My triple diamond.

Well, let's give this another go then,

Bought this car 5 years back when I got my license, drove it about bone stock for a while



Couple of months later, my dad gave me a ring and told me he saw one of these at the wreckers. Always looking for parts, I went over and made a sweet, sweet deal on the complete interior minus the dashboard and steering wheels since the airbays were deployed. everything from carpet, doorcards, seats, to the complete boot plastics came home with me for just €125. It did need a good bit of cleaning since it had been sitting for a while.





After that, the suspension started to go, now I could've went and bought OEM springs and shocks, but where's the fun in that? So had a little browse on the interwebs, and found a coilover set for a Volvo V40. Greatest thing is that Mitsubishi and Volvo shared the basic chassis, and built their own shell for it, which means that all the suspension components were the same. After an evening of wrenching/cursing at seized bolts, I got them in.



This lowered it a fair bit already, but it wasn't as low as I would like it, so it went back on the jackstands, and out came the helper springs. In this pic, I was running my old steelies since I sold the original alloys to free up some money (and more important: space in the garage) for some new wheels.

In the meantime, instead of buying wheels, I bought a second Mitsubishi with a salvage title, car was completely rotted through but all the parts I wanted/needed were in good nick. That's also where I got these bumper lips/ sideskirts.





For some reason, they looked like they were painted with a dirty pinecone, so loads of sanding, filling, and more sanding was required.





I only have the rear one done so far, the front lip had some spots that I missed while sanding, and with temperatures dropping harder than my grades in high school, I have to put it on hold till spring.

All done with rattlecans, don't have the space for an air tank and paint gun. (plus my neighbours hate me enough already )



My mirrors were that horrible bare plastic, Painted mirrors were an option but since these were meant as simple commuter cars, almost no one picked the option. Grabbed some paint and shot some color on these as well.




While everything was curing, I pulled the black dash from the donor car so it would match the black and cream interior in mine.



the center console was covered in cheap "brushed aluminum" vinyl, so I ripped that off and painted it as well.



Earlier this year, I found a set of alloys that were dirt cheap, tires were as new so I hopped in the car and went to pick them up. Originally, the plan was to polish them and spray the centers a different color, but one of the wheels had bad enough kerb rash that it would be practically impossible to polish without having the outer rim machined down. So white it is for now.





That's where I'm at now, next on the list is getting the bumpers repainted, audio, and maybe some engine stuff.

Lucas.

Thanks Leon

Roofrack is there with a reason, I got an old BMX bike which I want to do up in the same color as the car, and put it on top at shows or meetings .

The steelies weren't bad, but they were too narrow, and the offset was way wrong for what I wanted out of it. looking into getting my winter steelies banded to match this set.

Nice work Lucas, and by painting models, it has taught you to paint things like mirrors and bumper lips,
which in turn saves you money by doing it your self... not to mention the SATISFACTION of doing it yourself.

Right...

So it's been a while. in the meantime, not a lot has changed, apart from some yellow bulbs in the headlights.

Other than that, I bought a set of (pretty rare) Borbet A wheels in 15x7J, the thing that makes them rare is that in the late 90's, Borbet made a limited run of 500 sets in this size with the 4x114,3 bolt pattern. 

They weren't bad looking when I picked them up, but they had some corrosion under the coating on the "polished" lips, so I sent them off to the paint strippers that are near me, and for 70 euros I had them back the next day, completely clean.

One of the wheels did have some damage from where the PO tried to strip the coating so he could polish them, unfortunately, this left some pretty deep gashes that I had to try and sand/polish out.




So this is how they look on the car, pretty decent I think.













The plan was to polish the lips, and paint the centers, but in order to polish the lips, I'll have to send them off to a company to turn them down which is a bit more money than I can afford right now, so for the time being, they're gonna be completely painted.

Thanks Leon!

Started painting today, in the end I chose for a flat dark silver over a matte black base, turned out really well so far.

Tomorrow, I'll hopefully paint the other 2, and the centercaps.

They look pretty good in that color Lucas.

The wheels look great.

Paint went down super smooth.

Nice work.

Love Volvo wagons. I had a 84 245 for 6 years with no issues.

I too had to catch up on the maintenance and substandard parts. Took about 6 months, but once I had everything back to OE, the car was bulletproof.

Looking forward to pics.

Cheers

Man you've been busy, where in the uk are you moving to?