General

Karl did send me some pictures from our volvo C303 and made an attractive offer. My interest arouse, but I wanted much more information. Above all I wanted to compare the offer to others. To get this opportunity I wrote a letter with a wishlist about the pictures I would like to see.

In the next days some letters from Karl arrived with more than 70 pictures in total. He tried very hard. It seemed as if I myself would have been below of this car. Some pictures lead to misunderstandings, but on request Karl wrote, that the perspective produced a wrong impression - i.E. the fan for main cooling.

In retrospect I think the jugding of the pictures was very difficult. I.E. the rust is very present if fotografed with a flashlight and looks more ugly than in reality. But you can not decide if the rust is going deep or is just on the surface.

From outside

The picture from outside are nothing special. They show the general status of the car as an used vehicle with low trim. You can't say much about the technical parts from that, but you can see that the fotografs at all are not beautyfied. I can trust them as they are.

From inside

Here only some fotos from inside, I use some more on other pages of my site. They are an example what you can recognize and what not.

The picture of the cockpit shows the place for choke and hand throttle, which have been empty after the changes for unleaded petrol. The hand throttle was too dangerous, and the choke is positioned now more down on the engine cover between the seats.

The batteries are quit new, all vehicles comming from the army storage need new batteries. On the floor you can see rust from the battery acid, but it is only on the surface and not so dangerous as it looks like on the picture.

From below

Here you can see the weak points on our Volvo C303: A piece of the frame near the back axle and the knuckles on the front axle. The frame looks rusty, but in this area, where the frame member runs upwards, there is an additional layer of steel welded on the top an the bottom of the frame. Between these layers of steel water may invade an from inside the rust wll cause the frame to swell. That is a critical part.

The knuckles look greasy. On my Volvo it is only to much grease from the lubrification nipples and oil from the change leaving the depot. Oil at this area often is an indication of defect steering gaiters. These rubber sleeves can be controlled by a full turn in the steering an then looking into the protected parts of the knuckles. The brake lines look good.

Here three more details: The petrol tank looks nearly perfect, only some scratches and a little rust at the edges. The spring leafs are nearly without rust from downside. Very nice: To belts parallell for the power transmission. The fan is ok with all his 5 wings, depending on the angle of the camera it looks as if one is missing. The power transmission for the fan is by a little kardan axle from the water pump, not by an electric motor. At the front diff you can see a little bit oil, but only on the surface. The oil sump is nearly dry.