My 1980 345 DL

[S10NPH]

Just bought my dream 340 last weekend. It's 1980, one owner, 34,500 miles(!) and in fabulous condition.






The family:



I'm thinking of selling the blueline now that I have bought the 345.

[volvosneverdie]

Woah.
that looks like a beauty dude. Very well bought indeed.
Never seen a blueline before. Did they differ much from the Redlines?

[trabitom99]

Superb, good buy! Keep the Blueline, there's something nice about owning all those various Volvo generations

Tom

[S10NPH]

See for yoursef!




As far as I can tell, it's a 340 in a 360's clothes. It's 1989 and has a 1.7 engine.

[S10NPH]

Superb, good buy! Keep the Blueline, there's something nice about owning all those various Volvo generations

Tom

I know. I might do. Talking about the generations thing, I used to own a beautiful 1996 440 1.9TD GS in deep red, which was immaculate.

I sold it to a friend to use for a few years until I could buy it back, but she had an unfortunate encounter with a wall

[volvosneverdie]

Looks really nice.
Very very clean too. You must be looking after it well.
Like you say, it looks far more 360 than 340 astheticly, but thats not a bad thing.
Is it equiped with pas etc? or was the 'special edition' extras confined to the asthetics?

[S10NPH]

Unfortunately only the aesthetics!
The extra equipment as far as I can see is a temperature gauge, sunroof, rev counter, a fuel economy dial (which doesn't work), and heated seats (which also don't work, but I don't know why). Other than that, I think it's just a 'posh' 360 interior and exterior styling such as alloys and spoiler. Oh and the blue line going through all the upholstery.

It's very strange quite how much difference there is between the 345 and the blueline. The 345 feels a lot better built and more solid, but feels really old, like a proper classic car. The blueline feels like it should be a modern car, but in fact isn't. Maybe the fact that the blueline has twice as many miles on the clock as the 345 has something to do with it.

[Ride_on]

That was my first car! Same colour/model/year! Served me very well indeed

Found an olde fashioned film print of it, not great quality.

Spots, BMW 3 series steel wheels (same dimensions as the GLT alloys), Goodyear NCT tyres, lowered stiffened/front suspension, cherry bomb exhaust, Monroe gas shocks and sprayed black. Rusted to death about 10 years ago after upgrading to 360.

[MCHUDD]

Hi S10NPH.
Just spotted your motor.What a cracker.Not many of these machines left.Well done.
Cheers Mark.

[S10NPH]

Thanks. I just had it undersealed this week to protect it, and have treated it to a very expensive car cover. Hopefully that will mean that it will last for years to come!

[S10NPH]

Wowzer, it's been 5 years since I last updated this thread! I guess I didn't really have much to report.

Anyway, shortly after buying the car, I had it undersealed. Unfortunately, the garage put the underseal right up to the door bottoms to cover the sill, which gave the car a delightful tide mark, making it look a lot ropier than it in fact is:


So a few weeks ago, I decided it was time for the underseal to go. After a lot of hard graft scrubbing and peeling, it all came away. Then it was primed, and painted in Volvo 132 Marine Blue.









I am very pleased with the result

I think the only other updates I have are that I recently acquired a replacement tunnel ashtray to replace the old cracked one, and a correct rear seat belt to replace the later type installed on the back passenger side.

I am having one little problem with the car though, which is permanent heat! No matter how hard I put the heater controls onto cold, there is still some warm air coming through the side vents. This does make the car rather unbearable on a hot day! Does anyone have any bright ideas as to what might be the problem? My guess is a sticky valve in the heater control - I have got a replacement from a scrap car, but it's a fairly big job to replace it.

[S10NPH]

By the way, it would be lovely if the forum would not chop the right side off all my pictures displaying

[SteveP]

Looks great! Things like tide marks like that bug me, especially when the sills look so good underneath Big improvement!

So out of all these early ones.... which is your favourite? I think I prefer your 345... it's a great colour.

[bogbasic]

Awesome - looks like Petrol Blue. If you resize your piccies to something a bit smaller than original before uploading they shouldn't get...

[Hell Driver]

I hadn't seen this thread at all, only seen in now as you've updated it!

Heater problem may be a broken lever within the heater workings. My '77 car went for 10 years with socks stuffed up the footwell vents When I got the car, I took them out, it was pretty bad in summer and had to block them up again and put up with the side vents which were also broken and unshutable (Brittle brown plastic). I soon put vents in from a later car but the heat still came through. Helped to keep the engine cool though one scortching hot day when towing. Would have boiled over if I'd not had the heat circulating!

Sills look better without the underseal, I did the same with my old car after painting them and over the arches with underseal. It looked really bad once it got mud on so I took it all off a few years later and repainted.