Volvo 1800ES: Engineering a Resurrection

The floors really dont look that bad! Hatch on the other hand is going to be a stone cold cast iron motherberkeleyer to fix.

Wow!   That hatch area looks worse than on my car. That's impressive. Unfortunately, that is definitely a parts-car piece or just pure scratch fabrication. Nothing on the CVI website.  

The floors look better than my car, but probably will require the same amount of sheet metal.

The soft sills probably mean it'll all have to be replaced due to the layered construction. The sills typically rust from the inside-out. By the time you see rust on the outside, the inner panels are mostly gone.

What due the jacking struts look like?

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

In reply to Ian F :

Yep, stone cold and pretty far gone.  I'm thinking this will be a good chance to try some sheet metal fab.  This car needs so much sheet metal any parts car that might donate a piece for it is likely in better shape.  Unless it was hit in the front or something similarly evil.

The floors are pretty Kronchy, pics don't really do it justice.  Jacking pads under the front floor are toast; luckily those aren't hard to fab.  I've done them before on 122's  Interestingly, the inner sills (which I can see, unfortunately) are less rotten.  I think I can piece it together.  It's just gonna require a plywood-sized sheet of 16 or 18 gauge steel and some time with my two buddies, Eastwood and Lincoln.  

Any chance of flares and wide wheels?  I always felt these would look excellent that way.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I am still kicking myself for passing on a clean rear ES section from a wrecked car that the previous owner of Foreign Autotech had at his place in PA less than an hour from me before he sold everything to Mike Dudek in CA. $800 and probably would have saved me at least 2x that amount in sheet metal bits.  My car has a good amount of nose-rot as well, but I found a fairly clean nose section at Carlisle for $300 a few years ago.  I'm always keeping my eyes open for parts and jump on them when I can. Unfortunately, the pickings at Carlisle have been pretty slim for the past few years.

I've seen windshield lips fabricated using shrinker/stretchers, so I'm guessing the hatch lip will be similar.  Personally, I've been day-dreaming of ways to design that lip in such a way that it doesn't hold water so much.  I am also assuming that the windshield lip will also need some loving once the glass is pulled.

Be careful when removing the rear side glass. While the glass itself can be found from the "usual suspects", what is really tough nowadays is that gasket.  May as well be made from solidified unicorn blood. Pulling all of the glass will probably be one of my first tasks when I can finally start working on the car. 

More growl than bite to this dog. Just don't show your fear.

A shrinker/stretcher and  a sheet metal break will let you rebuild the lip easy enough. From there it is just welding tin. I would do it in three pieces: Both sides and the bottom, then weld the parts.

I can see where I would get it right after about the third attempt to form the parts.

If I had to make it from one piece of tin, I would make a hammer form from solid bar stock of aluminum ( cause I can cut it with the wood bandsaw) and bend it into the shape of the channel.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Yeah, I was thinking multiple pieces would be the way to go.  Same with the floors.  

If you are doing sill work, this might help: I did a quick tutorial on Sweedspeed with a few pics showing the work and a few tricky bits.

I found one factory sill and made the PS one from a sheet of tin. Was easy enough once I convinced myself that I had no choice.

https://forums.swedespeed.com/showthread.php?327681-Sill-replacement-Easy-for-the-most-part

PS with the home-made sill

https://forums.swedespeed.com/showthread.php?333649-No-Sill-Panel-No-Problem&highlight=sill+problem

In reply to NOHOME :

Your work looks great.    By the way, you mentioned at one point a fellow "Dimitri".  I am wondering if this is the same fellow I know....he's Greek, a Volvo nut, and a bit of a....well, he's got some opinions on some things.  We'll just say.  

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to NOHOME :

Your work looks great.    By the way, you mentioned at one point a fellow "Dimitri".  I am wondering if this is the same fellow I know....he's Greek, a Volvo nut, and a bit of a....well, he's got some opinions on some things.  We'll just say.  

I like Dimitri for what he stands for.  I dont agree with all of it, but I do understand and respect it.

Can't be two of those around, so must be him....Is he still around? He went silent on the forum a while back and in the case of us old timers I always worry about health.

Pete

i'd fill that hatch with great stuff, rough it down with a cheese grater, smooth it a bit more, and use that as a plug for a FG mold.  but i'm a berkeleying hack.

I’m just starting my first build and wondering if y’all had any recommendations for engine, trans, etc. Its a 1978 gmc caballero diablo that I’m wanting to turn into a street legal drag car. 

Walker

NOHOME said:

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to NOHOME :

Your work looks great.    By the way, you mentioned at one point a fellow "Dimitri".  I am wondering if this is the same fellow I know....he's Greek, a Volvo nut, and a bit of a....well, he's got some opinions on some things.  We'll just say.  

I like Dimitri for what he stands for.  I dont agree with all of it, but I do understand and respect it.

Can't be two of those around, so must be him....Is he still around? He went silent on the forum a while back and in the case of us old timers I always worry about health.

Pete

Yes, I email Dimitri (or D^2 as I refer to him...his last name starts with 'D') almost daily.  Agreed with your assessment.  He's very opinionated (on cars, politics, you name it), but also quite smart.  He's also a PhD Mechanical Engineer (as opposed to myself, who only has a Masters in it) so he's good to bounce ideas off of.  

I think he's maybe 5 or 10 years older than me, so I wouldn't call him an old-timer.  

Walkergrube said:

I’m just starting my first build and wondering if y’all had any recommendations for engine, trans, etc. Its a 1978 gmc caballero diablo that I’m wanting to turn into a street legal drag car. 

 

Walker

Welcome! Youve found a pretty good corner of the internet here. 

We can DEFINITELY help. Id suggest starting a new thread in the grassroots motorsports main forum  as tgat gets a lot more traffic and different eyes than the build threads .particularly a volvo thread in the build threads. 

When a garage spot opens up here at the Tunachucker Homestead, it's best to take it.  My '66 Jag was residing comfortably under it's carport, fully (or, at least, sufficiently) operational, the Plymford is a runner, and the Corvair was nestled happily in it's own shed, under a cover.  So I snuck the ES into the work area.  

And decided to take some better pictures of it, since I'd just gotten a new phone.

While the front seats seem to have been devoured by jackals and then converted into a rat's den, the rear seat was pristine.  I took out the bottom cushions and tucked them away safely.  

Door cards aren't too terrible, either.

Decided to finish taking out the seats, so I could rip out all the nasty carpeting.  And found this under the passenger seat.

Seats out!

The passenger floor was a bit crustier than the driver's side.

But luckily, my helpers don't weigh very much.

I was just looking at my pile of unused Volvo parts. Kinda sad I boogered up that project. Need an M40 with an 1800 shifter?

Don't you have a Jensen bodied car out on the farm? Terrible idea here, cut the roof off your ES and weld it onto a Jensen car to build a P1800ES.

There is a lot of rust on the outer panels, but other than the lower- rear of the tailgate, how significant is it?  Clean and treat or is there a lot of panelwork to be done?

I hear you on the condition of the rear seats; they were brand new looking when I ripped the Molvo apart, and the fact that I could not give them away tells me how useful they really are in real life. So I feel less bad about having lost the rear seats as a "Feature" in the Molvo.

Pete

I have never seen an ES that didn't have pristine rear seats, including my own car. 

The optimism in this thread is staggering. I love you guys. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Volvo only built a little over 8000 copies of the 1800ES.  The rough guesstimate in the 1800 community is maybe 25% survive. Probably less.  I am of the opinion that as long as a car is reasonably straight, then it should be saved.  

In reply to Ian F :

Funny...I am aware of that low number, and yet I can account for 6 complete( ish) cars in a 20 mile zone from my house. Not counting the one I cut up after harvesting parts. And I assure you, the last thing London Ontario would be considered is an automotive Mecca of any sort. Go figure. They also come up pretty regular on Bring A Trailer.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Yeah...and as I said earlier, this is the 4th one to pass through my hands.  Odd.  

buzzboy said:

I was just looking at my pile of unused Volvo parts. Kinda sad I boogered up that project. Need an M40 with an 1800 shifter?

Don't you have a Jensen bodied car out on the farm? Terrible idea here, cut the roof off your ES and weld it onto a Jensen car to build a P1800ES.

This is the only 1800 I have currently.  I had a '68 that I parted out a year or two back, it was more iron oxide than metal.  I have an M40 with an 1800 shifter in my shed, too (because of course I do).

I also have the roof structure from a PV544.  I've wondered how that would look grafted onto an 1800S.  

NOHOME said:

There is a lot of rust on the outer panels, but other than the lower- rear of the tailgate, how significant is it?  Clean and treat or is there a lot of panelwork to be done?

Pete

The rockers and floors are pretty swiss-cheezy.  Behind all four wheels is pretty rough, too.  And there's some rust in other odd places.  I'm not lagging too far behind in these posts (unlike the Plymford where I was done with the project before I ever posted it here!) so in a few days I'll share some more pictures of the teardown.  

I am suspicious that the survival rate for these cars is rather better than 25%. We all new they were extra special when Volvo discontinued production, so a lot more got saved than most cars.