Arvid Henriksen’s Volvo PV444
It took 10 year before what appeared to be a nice PV, would hit the road. Small surprises along the way, made the road to a good car bumpy and more time consuming than expected. Sounds familiar?
The history starts in 2002, when Arvid Henriksen – after being a member of LSVK in Norway for a good while, think the time is come to get his own classic car. It had to be a Volvo. It had been the family brand all the way – at least since 1959. The Volvo to be was a PV444 1957. The Volvo PV 444 was produced from 1944, although only a few cars were made before the end of WW2. First public display was September 1st, 1944 in Stockholm. When the production ended in 1958, 196 005 cars had been produced, and the model was replaced by PV 544. The first years the car came with a B4B motor with 1.4 liter four cylinder engine, producing about 40 hp. In late 1955 the engine was upgraded to a B14A, and in 1957 the B16A and B16B (two carburetors) engines came. Arvid has the comfortable B16A option.
- «One of the reasons to why I bought exactly this car, was the mileage. It actually rounded 42’ km this summer”, says Arvid. The mechanics is in very good order, reflecting the low mileage and good maintenance. On the mechanical area, it has not been a lot of work.
The chassis on the other hand, required a lot of attention. Nothing unusual about that, but it was really a lot to do. From (including) the doors and backwards, major work had to be done. The door on the right hand side was cut horizontally, welding in half a door from a donor car. The fact that the self-made door had a better panel fit than the original one, is one of the things Arvid is most satisfied with.
- The rear wings was eaten up by rust to the extent that they could be pulled off by hand, without removing a single screw. The moderate amount of bubbles in the paint, hid large areas completely damaged by corrosion. This fact resulted in two things. First Arvid bought a ’66 Mustang (imported from California) right after the Volvo, as he saw it was going to be a long time before the Volvo was usable. The close to concurs Mustang became the event and meet-up car, while the Volvo was placed in the garage for fixing. In 2004 a donor car was bought from Halden. Before it was sold again, it provided lots of parts for the main car – wings, doors, shock absorbers and the boot lid. Other body parts were bought in Sweden at VP-autoparts (www.vp-autoparts.com) in Fristad, Sweden.
It has been a lot of welding - numerous of hours have gone into this since 2002. Arvid has done almost everything himself. After a while with a lot of stripping and welding, the motivation dropped. A period no progress followed, but luckily motivation came back, and it became fun and interesting to work with the car again.
To prepare a car for a paint job, is far from the most fun part of a restoration project (the authors personal opinion, is that it is not possible to get further away from the definition of the word fun). Arvid got help with the preparation work. As it turned out, the preparation was not good enough for painting, so another 6 weeks were spent. Paint was applied in color clear black, without any clear top coat. The job is excellent – the car is shining!
After the paintjob was completed, it was just a walk in the park. New interior trim (textile) was made in the original color combination blue/grey. The seats were taken out, cleaned and sawn over again, using the original materials. It turned out good – not perfect, but good enough.
- “During a test drive, the car was far from good to handle», Arvid says. The 15” diagonal tires made the car hard to keep straight on the road. The tires were changes to modern radial tires, same dimension, with narrow white walls. It is a whole different car to drive – it drives beautifully. Solfrid (his wife) adds that the seats – well, they could have been better. As it is a car without safety belts, and there is literally no side support, you easily become a victim for the Centrifugal force (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force) in turns and for active driving. –«like sitting on a big mushroom», Solfrid says.
The 6 volts system was in good shape. There is no radio in the car, but Arvid got ahold of a FM radio that works the 6v setup – it is ready to be put in. In the life of the PV444, the wind screen changed from a split window to a one piece screen. The latter came in 1958, so this car has a split front window.
First test drive was done sitting on a wooden box, as the seats were not mounted. But really, this was just to turn the car around in the yard. The first real test was a big longer, up to Astrid and Reidar on Mosserød, where the drive was well documented.
This summer it has been a lot of driving and smiling. Spite of the length of the Norwegian summer (short), many miles has been driven. In these old cars, there are always things that need attention. There are not many things on the agenda for this winter, in regards of the Volvo. Putting in the FM might be done, and if Arvid gets his hands on a 4-speed gear box (from PV544), the 3-speed original one will be replaced.
A big thanks to Arvid and Solfrid that allowed me to write a few words about this project. It is an impressive piece of work you have done here, Arvid!
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