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Lily's transformation

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:02 pm
by dragonflyjewels
After 4 long frustrating months, Lily has finally come home from the bodyshop. Here's 'before'
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and 'after'
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Volvo pinstripes courtesy of cranna21 - don't they look smart !

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I'm a very happy bunny but absolutely dreading the bill !

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:44 pm
by arthuy
Nice looking car, amazing how good cars look like with a fresh coat of paint.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 6:07 am
by Van
That looks great! Hope you will enjoy it for a long time.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:33 am
by dcwalker
Beautiful! :D

Will we see her in October...?

David

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:53 am
by dragonflyjewels
o yes, after such a long wait she will definitely be flaunting herself at every opportunity for the next few months. Well worth it though, they had the bumpers off, got rid of the side sponges and both bumper bars have been blasted, zinced and powder coated. She was very solid underneath so should be good for some years to come.
I should have started a thread earlier - Al replaced an endless list of stuff that didn't work, pop up motors, window regulators, fuel flap pull, broken rear washer jet, sun roof struts etc as well as changing the interior to a half leather one (even changed the carpet - previous 1 owner from new smoked 60 a day and so did his wife)
Wheels came from a tatty GT we bought as a donor car. Terrible shame to break a GT, but there isn't a good body panel on it - if it's not bashed it's rusted through. The interior isn't great either and it has numerous mechanical and electrical problems. The front passenger seat will donate some reasonably decent leather to have Al's GT's driver's seat refurbed, so that and the wheels paid for the car plus the trailer hire to collect it from a Birmingham back street. We now have 5 x 480s...........

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 11:57 am
by jifflemon
dragonflyjewels wrote:I should have started a thread earlier
You Absolutely should have! However, I'm sure there's a wealth of pictures of all the hard work..... get to it!

I spotted a white one on Facebook the other week, with Black mirror caps - Such a tiny detail made so much difference!

Looking forward to seeing her in the metal!

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 1:06 pm
by dragonflyjewels
I have to admit that I took no pictures while Al was working in it - too much hold this, pass that, go and find something else interspersed with bad language and a lot of :angry: :badmood: Not helped by the fact that when I bought the half leather interior last year, it was for my beloved 2 litre ES as a thank-you-for 15 years of relatively trouble free driving (yes, this IS a 480!) and a whole lot of fun (red dipsticks are ME). So Al spent ages changing seats, but at the time I didn't realise it had different carpets so thankfully I hadn't bought those. I found it tricky to get my head round my grey interior becoming black in a Paris Blue car so when Lily joined our family I hatched an evil plan to have the black interior in Lily and have the plain grey cloth on the old seats replaced with grey leather to go back in the ES. Have you noticed that this meant Al had to reverse all his hard work ?? oops ! It was the stench of nicotine that swung it in my favour otherwise he'd have refused point blank. At least he was au fait with seat changes....
Here's the stinky old interior
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and here's the half leather whilst still in the ES - great condition isn't it
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Luckily for me, the car that the half leather seats came from was in the final stages of being broken and the main carpet was still there, so we went back and collected a few more bits plus carpet. My job was to get the rust stains out and give it a thorough clean, then Al had the joy of gutting Lily. :wall: Thankfully, glasgowjim and jifflemon between them provided excellent instructions and photos which I downloaded and put into a document to print off for Al to have in the car with him so it wasn't too much of a nightmare.
Next problem was that the boot carpet wasn't available, but I managed to get another one by complete chance. We'd gone to look at a white turbo with a half leather interior, when I opened the boot it was swimming in filthy water and lots of grease on the carpet. We were there over an hour trying to get it started but it just wouldn't so we didn't buy the car, but a bemused owner thought I was mad to offer to swap boot carpets with him when he saw my pristine pale grey one. He agreed, no money changed hands and off we went for a pub lunch leaving his to drain on the rear hatch of his car. All the stains came out with my comprehensive selection of stain removers so now Lily's interior is complete.
to be continued...

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 6:19 pm
by dragonflyjewels
The speedo was only working intermittently so a holiday in the Netherlands was needed.
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Unfortunately, when it came back the speedo still didn't work in the car. Knowing what a thorough job Brinkie does Al tried it in the GT and it worked fine in there. We are hoping there is a loose connection somewhere in Lily, rather than a failed sender. No time to do anything about it before she went into the bodyshop in mid April, and I wanted her back for the May Mini Meet. By the time she went in, she had a Paris Blue nearside mirror and a red passenger door, so she was red white and blue liberally sprinkled with tiny dots of rust - over-enthusiastic use of the T cut if you ask me. There was evidence of a rust patch under one of the rear windows, so I gave them the go ahead to have both windows taken out, sort whatever rust they found then get them re-fitted and properly sealed. That made it tight for getting her back on time, but just do-able. Until that is the bodyshop’s biggest commercial customer flooded them with work (change the colour of their entire fleet of vans if you please !) so I had an apologetic phone call to say they’d had to shelve Lily – literally.

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EEK - NO KNICKERS !!

So the Mini Meet date came and I was finally permitted to drive Al's turbo. (My ES was sitting in the garage with no seats and himself was swearing he'd never do another seat change)

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 7:18 pm
by arthuy
Had the same problem with the speedo.

If you look at my blinky project thread you will see how I tested it. The cable is awful type of coaxial.The outer was broken in various places. Very easy when you know how to test.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 8:17 pm
by dragonflyjewels
Thank you - I'll check that out.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 5:18 pm
by DEATH
dragonflyjewels wrote:After 4 long frustrating months, Lily has finally come home from the bodyshop. Here's 'before'
Image
and 'after'
Image
Volvo pinstripes courtesy of cranna21 - don't they look smart !
Image
I'm a very happy bunny but absolutely dreading the bill !

this look very good
where did u find clear rear side lights?

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:47 pm
by jifflemon
Joep makes them, along with the often perished rubber gasket seals!

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 6:09 pm
by frenchfries
The problem with Skip is that being Green it is super difficult to mix and match different colours :(

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:49 pm
by dragonflyjewels
Yep, the clear side repeaters and reflectors did indeed come from Joep - rather pricey but make such a difference.
Al's GT is green, and he's keeping his orange lenses as he likes them against the green.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:46 pm
by frenchfries
I will do that as well. Also replace the front spoiler from the company listed on the forum

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 7:32 pm
by dragonflyjewels
The lip is certainly a lovely finishing touch to the profile.

Back to the saga -
The next long delay was courtesy of the top man who does the paint spraying having a mishap with a petrol strimmer. He hadn't used it for over a year so he decided to try starting it first before he togged up into safety gear, and as you have guessed it immediately threw up a stone. Painfully, said stone hit him in the eye so he spent a day in A&E followed by numerous appointments with an eye specialist. His vision was too blurred to do any spraying for over a month so another chunk of summer drifted by with lttle progress on Lily. Happily, his sight is just about back to normal now.
I had been very happy to receive a phone call from the bodyshop saying that the bumper reinforcing bars were in good condition, but on a visit a couple of months later, I realised that they had removed the bumpers with the bars still attached inside so they could only see one side of them. On removal, there was quite a bit of hidden rust so off I went to the blasters to get them renovated. Next problem was a health issue for the woman who runs it, she was off for an unknown length of time so once again my job got shelved. Eventually, I got them back, blasted, welded, zinced and powder coated. The side sponges had been chucked, thanks to info on here, so they should be good for some time to come.

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 11:01 am
by dcwalker
Enjoying following this story... :D

David

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 9:23 pm
by dragonflyjewels
Thanks David.

A Day Out in Birmingham
Up at the crack of dawn and off to Norwich in the old 940 estate to collect a hire trailer, then a tedious cross-country journey to a shabby unit in a run down Birmingham back street to buy THIS:
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Al's first thought when he saw it was 'mmm, PRC number plate, People's Republic of China' (he has some very off beat thoughts)
My first thought was 'junk' (much more direct), so we now call it the Chinese Junk.
The interior isn't much better than the outside, the previous owner had a business making car kits and seems to have had some large unwieldy panels stuffed into Junk on numerous occasions from all the scuffs on the leather. He was keen to sell it for restoration as it's 'such a rare car' so I didn't have the heart to tell him we bought it for its VESA wheels for Lily. Normally, I wouldn't have chosen to break a GT, but this one is such a mess I have a clear conscience. Those are Lily's old wheels in the pics. Before anyone gets excited and starts asking for bits from it, it's a long-term break - just as when when one of our other 480s needs something that's in better condition than the body.
It has a permanently flat battery - so flat that absolutely nothing happens when you turn the key, added to which it has a habit of dying at low revs. Al went to move the 940 and trailer into a better parking place with available space for loading behind, and having jump started Junk, the seller insisted he drove it onto the trailer. I'm not sure if I felt insulted that he thought I wouldn't be able to 'manage it', or cynically wondered what he was trying to hide by not letting either of us drive it. Irrelevant under the circumstances really. We had a nightmare getting out of Birmingham (no less than 4 wrong turns onto motorways despite having the satnav - more of Al's off beat thoughts) Eventually we arrived back in Norfolk, and me being the one who organises everything, I had to work out how to get 40 feet of Volvo and trailer into our tiny lane, and end up with 1 working Volvo, 1 duff Volvo and said trailer parked side by side in our parking area where there's only just room to turn a car in. OK, pull into the field entrance at the top of the road, walk down to the house and collect a working 480, drive it back up the road and park alongside the trailer. Leave Al in charge of jump leads, clamber onto trailer, start Junk and reverse off. Send Al down the lane with an empty trailer to unhook so he can park the 940. Park Junk battery to battery with the other 480, let engine die (exit from field blocked by the other 480 and Junk's engine won't run without a foot on the throttle) and walk down to help with manouvring the trailer by hand. Both of us walk back up the road, re apply jump leads to Junk and voila, everything parked. It was a VERY long day........

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:47 am
by Alan 480
Before anyone gets excited and starts asking for bits from it, it's a long-term break - just as when when one of our other 480s needs something
so no chance of getting a front sub frame any time soon :-)

Re: Lily's transformation

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 2:51 pm
by dragonflyjewels
umm, 5 years time maybe ?