Some small items still to do, but almost finished. Distributor painted and new seal and upgraded with a hot spark, new leads, cap and new spark plugs, new fuel pump, rear and front crank seals replaced, new waterpump and seals, new freeze plugs, thermostat, engine mount bushings, oil filter, valve cover seal. Also checked oil pump sprocket play and bypass spring length which are good. Sand blasted inlet and exhaust manifolds and painted the latter. Ordered wrong gasket for a B18, mine is a B20 so I need a different one. And also replaced some manifold studs. The engine was in good shape, no weird noises, good healthy compression and leakdown tests and no oil usage so left the engine internals as is.

Now busy with the Weber (38 DGMS), cleaned it with the ultrasonic cleaner, checked everything and rebuild. Still a bit in doubt, but possibly I’m going to switch back to the dual SU HS6 set-up. If that is no good I can always switch back to the Weber.

And also got the transmission, M41 + OD, on the workbench for a good cleanup, new oil and some gaskets. It was overhauled when it was with the previous owner, so I hope this will be a quick and easy job. This is the original transmission as delivered from the factory. Engine has been replaced by a B20 so unfortunately no complete matching numbers.

As the bodywork of the car has nearly been finished, I got the car back home in my own shed again after some two years at the metalshop. Finally made a proper restoration stand to move the car around easier and prepare for the door reskinning. I bought a new 380v Mig mag welding machine, a Lorch M222.

Got the car home again

New stand

Started with reskinning the doors.

The front suspension is assembled. I also started with the calipers for cleaning and painting, but the pistons are stuck, so I need to sort that out.

Now starting with rebuilding the rear diff. I’ve allready painted the axle, but I’m not completely satisfied with the result so possibly I’l do it again.

Taillight, window frames and some other small damages repaired.

Front window frame.

It has been a while, but since my last post the car has been sandblasted and work started on the body.

We went to the Volvo Beurs in Rosmalen, so nice to see some beautiful Volvo’s at this exhibition. Especially the P1800 / S / E / ES section, it was good for motivation to see some 1800’s in driving condition. Also, the parking lot was divided into sections, you had to park by type and parking was free if you’d have a Volvo!

Nice!

Looks exactly like my old Turbo!

As a preperation for the sandblaster, I am using a chemical paint stripper so the sandblaster has an easier job. It seems the car has accumulated 5 layers of paint over the years and some patches of filler. It is hard to remove all the filler with the paint stripper, so I will leave this for the sandblaster. I haven’t noticed any major repairs yet, so thats good news, but we’ll see how the car looks after sandblasting. I suspect there will be some minor repairs visible then. I’m also working on cleaning up and preparing for painting of some parts of the rear + forward suspension (sway bars and such) and some other small parts and pieces.

The whole process of restoring the car is going a bit slower than I expected it to be before I started. But it doesn’t matter much. I want it all to be done the right way, so, if it’s gonna take more time, so be it. I hope the car is painted and back in my garage spring 2015. Rebuidling the car probably will be much more fun than scraping tectyl or working with paint stripper.

Started cleaning the lower side of the body with a heat blower it comes off oke, but it’s time consuming and messy.

This took about 30 mins, I did some more but still lots to do.

I placed the car in the restoration stand and it works. It´s a very basic rotisserie and it was originally built to fit an Amazon, but a 1800S is almost the same so it was an almost direct fit. The car is now back on its wheels again because the stand needs to be strengthened.

Just enough ground clearance.