Volvo 480 Club Europe

Hello,

A few weeks ago I bought a 480 as my first car. Only the glass of the right tail light is broken.
Does anyone have a tail light for sale? If you want to sell a complete pair, I'm also willing to buy that.
Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

Welcome to the club !!
Rear lights are not easily come by and usually quite expensive in good condition. Apart from the frustrations of unobtainable parts and other things that go wrong, the 480s are great fun cars and you will find lots of help and advice on the forum. We are a friendly bunch with loads of knowledge between us and always ready to help. I hope you enjoy driving your 480 as much as we love ours.

RensV wrote:Hello,

A few weeks ago I bought a 480 as my first car. Only the glass of the right tail light is broken.
Does anyone have a tail light for sale? If you want to sell a complete pair, I'm also willing to buy that.
Thank you in advance.

Kind regards

So that you know, a few months back I paid £300 For a brand new one still in the box in France. Needless to say that it was after looking at a few EU EBay sites and trolling French version of Gumtree etc......
Light clusters don't appear often and if you see a car being sold for parts the lights are either beyond repair or long gone.

Last week somebody in this Forum was selling a good pair for €375 on EBay (Spain?) but they are gone.

Light clusters are the physical representation of a term I learnt here: unobtainium

The rearlights I had for sale on Ebay didn't sell finally. They had a 200 euro starting price and a 375 "buy it now" option.

I have them now for sale on the Gumtree-like Spanish site.

https://www.milanuncios.com/otros-recam ... 897318.htm

As I explained in the Ebay ad, this pair was damaged during transportation from it's previous owner. Bits of both upper borders plus the lower border of the left one broke. I have glued the bits with this special hard plastics glue. Then water-sandpapered with decreasing grane sandpaper (1000-2000-3000). And finally thoroughly polished.

Trying to be honest about this. You can see in the pictures where the lights broke and have been repaired, but I think this set is still in usable condition and would be a decent replacement for a broken beyond repair or deeply sunburnt ones. The shine is there. The fixed borders are also there.

The previous owner added a 4th fixation point in the middle, I guess for watertightness. Doesn't affect function of cosmetics. You can use it or just let it be.

I recently got my hands on a set of NEW ones. Don't ask how much I paid for theese..... So the other ones have to go.

dragonflyjewels wrote:Welcome to the club !!
Rear lights are not easily come by and usually quite expensive in good condition. Apart from the frustrations of unobtainable parts and other things that go wrong, the 480s are great fun cars and you will find lots of help and advice on the forum. We are a friendly bunch with loads of knowledge between us and always ready to help. I hope you enjoy driving your 480 as much as we love ours.

Thank you

I have never attempted it myself but theoretically you can polish them back to life.

I have replaced mine and one day will attempt this on my old ones.

I'd recommend taking them out (so you don't polish the surrounding paint off), machine Polish with plenty of water and cutting compound and then having sprayed somewhere with a two-part clear lacquer, then a light polish.

The main site (you will need a different log-in) has an FAQ on how to do this, and over the years on the forum there have been a few good attempts documented about rear cluster restoration.

If you have the money though and a pair does come up, don't dither, just buy 'em!

jamescarruthers wrote:I have never attempted it myself but theoretically you can polish them back to life.

I have replaced mine and one day will attempt this on my old ones.

I'd recommend taking them out (so you don't polish the surrounding paint off), machine Polish with plenty of water and cutting compound and then having sprayed somewhere with a two-part clear lacquer, then a light polish.

The main site (you will need a different log-in) has an FAQ on how to do this, and over the years on the forum there have been a few good attempts documented about rear cluster restoration.

If you have the money though and a pair does come up, don't dither, just buy 'em!

Yeah, unfortunately the right one is beyond repair
If I find a good pair, I will definitely buy them

Balto will post to the UK. James is right, buy whatever you can.

To anyone else interested here's a full report I've uploaded to my Google Drive.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Since everyone here has always been polite, helpful, lavish I feel compeled to share this pictures. I've uploaded a comparison between the ones for sale (upper ones) and new ones (lower side). What you see is what you get.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

They look good even compared to the new ones.

Would it be worth protecting the new lamps with some kind of UV lacquer to prevent them going the way of the originals?

We had ours professionally laquered 4 or 5 years ago, now it's starting to peel around the edges. I'm going to try stripping it all off and just keeping a good layer of wax on them.