I've negotiated the absence of a large garage as a deal-breaker for any new place we move to. Once that happens, I anticipate the project really taking off.
 
Can you please take better pictures of the temp gauges in the center. I'm looking for some like that if you got extras

Extra space fills up quickly at my house and garage
 
Sir,

Wow, what a terrific story! I have heard about this particular Express, certainly in print, but was this that car that was rumored to be languishing behind a NJ gas station for many years? I don't think that there are more than 3 or 4 of the Express models in North America. Do you know of any others? I happen to have one: It is a 1971 145S Express Panel, in Volvo Service Vehicle Blue. The Volvo Club of British Columbia had the car for many years, and I purchased the car in the summer of 2012. Here is the link to the VCBC write-up. http://www.volvoclubofbc.com/articles/VCBC 145 Express ad 06262012.pdf
Please note that the car is NO LONGER for sale.

What year is your car? It has the 73-74 grill, but the 67-71 door handles and dash, and the 72- remote shifter. Also missing is the steel bulkhead and wire mesh cargo screen! Did your car come with a bulkhead/screen in the parts stash? Is their a folding rear bench seat? These cars came in either panel of glazed form.. the fully glazed cars had with or without a folding backseat, as per the standard 145. Particularly intriguing to me are the interior cargo panels.. do you have a sense if those came from the factory or if they were custom-made for this car? There is very little literature published on the Express.. at least that I can find.

FYI Goldline Brakes in Seattle, WA does a first class job for caliper refurbishment. John has been in the business for many years, and really knows his stuff. The pistons and seals in Volvo 1800/140/240 calipers were widely used and readily available. Plan on about $100 per caliper for a comprehensive ground-up rebuild, plus about $40 more for a high-temp coating if desired. He's done three sets of calipers for me so far with excellent results.. ie, extremely even stopping power. New hoses are a must.. and on and on..... Supposedly John can rebuild brake boosters as well.

VP Auto Parts (Fristad, Sweden, Charleston SC) is a great source of repro sheet metal as well as a heck of a lot of other stuff or the 140 series. They even had a repro tailgate weatherstip seal for the Express. or ordered one and they had it in stock.

Did your car come with a rear-window defroster? If not, I think I still have a clear glass rear window with no defroster lines.. these are rather hard to find because I think defrosters were standard from 1969-on. Of course it would be easy to simply put a defroster-equipped rear glass in place and call it a day.

Feel free to send me a PM with questions about my Express.. My car was used heavily but remains and very original (except for Bilstiens, a pertronix ignition and wider 164e wheels) I'm happy to supply photos, etc for restoration guidelines should you need them. The Express is standard 145 throughout the floor pan, the exception being the cargo bulkhead attachment points. I haven't had the headliner down, so I cannot speak to the interior roof structure. The car had been put back into duty as a parts hauler-general purpose utility vehicle. It has been particularly handy for the restoration of my 87 245glt and 72 1800es. I've even had some compliments in parking lots and gas stations, though most people don't have a clue as to what it is when it passes them, except for that it is very tall and boxy..... haha.

Do keep us all informed as you make progress.

Cheers, BCMac
 
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For anyone wondering, this is why there has been little movement in the last 3 months:

 
83glt said:
Some updates:
I picked up this little spot blaster from Harbor Freight. It's cheap, but does the trick pretty well. I'll be using it to restore smaller rusted parts off the car. Here I'm starting with the roll bar that had some pretty bad rust at the base. You can see that this little blaster does a good job. I'm just using a little compressor here as well. Hope to find a vintage monster cast iron made in USA compressor at some point:

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LOL at first glance, I thought you were installing some kind of toilet to go with the shower! :lol:

Good luck with the resto.
She's rusty but not as rusty as my '83 flathood. :oops:

History is awesome!
 
Haven't really been wondering much since I know you guys are getting dumped on every two weeks and the average temp in the tri state has been 30 degrees. Sounds like an average Canadian winter...
 
Front View

Here's another old photo of the Express - a head on shot - out of an old Clymer Volvo 240 Repair manual:



Hope to be moving at the end of the month to a new place with a large garage space/workshop. Details to follow. Still only creeping into the 50s here, and wet. So having an indoor workspace will change everything.
 
What's up Jason! How are ya! You coming to Carsile, at least with the 245? It would at the least be a good place to sell all those parts and make some project money for this thing!
 
OK. So the move to the new place has occurred. Finally, a nice dry indoor home and proper shop for the Express! It's not a separate barn/workshop which was my first choice, but the split garage and 12ft. ceilings will facilitate plenty of storage and eventually a lift! The Express will be put in the left bay which is wired for 220v, and the right bay will be for working on parts that are taken off the car - blast cabinet, tool storage, etc. The pictures were pre-delivery - the Express is now housed in the left bay. Once we're fully settled, I hope work will proceed without delay. The plan is to pull the drive train and continue stripping the car down to a shell to continue the rust repair/body work.

Rusty's new home:



Right bay:


Left bay:


For comparison purposes, this was Rusty's old home - every moderate rain would flood the driveway - which I don't think was helping the rust any:

 
83glt said:
Some more progress to report. I finished stripping the paint from the fuel tank bay. Then I sand blasted with the spot blaster to get all the rust out of there. I highly recommend this Harbor Freight spot blaster for small jobs like this where you need to work in close quarters and blast rust out of tight corners. It worked well. Here are some pics of the prime/paint and fuel tank install. This is an early tank with the smaller fuel sender, but I'll use it for now. Eventually I'll probably swap back to the correct later tank with the larger sender. In many ways, this was really a practice run at some of the body work that lies ahead.



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Is this primer and paint? GL in the new place! Learn to weld yet?
 
nel621 said:
Is this primer and paint? GL in the new place! Learn to weld yet?
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Yes, I primed using a self-etch primer that I had on hand and sprayed a few coats of silver that I had made up by a body shop a couple years ago. It came out looking really good, but it may be redone at some point now that I can really go at the car.
 
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