Al's 145 barn find

bigal

Hello All, I'll try and keep this brief.. I'm a Tasmanian and my first car (in 1999) was a 145 (auto wagon) and silly me got rid of it in about 2003. I know I'll probably never find my actual brown wagon again, I'm sure it got crushed, but I'd dearly love to have another 145 of the 73' or 74' vintage. I'm happy to look at anything, even a shell (interior would be nice though). Please help me find my favourite car! I had great times with my 145 delivering pizzas and gearboxes blowing up! Haha. Those were the days!

Al.

bigal

Update - I've found a 1974 145 and purchased. She's a Barn Find! Details to be revealed later! :-)

Rob

:-bd

egads (she/her)

Yay, top stuff! Have you got any pics?

bigal

I haven't received it yet.. still on its way to Tassie via freight but here's a sneak peek..

GingerNinja

Cool. I saw a dark blue one around here this week. Where are you in Tas?

bigal

Nice! I'll have to meet up with the owner of that one one day. I'm in Launceston.

Major Ledfoot

Moar pix when you have 'em please.

bigal

The Revealing of Big Al's 74' 145:

Hi Guys, I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat ready to read about this one. Who doesn't like a Barn Find story!!

I put a wanted ad up on volvovic.org.au and here on ozvolvo back in around May this year.. I received some helpful tips on where to keep an eye out for one and people asking me how the search was going. Many of you may recall a Blue one that popped up on Gumtree not so long ago, a Manual/Carb. I was very close to buying this but decided to keep looking as I wanted the Auto/Fuel Injection model.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a loverly chap from Bendigo. He said he had a 74' 145 that had been sitting around in his yard for years, it used to belong to his father in law who owned it since new. Up until the last 10 years it had always been garaged and well maintained. I was sent a pile of photos and instantly knew this was the one!

I arranged with the gentleman to have it taken to a mechanic and fired up as it's been a long time since running. I talked to the mechanic who got her going and I took care of the bill. The vehicle was quickly paid for and booked in for pickup and is now on its way to Tassie. I'm yet to see it in person.

It needs some TLC to bring her back to her former glory. Looking forward to cleaning it up.

A brief summary of what I know:
-------------------------------
1974 Volvo 145
Comes with all service records and original manual.
Auto
Fuel Injected
No Air Conditioning
No Radio, Door speakers or Arial (What the!!)
Only 1 small patch of rust to be found below the back right window

This is what I'd like to know, so help me out with your knowledge:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Those wheels don't look like 1 series wheels, but because this was built towards the end of the 140 production run then is it possible it ended up with 2 series wheels from factory?

I take it a stereo was an option back in the day?

My goals for the 145:
---------------------
Clean it right up.
Keep it original with the exception of lowering and a simple stereo.
Get rid of any rust.
Enjoy it, use it.

egads (she/her)

Looks great!

I think those are late 70's 240 wheels.

US sales brochure for 74
http://www.auto-brochures.com/makes/Volvo/Volvo_US%20FullLine_1974.pdf

US sales brochure for 75
http://www.auto-brochures.com/makes/Volvo/Volvo_US%20FullLine_1975.pdf

Early 140

Late 140

Early 240

Major Ledfoot

That 145 is in great condition. 292,000 km

The wheels look like 14 inch x 5 inch wheels used on the 1982 244 DL. Very unlikely it left the factory that way, the more likely scenario is that a previous owner swapped the factory 15 x 5 inch wheels with mags of some sort, then sold or lost the OE wheels, and then put the 244 wheels on it at the time the car was sold. Egads' picture of the 74 144 shows the original 15 x 5 inch wheels.

IIRC, radios were optional in the De Luxe, standard in the Grande Luxe and the 164E. A virgin radio cover plate is rare these days.

For tidying up -

- A suitable replacement grille emblem is available from Skandix (p/n 1036545)

- Front indicator corner lenses can be found on eBay for not a lot of money. Cibie and Hella lights have slightly different cases.

- Looks like you're going to need 3 plastic headlight clips for the LHF headlight (p/n 681923-9). You shouldn't pay more than $5 each for these, some vendors demand crackpipe prices.

- I'm getting the dashboard tops re-covered for my 140s (results in this thread). One is done and there's another on the way. The original speaker grille and the demister vents looked pretty second-hand after 40 years of sun, so I ordered a new set from Mother Volvo in the US.

All in all, yours looks an excellent purchase.

Ex850R

Good advice!^
Add an mp3 system by stealth , keep it stock no radio?

bigal

Cheers for those part numbers.

Given that the stereo blank plate is pretty unique then I might explore a stealth stereo idea. Maybe utilize the single speaker hole on the dash and just settle for mono :-)

bigal

Also, I'm expecting to receive some pictures of the 145 back in its early days.. will be interesting to see what wheels it has in those pics. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for the comments. I'm pretty happy with coming across this one. It was obviously well looked after to still be in a pretty rust free condition.

Major Ledfoot

Ex850R;60024 wroteGood advice!^
Add an mp3 system by stealth , keep it stock no radio?

An mp3 player is a great idea - there's a guy from Adelaide who advertises in the Vic Volvo club classifieds and sells OE Volvo radio / cassette players which have their tape players converted to take audio via a USB port from an mp3 player or a USB memory stick. Looks old, works modern. This will likely be the way I'll go for my 145.

Angus242164

The wheels aren't original, they're '75-'80 240 rims with '81-'82 240 hub caps, by the looks of it. Apart from that it looks extremely straight and original, very nice.

It was common to replace the narrow 15" rims with 14" rims in the '80's and '90's to take advantage of cheaper 14" tyres, the narrow 15" sizes were getting expensive.

discombobulate

If you are plan on running an MP3 player and don't plan to add speakers, why not just get a Bluetooth speaker and play music via smartphone/ stream digital radio etc

http://www.cnet.com/au/topics/speakers/best-speakers/bluetooth/

I've got a Bose sound link mini and it's awesome

familyman

.... why not just get a Bluetooth speaker...

Or, look here: http://snipurl.com/2a8vygf

There's cassette insert types, FM radio types (that plug into the cigarette lighter and transmit into the radio's FM). I have one of the second type, but you can get them with a text screen too - so rather than just a song number (like mine), it can display titles. There are others again, that have a small colour screen that can display not just the song info, but a pic of the album art too.)

Ex850R

set of smal box speakers , ( JBL Concept Ones ) hanging off the back pillar and a sub box with amp , an MP3 thingo that blutoothz to the amp from your media player/phone , all run off a pwr wire run up to the boot area.

I will say the JBLs are the best set of small speakers you will get , period...

bigal

Ok Guys,

Here's some challenging questions for you while I wait for the 145 to turn up..

Tachometer:

My previous Auto/Fuel Injected 74' 145 had a tachometer, this one doesn't. In the UK brochure it appears that if you have the Fuel Injected model (de Luxe) then the tacho comes standard. Obviously this wasn't the case in Australia. This brings me to my question.. Does anyone have/or can find the Australian 1974 Volvo Sales Brochure? It would be great to know what the Aussie standard features and options were exactly.

These are from some UK Brochures..

Side Badge:

The badge on the side of this 145 doesn't have the lower part filled in with anything. What should be in here? "DeLuxe" perhaps? I've seen pics with and without something here.