The Acquisition

Sometime late May 2006 I spotted the ad of a Volvo 1800Es for sale only some 20 km from where I live. No picture, and reason for sale was said to be that the seller had to clean up in his garage, where the car named Robin had stayed for the last two years due to lack of time.

I called the guy, presented myself and started asking questions. The answers confirmed that this could be interesting, but I was also told that the seller had to ensure himself that the buyer would take good care of the car. We agreed to meet for a closer inspection, and on purpose I took my 1958 Volvo PV544 to show myself as somebody competent to own and take care of classic Volvo's.

We went to the garage, and found a very dusty 1800. After putting some much needed air into the tyres, the owner started it up and the B20E sounded just as it should - purring like a cat with loose teeth... The exterior and interior showed a car which was far from spotless, althought it was pretty complete and with cosmetic faults that could be amended over some time. It had been repainted sometime in the eighties in a copper brown metallic colour, whereas it orginally had the famous Volvo color 105 Gold Metallic. Some rough patches were easily visible at the typical rust areas of the 1800's like the front wings and sills, but they were not recent and appeared to have been stable.

The test trip became somewhat interesting, because the brakes would seize on the rear wheels. I first believed that this was due to rusty rotors after the long storage but it later showed to be a much more complex problem to solve. However, everything seemed to work, even the overdrive clicked effortlessly in and out of operation. We agreed on the price and everything, and I returned home happy to have at last found my dream car.

When I called him the next day, the seller had developed some second thoughts about letting his dear Volvo go. I protested of course, having already prepared the cheque for his payment. We finally agreed over the phone to sign a contract where he would keep a lifelong preemptive right to buy the car back in case I should choose to sell it.

I brought the car home and immediately started to work on the seizing brakes. I quickly had it on stands in my garage, and decided to replace both rear rotors and rebuild all four calipers, the reduction valves at the rear and the brake master cylinder. After getting parts from CVI in Sweden (Recommended!), I did as planned but to my big disappointment the brakes would still seize on the rear wheels. I could not understand the reason until I found a similar symptom described at the Brickboard forum (Also recommended!). In short, the reason showed to be that the flexible rubber hoses to the rear axle which looked flawless on the outside had swollen inside so that the brake fluid could not be evacuated fast enough after braking, thereby causing the severe seizing and overheating of both rear wheel brakes. I quickly ordered the new hoses and Voila! Since then, the brakes have worked very well on this car. This was confirmed upon the compulsory technical inspection (2-yearly in Norway), after which I could finally register the car on my name.