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RMS Regular
I mentioned this project in passing in another thread, and there was some interest in a project thread for it, so here goes.
I haven’t posted on here that much over the years, but anyone who was a regular around Jordanstown or Banbridge 8-10 years ago may recognise my first car, which I still have hidden away.
Since then, I’ve owned a load of Volvos and Land Rovers, and very little else. I reckon six Land Rovers from Series 2 to Range Rover 4.4 V8, and probably 20 Volvos from the 60s to 5 or 6 years old.
In June 2017 I was sent a picture on another forum, of a weird old Volvo which had been parked up so long it had sunk into the ground, down on the South Coast of England. I knew Volvo had made a range of live-axled 4x4s for the Swedish military called the Laplander, so it didn’t take much googling to find out that this fantastically ugly version was called the C202.
I admit it, I like Volvos, and I have a problem. I had recently put my 1966 Volvo Amazon project on the road after a load of welding and painting, and I had space in my shed, and a good strong trailer. Of course I messaged the guy who had got in touch to express my interest. I was told that it had been off the road for 25 years, and the widow of the late owner was talking about selling their big house, where it was parked. He passed on my details but I heard nothing.
Nearly a year later, in summer of 2018, another of the handful in the UK came up for sale, near Bristol. The seller wanted nearly £4000 for it, running, but scruffy and with no brakes. I was home in NI for a visit at the time so was making plans to go and see it when I got back to Cumbria, when I remembered the original one, on the South Coast.
I sent a follow up message to see if it was still there, and the next day my man replied, saying he had driven past for a look, and it wasn’t there.
That would have been the end of it, if about two hours before that message, I hadn’t spotted it on eBay. It had been posted 20 minutes before I saw it, with a low price (lower than I’d have offered the lady who had it), but for sale by a fairly dodgy character, who had, I suspect, given scrap value for the thing that morning.
The stars were lining up and I wasn’t going to let it get away, so I dealt with the guy over the phone the next morning (Sunday), and said I’d be down first thing on the Saturday for it. It was a 650 mile round trip to get it, and at the time I was without a Land Rover. My Volvo XC70 was a strong tow car, but its legal towing weight may have been a little bit lower than ideal. I had little choice, so went for it, and pulled it back the length of England in nearly 40 degree heat, and the thing absolutely aced it.
Once I got back within a few miles of my shed, I got a mate with a Defender to pull the last bit, as there are some tricky little lanes with steep turns on the way in.
Once it was in I set about pressure washing 25 years of grime off it, and sucking a serious amount of organic material out of it. The roof had a rotten seam which let all sorts of animals and plant material in, which can smell about as pleasant as you might imagine, and didn’t help keep the thing rust free.
I had hoped that the Arabic writing on the front doors might have hinted at a nice dry few years, but 25 English winters made up for that! A friend tells me that the writing translates to a house building corporation in an area known as the ‘Gateway to Baghdad’, so it’s a wonder how it even made it out of there in one piece, never mind to my shed in the Lake District.
I spent a few weekends starting to strip it and get to know its condition, almost to the point of lifting the body off the chassis, but then had to start back at my part-time Masters – so it got left under a tarp. In the meantime the engine in my Amazon died, so I’ve been slowly getting that back into action, and I’m going to get back into this project in the next month or two.
I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do with it. I’ve decided it’s going back to its original colour scheme of orange with an off-white stripe all the way around it, but in terms of running gear and what I’ll use it for, I’ve had ideas of making it longer with a tag axle and a small hookloader and something like a Cummins or Merc 6 cylinder, down to keeping the body as is, and making it into a micro camper, either with a rebuilt and breathed-on version of the original Volvo B20, or something compact that’ll give more torque and be a lot easier on juice, like an older VW TDI.
The axles are Dana American ones, the same as used on a lot of Jeeps. The brakes are shared with the Land Rover series 2, the engine is the same as the Volvo Amazon/140, but the gearbox and transfer box are unique. I have a 5 speed version of the same basic box, from an early Volvo 740, which I’m going to try to mate up to the transfer box, pushing the engine forwards a bit. Space is an issue, with only an 82” wheelbase, and the engine between the seats. The rear prop is already about as short as it can be!
I'll keep this updated as I get on with it if anyone's interested. I'm aiming for a Laplander to Lapland camping trip in it...
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