A brief History of my Volvo's

**manback** · Monday 10th October 2011, 20:24

Hi.
wasn’t sure where to post this but as its lengthy i thought id stick it in with the projects.

In 2009 i was driving around in a Renault Clio 172. Me and a mate decided to get on the ramshackle rally to Valencia. A 3000 mile rally where car has to be purchased for £150 and taken half way down Spain to witness the madness of La Tomatina, the worlds largest tomato fight.

Our weapon of choice was a £150 Volvo 850 2.0 10v, saloon in silver.

the car had been stood for a number of months and wouldn’t start.
we spent many weekends tarting the car up and eventually revealed it to the world at a shopping centre in Calais at the start of the rally as "Apocalypse Now"

the car featured 2 surf boards and a megaphone, which played ride of the valkyries as we drove through France, into Italy, down to Monaco, along the coast of the med and then on to Spain for the big fight. Along the way we hammered the Volvo and paid the price with it developing a problem running after about 8 hours of running at around 100mph. It seemed we had broken the old girl. we limped the rest of the rally but took in Mt. Blonc. the Monaco GP circuit, the Valencia GP circuit, the GP happened the day before we got there. Also crossing the millau viaduct in France on the 25 hour jouney home.

back in donny

I drove the car around for the rest of the year until it failed its MOT, the hanging smoke in the test centre confirmed that it wasn’t going to be cheap to fix so i sent the old girl to the scrappers. Luckily though my love for volvos had begun!

skip 2 months and i picked up an 854 T5. It was a 15 owner RED CD with no service history and a big hole in the rocker cover, but for £500 i saw it as a project!

After a week the head gasket went. Rather than send it straight for scrap i decided to have a go at doing the work myself and replace the head with another one. 2 weeks later and i had a running volvo again.

After an expensive year keeping the t5 running i decided that rather than scrapping it id send it on a rally across Europe. This time we went on the Krakow rally, organised by the same people and starting at the same place, this rally took in, France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Poland with a massive run through Germany and Belgium back to the uk.

the car was to be decorated as "Team America World Police" I have attached a pic of how the car should look.

I should mention this car owed me for a Cylinder head, steering rack, wishbones, discs and pads, ignition coil, cam position sensor, ECU and a replacement Turbo. so i didnt mind covering it in paint and bolting some engines to it before it got scrapped.

You will noticed the engines disappeared, we got pulled in Austria and all the stick on bits were removed and we got done for 2 illegal front tyres. The police didn’t get that we were on a rally and thought it was some sort of "go fast" motorway project. i thought the foam missiles would have given it away.

either way we were first to Poland and received the "best banger" award nominated by the other teams. the only issues being the car boiling over when we stopped it on an Austrian glassier and the anti roll bar snapping off going up a big ramp on the ferry.

the car did so well i sold it as a runner on Ebay but got messed about, i ended up selling it to a guy with a red n/a 850, who claims to be "fixing it up"
so watch this space.

Finally i purchased my S70R, its a really well looked after car, in a way its too good for me as im used to parking my volvos anywhere and not worrying about them. So that’s my story, thanks for reading.

p.s. sorry if you think i have ruined perfectly good volvos, chin up though its all in aid of charity.

**manback** · Monday 10th October 2011, 20:26

my fav pic of the coke mentos experiments we had to do in reims

**danny-R** · Monday 10th October 2011, 20:31

Would love to a rally like this some day, and s70r looks very nice mate :thumbsup

**M-R-P** · Monday 10th October 2011, 20:35

Good read mate, looks like you had a larf!

**LiamT4** · Monday 10th October 2011, 20:45

Looks like fun.

Nice S70R as well.

**antz** · Monday 10th October 2011, 21:10

definitely a good read

JT · Monday 10th October 2011, 21:11

looks like great fun!!

**AndysR** · Monday 10th October 2011, 23:11

850's aren't to my taste, but it's good to see the cars have been put to good use and in your own way you've probably had as much pleasure out of them doing that as i get out of mine. S70R looks lovely, I'm sure it used to belong to Simon who sold it and bought a Supra..