I am pretty much over 240s (well, the 240 'scene', fanbois, fuccbois, at least...), but my darling wife is not... When egads posted his GLE for sale, we jumped on it. https://ozvolvo.org/discussion/12722/nsw-yass-1992-240-gle-sedan-gold-auto-800#latest
Part of the appeal is that most of what it needs, I have on my parts car that is very close to going to god.
It drives far better than it looks. Today we spent some time doing basic tidy-ups and generally getting a feel for it.
First stop was to fix the bonnet release cable - the cable was fine, the problem was the little cable clamp had bent and wasn't clamping anymore.
Fixing this allowed me to refit the grille, which makes it look far less like a shitbox.
Next was to replace the glovebox, as the original had broken hinges. I managed to over-think the process a whole lot until I realised that I just needed to swap the lid on the glovebox itself.
Something still isn’t quite right because it doesn’t latch properly, but definitely better than it was.
Also fitted the parts car's instrument cluster as the original's speedo didn't work.
Glued the mirror back into place.
Cleaned out the boot, including finding a bunch of (chicken?) bones, which fortunately appear to be old enough that they were clean...
Also performed the customary ritual of bashing out the butt cheeks.
The board that covers the RHS spare wheel well was MIA. The one from the wreck was badly warped. I wet it and then put a bunch of batteries on it, in an attempt to flatten it out. Will see how this goes.
The seat was probably the most challenging thing we did today.
The black plastic wheel is broken. I assume that a back seat passenger has managed to kick it in the past.
It is supposed to sit under the metal disc, but was sitting on top and not engaging with the disc (and therefore not turning the disc).
Hopefully the photos tell most of the story. The only part that’s not obvious is the three M4 bolts that clamp the plastic wheel onto the metal disc.
Works like a charm!
Bear with me here... Hippy (my ‘good’ 82 244GL project) has a tan interior, but is going to get the parts car’s charcoal interior. The parts car’s passenger’s door pocket was originally tan, but had been painted black. I had a good black door pocket from one of the wrecks in days long gone.
So... some superglue and fibreglass tape later, the originally tan but now black door pocket is on the GLE.
And then I realised that Hippy probably has a good tan door pocket...
The paint is bad on the bonnet. Couldn’t work out what was wrong in the bad light last night, but today it was clear - there’s a bunch of humidity blisters in the paint and many of them have popped.
After much discussion about the viability/cost of respraying the bonnet and replacement RHS front guard, or the whole car, we decided to leave it ugly. It will be washed and polished as best we can, but for now it will stay ugly.
We also did a bunch of other little tidy ups - silly little tings like replacing the plastic cover plate over the interior roof grab handles.
Next up is to replace all the oils/fluids and the timing belt. There's a blinker globe out, so I need to find and replace it.
Should be very close to rego-ready after that. The rear tyres are marginal - my inclination is to buy four newies but need to think about it a bit more.
Also haven't decided if we are aiming for full rego or historic rego.
