PV544 Sport Ruddspeed bare shell restoration.

Once upon a time in a land far away a man took his camera to a dingy lock up in California and snapped some photos of a PV544 Sport. Then he took the film to a place where vats of chemical bubbled and he had the film processed and he sent them by post across the Atlantic and they were delivered and studied an speculated upon and a plan was hatched to go to a bank with an envelope full of cash so a wire transfer could be made to the man in that land far away because this was before Ebay and Paypal were invented.....

Equally You could argue the story started back in 1965 in a Swedish factory, a factory I fondly imagine was staffed by beautiful happy Swedish people. However for us it started when these grainy photographs arrived by post from California. That photo showed the lightly crashed derriere of a Volvo PV 544. A friend of mine decided that that was his own personal rear of the year. The object of his affection was a 1965 PV 544 Sport, in red, colour code 49 and before long he got it shipped over to the UK.

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Cali cars have no rust. IMPOSTOR!!!

So people would have me believe, and I fell for it

Anyhow, this thing got loaded onto a boat and shipped back to Yurp. not quite all the way to Sweden but here to the UK where a couple of mugs were anxiously waiting for it. The car doesn't actually belong to me; it belongs to Mark, a friend of mine, but I’ll be wielding the welding torch.

When it arrived we prodded it and poked it and decided it was a worthwhile candidate for restoration. We also realised it wasn’t viable to just get it running and put it back on the road without major work. The car presented us with an interesting dilemma because it cxloearly has a bit of history. There are loops in the floor for racing harnesses, there is a Santa Monica Sports Car Club rally badge on the glove compartment lid, and strangely of all it has a Ruddspeed head.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Ruddspeed cars but goodness only knows how a Ca;lifornia PV came by a head ported by a company in Worthing England. Ruddspeed did export, there are Healey 3000s in the US with Ruddspeed bits, and I once saw a Ruddspeed 123GT advertised in Canada but it’s a bit of a mystery.

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Mark, decided that he couldn’t be bothered to explain to his wife just why he’d acquired yet another car. So one day we snuck off to Ipswich to see our ship come in. We took along my trusty 265 and a trailer and dragged Mark’s prize back to the workshop.

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As is inevitable with these small omissions, he got found out. One fateful evening at a dinner party someone remarked they’d seen a car in Hemmings, but unfortunately it was in California. Mark started to explain how easy it was to ship a car, the costs involved, the duty that had to be paid and just as the story started to flow he was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder “which car is this then Mark”?

The secret was out, but the PV was no nearer to rolling on a British road. We did search out original parts and salted away for the day we’d finally get round to “do the work”. Other cars intervened, Fiats, Citroens and Volvo Amazons came and went while the PV was kept dry, safe and untouched while we searched out interesting new parts. Ten years later we’ve finally disinterred it from a nice dry hidey hole.

That thing looks awesome that low! Bring the front down...get wheels and your done! I love pv's and i will own one, one day! Good luck to you and mark. Any engine bay pics?

It's gutted right now, engine pictures are a fair way into the future. The car has an appointment with a very large tank of acid.......

Part of the reason it's that low at the back is because much of its engine resides on the back seat!

Ruddspeed? I haven't heard of them for decades; are they still alive in the UK?

No, Ken Rudd died a few years back. I believe someone has the rights to the name but it isn't a continuation of the company. It's an attempted revival. I think they were reproducing some of the big Healey parts. I quite like the Ruddspeed Volvos, although they have no real value over and above the standard cars. Their head porting was good. The head on the PV is intended for SUs, it runs slightly raised compression. The Weber heads were more skimmed, 11-1 I seem to remember.

Rudds later became an official Volvo dealer, but that isn't any longer alive either. They did all sorts of things, they built RHD Mustangs, they tuned Volvos and Healeys; interesting little company.

Anyway, the PV sat in the corner of the workshop, Mark had been found out but nothing much really happened. Every now and then we’d find a few parts and salt them away but we couldn’t figure out what to do with the damn thing. We kept looking at it but discoveries like the lack of brake internals on the front axle made us doubt the claims this car had been roadworthy!

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That Ruddspeed head was a dilemma, it is in all likelihood the only Ruddspeed PV and that was kind of fun; but it was not especially valuable. The original idea was to go the well travelled B20 route but that involved ditching the engine.

Many bacon sandwiches later we hatched a plan; a what if kind of scenario. What if Volvo had built a PV544 GT, what if some enthusiast had found a crashed 123GT in 1968 when the car was still young? We decided to make it conform to the standards of 1968, that would be our cut off date. Consequently no B20, but crucially it would give us disk brakes, alternator, LSD, overdrive, Recaro seat mechanisms, twin down pipe manifold.

Great idea but the car was still a slightly crashed rusty hulk with a defunct engine. It had sat in the workshop for damn near 10 years and it still honked of Patchouli oil; personally I think the smell would go away if we killed the grateful dead sticker in the back window with fire but for some inexplicable reason Mark likes that sticker. His solution was altogether more drastic. Save the grateful dead sticker but dunk the car in a very large vat of acid. He convinced me that only would it get rid of the smell of Patchouli but a welcome side effect would be that the rust got dissolved.

Before we did that we had to address the accident damage. The roof was perfect, the gutters straight as a die and we sat the car on a flat floor and measured, carefully, three times and found all the chassis legs to be in the right place. The boot floor was a different story so I set about straightening it. First I knocked out the worst damage and then I examined the boot floor.

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We’d managed to find a brand new, genuine Volvo rear valance so at least I had the correct panel to work with.

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Unfortunately there were some small kinks in the flutes but I can deal with those.

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I strapped the car down onto the trusty body dozer. The car is held by sill clamps linked by a tube and chained onto the dozer. I really don’t fancy the idea of doing this to a shell, the axle had to be on especially since I wanted to check all the geometry was spot on.

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The idea is to reverse the accident, no hammering because that can stretch the metal, just a gentle controlled pull to pop the pressing back in shape. These dozers are powerful enough to pull a car in half, breaking the spot welds so they have to be used with a tad of caution. In the right hands they’re an incredible tool. I can use one, my friend Dave is a master so I helped and learned a bit more. Once we were done every crinkle had gone. And I could start stripping the rest of the shell. Everything gets bagged and labelled, I list stuff that is missing or broken and I photograph details like shims on axle beams as an aide memoire.

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I stripped the car on my own so I rolled it onto the trailer and then lifted it with the engine crane to get the axles off it.

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Outside my house in the morning; ready to finally get rid of that damn Patchouli oil smell every nut bolt and washer removed. Anything that isn’t steel will be destroyed. I drilled drain holes everywhere so the shell can drain. This was a bit of a worrying moment. We started with a car, sort of, all that is now left are loose parts.

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Well, it’s back!

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We started with floors that I’d hoped I might get away with patching, but once the car came back from acid dipping each and every rust filled pin hole was revealed in all its glory.

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Is what we started with and it turned into this.

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On the other hand areas where PVs are prone to rotting, like the rear sweeps, the area under the rear seat

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and the sills (rockers in transatlantic English) are absolutely flawless. There are few flies in the ointment. There is some minor accident damage behind both doors, and in typical American 1960s panel beating practice they drilled holes and bondoed over it.

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I hate that practice but we can fix it. The rust on the scuttle we knew about, but I’ve now discovered why, I suspect a door blew open at some point and damaged the panel, more holes and bodgery are the result.

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Overall though we have wonderful nice straight shell; it has a perfect roof, perfect gutters, perfect sills and jacking points and perfect screen apertures.

Awesome.

Keep up the good work. Looks like this truly a full resto.

smokeyfan1000 said:

Keep up the good work. Looks like this truly a full resto.

Click to expand...

We've gone a bit nuts with this one. In part because the car sat for so long we gathered lots of new bits for it. All sorts of things are going on at once. Parts are off to be plated, we've even re cad plated stupid stuff like the ash trays

Pulleys, flanges and so on have also been re plated.

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Meanwhile we're still gathering parts, CVI have supplied a lot of stuff

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You are my hero. Very nice restoration plans. No half assing or corner cutting. Amazing sir subscribed to yiur excellency

I love these cars, cant wait to see this turn back into a car again.
Adam

Mine has an odd rusty spot right in front of the A-pillar as well. Must be some little cavity in the bodywork there.

I remember a Rudd Speed 122 (the canadian one you might be talking about) being for sale in Kelowna BC. I believe my dad went to look at it. It was a RHD car. I had pictures but they are long gone now.

Jordan

peeveeeeeeee!! is it staying LHD?

Sounds like it's got an interesting history.

Dr Dokeh said:

peeveeeeeeee!! is it staying LHD?

Sounds like it's got an interesting history.

Click to expand...

No such thing as a RHD PV apart from a couple of Duetts built as service vehicles for Australia; yup it's staying LHD.

We've tried to find its history with 0 success. What we do know is that

Reported OK 4 December 1964
Delivery date 28 December 1964
District Volvo of America Co, Carson, USA

We also know about the Santa Monica sports car Club badge from 1967 but we have no idea who owned it. Beyond that we have a dent, a smell of Patchouli oil and the roaches of a few hand rolled 'cigarettes' in the ash tray.....

I suspect it changed hands!