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Quick & Dirty - a V50 project for a great kid.

13K views 49 replies 23 participants last post by  avenger09123 
#1 ·
Hello to the P1 forum. I have a long history of buying salvage cars and fixing them for myself, links to my current 3 cars are in my signature. My dad also does, in fact he just retired after 25 years doing it as a business. But now that he's retired, he's bored and can't stop shopping for cars. Which leads us to my daughter, his granddaughter. She's a great kid, nerdy, well behaved, getting straight A's in honors courses as a freshman in high school.

She was 4 when she first helped me reassemble a 940 after welding in a new rocker and dog leg:



Turned her first lug nuts at 6:



Installed a stereo at 7:



Helped strip my 122:



And most recently, when she was 11 she helped me swap out modules and ignition switch on my C70:



She turns 15 in June, and will get her learner's permit soon after that. But because my dad and I are idiots and can't stop shopping for cars, we found this easy to fix V50 T5 AWD Auto at the salvage auction. It happens to be exactly what she wanted for her first car, so how could we pass it up? Even though she can't even drive it for 3 more months.

So far, I removed the broken headlight and crushed grille to assess the damage:



The fender is pulled under the hood a little:



Obvious slight buckle:



Crumpled metal behind the hit:



First, I got a heat gun and popped out the bumper where it was inverted:



Then I washed it:





Bummer, a little bubbling on the tint.



A daylight close up of the bumper after I popped it out:



Then I undid the screws at the front and of course the fender straightened right out. Now I can see how far things have to move to be right again.



Here's a shot of the driver's side, and what that crumpled metal is supposed to look like:



Next I took the bumper cover off, and everything behind the grille is kind of munched.





Removed all that to get to the good stuff. And no, the a/c condenser is not punctured, fortunately!



Again, what the metal is supposed to look like:



Top view showing buckling. This is supposed to be straight.



I pulled, twisted, and beat on it for about an hour. I got the fender bolts lined up, and this is about as straight as I'm going to get this. As long as the bumper fits back on and the panel gaps line up, I'm fine with it.





Boom. Fender bolted back down, perfect panel gap. Unfortunately yes I did haze the paint. I'm an idiot when it comes to paint sometimes, all that dirt was actually extremely abrasive. I sprayed a little water on it and wiped, and that is the result. I'm sure it'll buff back out but man do I feel stupid.



And here it sits, waiting for new parts. I'm shopping the classifieds here of course, and ebay, and erie, and tasca, etc.



I need to get the thing through Colorado's salvage inspection so I'm kind of pushing forward without her, but once it's licensed and registered I'll have her go through all the stage 0 items with me. Full fluid changes, spark plugs, filters, PCV, accessory belts, and I'll probably do the timing belt while we're here just to be done and have the car bulletproof for the forseeable future.

Plus I'll start teaching her to drive. Can't wait.

You know, I've always been kind of a grumpy firm believer that your first car should be a total piece of crap, for the crisis management skills that it can build. Yet here I am, getting her a really fantastic car for her first ride. She's such a good kid that I have a hard time not spoiling her. First time I had a car this nice I was 26 years old.
 
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#3 ·
great job dad!
 
#4 ·
Yep, great story! Good that you've involved your daughter in your love for cars from an early age, which hopefully will instill in her the desire to take good care of her own future vehicles and also make her a better, more careful driver. The statistics are what they are for new drivers, so you have to get out ahead of that curve. Also good to keep her in the Volvo, not just for safety, but for reliability, and since you're good with these cars she has a built-in mechanic :) . Trust me, with our son (and soon-to-be second new driver in our family) I tossed around the "piece of crap first car" idea many times, but never liked the idea of them driving an unknown entity car where I had doubts about safety and didn't know how to fix a Honda lol.
 
#5 ·
I went through a similar thing but my damage ended at a crack in the bumper and grille and a broken headlight. Same deal though unbolted everything and it all shifted back in place. Paint and new headlight and grille and it turned out beautiful.

I would suggest you go through ebay for headlights and grille recently someone sold used pair of headlights for 100$. The Grille is also a very nice touch. May want to consider one of those badgeless grilles. They sell them in black too.

Grille link: 99$




Then i would get a volvo emblem and put it on without the slanted part.



Those two can easily make the front end of that car look fantastic.

I would suggest also expanding to C30, S40 and ofcourse V50 for headlights.

Pair of headlights for 250


Or separate.
LH
53$


RH
34$


Or you may want to consider going with the facelift bumper and headlights since now is a good time to do so.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for the kind words and the help! Do the facelift headlights fit the same fenders? So it's just the bumper, grille and lights? That's good to know.
 
#7 ·
Yes, you may need the foam piece behind the cover in front of the craash beam but other than that I think its a direct bolt on.

Obviously you will need:
Headlights,
Bumper Cover,
Upper and lower Grilles,
Fog Lights, Not sure if the V50 PreFL are the same as FL.
Crash foam, could be the same. may wanna dig some PNs to see if they differed.
Potentially washer bottle but i think at the time when i did mine i was told i only need Bumper and lamps. Nothing else.

So since you are gonna dump some money on those components why not scour around the local scrap yards and see if you can find a black bumper and some lights and bingo, you got yourself a very fresh looking vehicle.

The rear is the same way, just bumper cover and tail lamps.
 
#8 ·
This is what mine looked like.


New light, grille and paint on the bumper and back to like new.






And at its highlight of its life it used to look like this



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#10 ·
Absolutely no issue, for whatever reason the guy who painted the bumper did a great job. Didnt have to do any matching at all.

I have had a lot of luck with the paint you order through automotivetouchup.com. Never had an issue with mismatch especially on the metallics and i know how hard it is to get them to match.
 
#11 ·
Shell for sure love it. I'm currently a junior in highschool and all of my friends constantly talk about my car (06 s40). I always hear around the school about "the kid with the all black Volvo" and it feels pretty sweet. Looks amazing too and it's perfect for what I need.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
 
#13 ·
My daughter has the XC as a senior, and all the kids in school think she's cool. They love it.
When I was in HS, the kids who had Volvos were the snobby, rich kids.
Nice work, LD! She's lucky. I recall working on stuff with my Dad at an early age. It was invaluable knowledge, even though I never really use it much - I understood, and was humbled by his hard work in heat, cold, etc.
 
#15 ·
Got a box of parts from a part-out here, good stuff:



Got a headlight too. Unfortunately it didn't fit right. I tweaked a few things and it fits better now, but the main mounting point is still pushed backwards. There was an S40 at the junkyard with that front headlight support fully intact in black, so I think I might go try to pull it tomorrow. It will fix everything back to original.



Then with a little zip tie surgery:



And of course. The worst part is I was just checking to see if this was broken and broke it.



Gonna try to get the kid herself to help install the rest of this. Also the auction yard hasn't sent us the title yet so I can't even try to get it inspected until that's done. So I have time.
 
#16 · (Edited)
Wow. Almost the same zip-tie surgery I did on mine.



Mine was a smidge worse off (I hit a deer with it). Turned out okay, though. Insurance check was almost $7,000 - just shy of totaling it. And I fixed it (quick and dirty) for $800.

 
#18 ·
Awesome, I'll be sure to hunt you guys down.

Made it to the u-pull yard today, but the black car was stripped. There was a silver S40 that was nearly complete, and since I had to remove the bumper cover to get where I wanted anyway, I bought it to re-sell. Anybody need a very decent silver bumper cover, complete with fogs and grille?



This part was surprisingly easy to pull, barely anything really attaches to it besides the fenders, headlights, and hood catch.



I also snagged this PCV hose to replace the broken one above. I think it's the updated design that's less failure prone. I'll replace it again at some point but this will get me back on the road. And they threw it in for free.



I also snagged the driver's mirror to replace at a later date, the one in the car now is broken and doesn't go high enough.

All this after working yesterday and this morning assembling a machine at my day job. I'm beat.
 
#20 ·
Well, I'm an idiot and didn't check the actual color tag but I'm pretty sure it is. Tomorrow I'll hold it up against my C70 (which is 426) for color match. Did they offer any other silver in 2004?
 
#22 · (Edited)
Littleton U-Pull, south of 470 on Santa Fe. It's pretty stripped now but they have 4 P1 cars there with nearly complete interiors. Three graphite and one tan. I actually got a full set of floor mats.

One of them is a real heartbreaker, a gorgeous bright blue (Cosmos? Ocean Race?) V50 AWD 6 speed that was scraped all down the side. Front bumper was 99% perfect but the entire drivetrain was already out and gone.
 
#25 ·
The bumper is definitely 426 mystic silver. Where exactly are you mercdude? There's a guy delivering a black bumper to me on his way to california at the end of this week, maybe he can deliver this silver one to you.

So I had a weird day, I took my daughter to her mom's house and then I came home around noon and fell asleep. Woke up at 9 PM. I had planned to work on cars all day, so at least now it was cool outside. I went out and started stripping the headlight support:



The thick tab near where the bumper bolts on was tweaked backwards a little, that's the only damage not confined to the headlight support.



After about an hour:



Everything fit up nicely:


While I was in there with a bunch of stuff out of the way I detoured to replace this thing. Great design change fellas:



And with that, I reassembled everything. There's a little oddness where the hood meets the bumper, I got the fenders to line up but the bumper is riding high. I'll wait for the new bumper to do anything about it though.



And with that, I should be able to get it through the salvage inspection. I'll figure that out this week.

The real bummer of this is that my daughter has been super busy with a school play that has practice during any time I'm supposed to have her, and performs this coming week which wipes that out as well. I'm tired of having this car in the garage, my C70 belongs in there, but I have to get it registered as I have no private driveway to park it in. So I gave up on having her do this part of the work with me. I will probably have her swap bumper covers with me once the replacement gets here.
 
#27 ·
Good to see it's coming along. I'm personally waiting for my radiator to start leaking so I can replace it and the frame it sits in from the accident mine was in ebfore I bought it. Sadly it appears to be much heartier than I thought. Oh well, play the waiting game for now. I'm down on the north side of the Springs (next to the Air Force Academy) if you ever come down here.
 
#28 · (Edited)
(Odd editing situation: A post got deleted asking if my daughter is self-motivated in regard to cars.)

Nah, I kind of have to force it. I think this car will inspire a little more though because it's hers.
 
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