Mike K? ruin another volvo. 945 pickup build

Is it too late to suggest Bertone doors?

M.H. Yount said:

Really coming along nicely. One thought -- that's a large piece of class sitting lower/closer to loads in the bed than it would in a pickup. A pickup would have the forward wall of the bed to help keep loads away from the back of the cab. You might wanna think about how you protect that glass from a load in the bed that might accidentally move forward under braking.

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We're going to have some kind of removable frame behind the glass tailgate to pull the bike against. Can't pull it against the aluminum panel, for the reasons you stated on the glass, plus the aluminum won't take much either. It will have to be removable because we both like the opening up idea.

The alternative is to make a steel lower section, that doesn't move, and just have the glass swing up, but then you don't get a working rear wiper.

All 7/9 wagons had alu hatches.

We need a donor car or a scrap car that we can cut some of the pieces we need.
Have had offers come in, but nothing local - trying to keep it to +/-2 hours of the Hartford/Springfield area.

Anyone have, or know of a 745 or 945 parts car kicking around?

https://boston.craigslist.org/nos/cto/6013673097.html < 960 with a blown head gasket listed for $1k. Looks beat up enough to not be missed.

https://providence.craigslist.org/cto/5980753117.html no pictures, could be a sedan, has been listed for a month. $375.

did a little digging on "bed extenders"



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j28STMhY13Y







I like this one the best for simplicity and picture the rear wheel nestling in the gap

Nissan had a factory one that could probably be adapted.

Billy that last picture you posted was way too small

That's the Canine's cajones ...............

I went through a phase of chopping down Citroen CX estates. Nobody wanted them, so when I wanted a newer model - I could never sell the old one !

But I DID need pick ups ........ all my conversions [ 4 in all ] were 2 seaters as I needed the bed length [ over 6ft. ] for my bikes. And the bonus was - I could always sell the pick ups on as very fast [ and comfortable ] bike transporters !

Here is "La Peek Erp" Mk2

And here I thought Citroen's couldn't be any weirder. In a good way.

Great 940 wagon-truck! Love the work. Keep up the momentum!

Is that Citroen stretched or were they really that long?!

Took some vacation and working a much more demanding job these days (good for bank account, bad for projects) so had some gaps in progress, but we're still moving. Jesus is it March?! Senior's been digging into the research on bodywork plans and handing off some shopping lists.

I spent a night grinding welds, doors came out good and basically ready to try our hand a the lead work. Also time to cut the door handle recesses out and make a filler panel.



Also did some tying of the inner door frame to the body, just trying to get everything tied together as much as possible.



We do have at least half an idea for the tailgate. Will talk more about it when we've got some parts and some thought time into it with the car. A friend at work drew up the 'bed rails', the top for the tail gate, and some sheet metal for the rear of the cab/hatch area. This will be bent up by a shop - hopefully soon!



Also bought a bunch of square tube lengths for framing out the rear cab area, bed frame, etc.



Besides getting the bed rails bent the biggest thing needed was another car. I was hunting around and pretty close to driving out to NY for a car when Okoye showed up with this supa cheap 93 945 wagon with straight metal out back, worked out perfect and I even drove it home!



Drew all over it and spent an evening doing another strip and cut. I'll mention that I had the big rear glass sections on the roof and they fell off the car onto the garage floor while I was attacking the body with the sawz-all and they didn't break... lucky shot.



aaand it's ruined



Basically took two big chunks out of the back for the complete d-pillar sections then big dog-legs off the quarter panel and c-pillar. Needed these pieces so we could build the window frame for my new rear quarter windows. If you look around you'll see a lot of people just put in big metal sail panels which imo looks pretty unfinished and also, I imagine, would suck for visibility from the driver seat.



so idea was to slice off that piece of window channel, and keep the 'nail heads' because we'd like to try and modify/adapt original window trim. In order to turn the top of the rear door into a window frame we had to flatten out the old window channel



laid one strip on top of the door, then used a filler piece to make up the corner section.





It worked out very well. Should have a nice flat plane to glue a lexan window in then get creative with trim to make it look like it belongs there.



Easy to summarize but the time goes quick eyeing, measuring, marking, cutting, rinse repeat until it fits, welding trimming grinding... then have to do it again on the other side! It's a lot of work, but enjoyable. So far everything has gone along well. Obviously the "d-pillar" was cut shorter on the original car cut, so we'll use the silver car d-pillar to kind of fill the gap and drop down into the bed and finish the rear of the cab.

Because the wagons have a slight inward taper at the tail we're going to take the outer skin of the d-pillar, slice it, and somehow pull it out towards the edge of the door/body line. This way the whole cab, front doors to rear of the cab, are in a continuous body line. It adds a fair amount of complexity and it's not something I've seen in most of the other builds online. But again it should help it look more 'finished' and less like a glued together cut job. Then we can bring my nice bent bed rails up and blend the two together to get a nice smooth transition. Will probably get into that next, but really need the bed rails in order to line it all up.

the new bike I bought two months ago has still yet to arrive so there's a chance by the time the damn bike shows up I'll be able to load it up in this thing at the dealer! . It's actually starting to feel a bit Spring-ish up here, which has me thinking about my 242. I've got a whole hydraulic clutch conversion/clutch swap and a decent list of things I wanted to do on that car for this season as well. Going to have to try and squeeze that in at some point pretty damn soon. Oh and both daily SAABs need attention.. phew, long on ideas short on time.

Oh by the way today is my 31st birthday and Senior's 61st birthday, we share a bday along with a fondness for Swedes. So happy birthday to us!

Birthday wishes to both! My dad was also 30 when I was born....

Very nice. I share 4/2 as a birthday with my dad as well.

Tom Wiley said:

Very nice. I share 4/2 as a birthday with my dad as well.

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There is something special about sharing a birthday.

I had/have an excellent relationship with my dad, very car oriented. I am truly blessed to share a birthday with my son, and have that same kind, or even better relationship.

Happy Birthday Mike!

Yes, they really are that long - 6'- 6" bed. They were probably the largest estate of the era and sadly missed.

All of the sheet metal for the bed should be cut and bent for next week. Have been trying to stay busy since...

I made pieces for the passenger side window frame and cut rear door handle recesses out. For the filler piece I used a piece of rear quarter panel from the silver car, since it has the same curve as the door. Filler piece was flanged and ended up working out well.





The d-pillar is narrower than the middle of the car, so the window frame was ~1/2" inside at the rear.



Cut two slices up either side of the d-pillar which allowed it to be pulled out so the window frame is square.





Have to make some quarter window templates.



Since we didn't have material this weekend to build with, we decided to start playing around with body stuff.



Did some stripping



Despite best efforts to control heat, all of the welding on the roof and door skins caused some warping. worked some bulging out of the drivers side with a pick hammer and a body dolly



Instead of just laying down some plastic filler, we decided we wanted to lead the panels to build up a solid base. Spent a lot of time watching youtube videos. It was an interesting learning experience. The first attempts at tinning didn't go well. Watched more videos and modified the technique a little bit and got it down. Most of it is all in controlling the heat.

roof all cleaned up with 40 grit on the DA and etched with phosphoric acid.



all tinned and ready for lead



Leading the roof was pretty easy because it's just a big flat surface we needed to fill up.



paddling it out. Again the roof was easy because you could just heat up a pool of the lead and push it around with it running anywhere. At the right temp it has a nice plasticky consistency that is really easy to work with.



It filed easier than expected. We're going to put a thin layer of short strand glass filler over the lead, so just had to make sure high spots were knocked down.





Here's a video of doing the roof

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TMYy8ce4g1Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Filled the low spots in the doors as well, and leaded all of the weld seams. Doors were a lot trickier, a little too much heat and the lead will pick up and run off quickly.

tinning:




built up material along the old door line where the welding had sucked it in.





more filing and shaping tomorrow.

I always wanted to try lead bodywork. I remember seeing the supplies in Eastwood catalogues and almost buying some when I was working on my 244, but of course I chickened out lol.

Looks good so far, and having seen yalls other projects, I have no doubt it's going to have a high standard of quality. Or at least a lot higher than most TB bog jobs lol

That's pretty bad ass. I'm enjoying watching this, and it seems like you guys are having a ball with it.

Seems like a lot of work. Also seems like the way to go to produce the best outcome.