'87 360 GLT B200F leather, no MoT, should I or shouldn't I?

[trabitom99]

I just got off the phone to a lady who's more or less prepared to give me her grey-metallic GLT for the price of its scrap value. She's even prepared to travel the 300kms to my gran's & drop it off.

TBH I want to be talked out of it. I've been after a leather interior for a while, but she admitted to being a heavy smoker and the heating elements don't work anymore.

By the time I've paid for her petrol and her train ticket home I'll probably be looking at 200 Euros for a car without MoT (exhaust emissions are too high - her mechanic says its the cat - and it wobbles at high speed).

No other value-raising accessories, certainly no A/C, all else its got is central locking & a sunroof.

I've seen no pictures of the thing, and dammit, I even forgot to ask if it's a saloon or a hatch.

What do you reckon? I need to decide by tomorrow lunchtime ...

Tom

[pistonpen paultje]

Were the hell does it need to come from then?

A leather interior in good condition is worth the 200 bucks. The seatheating is probably just disconnected, and worst case scenario: Fit those of you normal seat in these (not a hard task to do. Takes about 3 hours)

360's with leather interior often have a lot of special parts: maybe Original volvo soundsystem, snowcap, headlight wipers, powersteering, GLT dash, klok in centre console, foggy lamps, frontspoiler, rearspoiler and so on. I think its worth the try. Nice for some extra spares, some extra options. If I had the oppurtunity here in the NL, I would do it anyway...The options you'll not be using is very easy to sell. In the NL it is, anyway.

[redline]

200 euros is about £140 so that sounds a good price

iirc over here an 87 model dosent have to have a catalytic convertor ,

if its the same over there then surely you could buy a cheaper standard non cat pipe on it (better performance without the cat as well )

high speed wobble could be wheels need balancing , wheel bearings ,or steering arm bushes none of which are expensive

ok so the lady smokes , as long as theres no burns the leather seats can be cleaned and then add leather feed .

I would contact her again and try to get more details but on the info given it dosent sound bad

[V6 Man]

Indeed!

The smoking isn't so much of a problem with leather as it would be with cloth. Cloth seats can reek of cig smoke, whereas the leather can often just get away with a wipe with a damp cloth and a good polish/feed. this is assuming that there are no burn holes etc, and even then they are likely to be in the seat base of the drivers seat only.

Non Cat 360 Glt's were available over here as Redline says. If the law is such that a 1987 car doesn't need one (here it's 1992 onwards that does) then fitting a non cat front pipe or even just cutting out the cat and fitting a straight piece of pipe would work. At a push I dare say you could ditch the lambda sensor and get ECU's from the B200E from someone over here easily enough.

There's also the added fact that 300's are getting rarer to find now, so not only have you got a set of leather seats, but a spare engine, gearbox, wiring, lights etc etc etc. If you have the space to store it then it could be a handy source of spares if you don't want to put it back on the road.

[retrocool73]

Get it!
I would!

[petefarrell360]

Go on Tom! But then we all know I wouldn't even need to think about it, potentially I've got two more on their way. Even if you don'y get anything rare from it, as Rupert and others have pointed out, there are a lot of useful spares on it.

Pete

[filthyjohn]

I don't think my opinion is really of any use here, what with my self-destructive compulsion to own every cool car I see, but I say do it, as the worst case scenario is selling it on at a loss.
Like I say though, don't listen to me as I have a rather skewed perspective on these matters, and have managed to fill a 2000 square foot unit with cars

[trabitom99]

Thanks for all your replies!

I'm pretty sure it has a 3-way cat - the papers say the car has 80kw/109PS. Unfortunately in Germany that means there's no way of going back - either mend the cat or no exhaust emissions certificate and no way of registering the car.

So spares then. Next problem - "space". My (deceased) gran's house is empty at the moment, so I can park it in the driveway for a while (the garage is already filled with the GLT) - but anyone wanting to enter the house would have to squeeze past the car.

The lady said she smoked in the car for the last ten years. I can see the leather being not as bad as cloth for picking up pongs, but what about the foam inside the seats? My cat p*ssed on one of the GLi's front seats once - no chance - they had to go straight to the scrapyard despite all my scrubbing!

I'll know more by lunchtime. If I don't buy it, it goes to the scrapyard this evening

Tom

P.S. BTW redline / V6 Man what is leather feed?

T.

P.P.S. Any Dutch members interested? The car is in 37130 Gleichen, about 4hrs from, say, Arnhem.

T.

[pistonpen paultje]

Damn, all the nice cars are getting offered when I dont have the money.

Car is free? Then if its still drivable, and she would be able to bring it here it would cost me about 40 euro's for her to get here, and 40 to bring her back by car and back (LPG, big differnce) Not bad!

I think you should do it anyway. And if you dont, ill ask Frits, maybe he's interested...

[redline]

leather feed helps the leather to stay supple and not crack,it also stops water penetration so your cat can pee on them as much as it likes lol

http://www.theleathercare.co.uk/leatherfeeders.html

[trabitom99]

it also stops water penetration so your cat can pee on them as much as it likes lol

LOL! The smell was REALLY awful, and I tried all kinds of stuff, it made no difference ... It just ended ponging of cat pee AND dettol.

I've got a few more details about the car. After sleeping a night over it, the lady's decided NOT to drive the car over to me. I can't blame her, it'd be a 3 hour trip plus a 4 hour train drive home, I think she was initially overjoyed that someone had taken an interest at all ...

The car is a SALOON. In '87 they made a special GLT edition over here, (the injected 360 saloons were called GLE's) with GLT trimmings (14" moon alloys, boot lid & front lip spoiler).

Accessorywise, leather is all it has (4-dial dash, manual windows, mirrors & steering) - and AFAIK the rear seat won't fit a hatch. So it's likely I won't travel the 650kms in all just to pick up the front seats - they take up a bit of space and who knows if I ever manage to find a leather hatch rear seat ...

If anyone else this side of the channel is still interested, there may be a bit of time yet - the car is not going to be scrapped immediately, the lady's just taking it to her mechanic this evening where she's going to pick up her new car. I'm sure the guy would be quite happy to remove and store bits off it ... for a price.

Tom

[V6 Man]

The car is a SALOON. In '87 they made a special GLT edition over here, (the injected 360 saloons were called GLE's) with GLT trimmings (14" moon alloys, boot lid & front lip spoiler).

Accessorywise, leather is all it has (4-dial dash, manual windows, mirrors & steering)

We got those too, in black only. They were part of a limited run of black 360 saloons and silver 240saloons and estates. They only got alloys, spoilers and leather and were launched to celebrate Volvos 50th anniversary. All were badged GLT

[petefarrell360]

Ah, those ones were in the brochure of which I have somewhere, and we once owned a 360 GLT 50th anniversary saloon in black, but as no one would take it and we had no room, it had to be broken up. I don't think they got leather from memory Rupert, but otherwise spot on. Ours certainly didn't and from memory the brochure didn't mention it.

Pete

[trabitom99]

Pete, I've found the brochure you mean ...
http://www.volvo300mania.com/forum-uk/v ... 30&start=8

Tom

[classicswede]

You can't say no to a cheap car especialy with leather interior