PROJECT VOLVO

After a deal of consideration (and a certain degree of apprehension) I have now replaced the rear panel on my Volvo amazon saloon. It turned out to be a little fiddly but not as difficult as I feared. This is how I went about it. My biggest concern was how taking the rear panel out would compromise the strength of the rear wings, leaving them vulnerable to being twisted or distorted. This was especially true of the n/s wing which has at present no point of attachment to the car along its lower edge. The rear panel is attached to the floor by a row of spot welds along the bottom lip. I drilled these out as best I could, although the original panel was quite badly corroded here and the spot welds were difficult to identify and drill accurately. Here and there the lip simply crumbled away. There are two points around each light cluster aperture at which the panel is butt welded... ...and the boot seal channel is lap welded in line with the horizontal seam. This needs to be ground out with...

Having removed the old spare wheel well (see previous post) I have made a start on a repair piece for the corroded chassis end. This should be fashioned out of 16 gauge to be reasonably true to original Volvo spec. I made a card template to cover the base and the missing edge/lip as a single piece. I intend to make and add side pieces once the main repair has been attached. Here is the initial cut panel which fits pretty well actually (reasonably happy with that). However, I though it prudent to move on to the fit-up of the new wheel well/floor panels before I actually welded it in place. I have therefore cleaned up the inside of the chassis box with wire brushes and treated it with Fertan rust converter.  Trial fitting the spare wheel well sections proved to be more complicated than I anticipated. I perhaps naively assumed that the new panels would simply drop into place but it seems that the main section of the wheel well needs some modification. Firstly, the leading front edge (...

I have been able to dedicate some time to the Volvo recently, continuing the work on the boot (trunk) floor, and I am making progress. You may remember from a previous post that a while ago I bought some repair sections including the spare wheel well; you may also recall that I was not especially impressed with the quality off that pressing. Well, since then an alternative has become available, one which allegedly is closer to the original Volvo panels as it comes as two sections and incorporates some of the boot floor itself. Irritating though this is (having already spent money),  I have now purchased these new pressings, along with the inner rear panel. They do seem to be of a higher quality. To the boot floor then. My task today was to remove the spare wheel well. This has been plated over numerous times but I wanted to uncover as much of the original metal as I could, and to remove it sympathetically. This would help with points of reference when fitting the new panels. With ...