1977 343 - from the Netherlands to the UK

Hello

My name is Si?n, and I live in the UK. I am writing this in English, because I am afraid that I don?t speak Dutch. I can speak Welsh, but that?s probably not any help for most of you! I would have put it through Google translate, but the translation comes out quite strangely sometimes.

I?m a huge Volvo 340 enthusiast ? I have a 1979 343 DL:

A 1980 345 DL:

And a 1985 340 DL variomatic:

However, there was one 340 that I was longing for, and couldn?t find in the UK ? a 1976-77 model year car. These are the most interesting of 340s in my opinion because of how different these early cars are from all the later ones.

I decided to look a little further away from the UK, and so I eventually found a suitable gold 1977 model for sale at Dafhobby. So on Friday, I travelled from Cambridge to Sittard to collect it. I thought you might like to read my story of the collection, and see some pictures.

After finishing work on Thursday evening, I headed over to the local van rental place to collect a Transit recovery van. It had had a fairly hard life, with the mileometer showing 206,000 miles. I'd also never driven anything quite so long before, and the first thing I had to do was a right turn onto a busy road at rush hour! Anyway, with a slight diversion we made it to Dover, but not quite in time for the correct ferry. So we sailed at 00:50, arriving in Calais at 03:30 (French time). After 3 hours sleep at a motel with a thankfully huge car park, we set off through Belgium for the Netherlands. I hadn't realised beforehand, but we drove right past the 300 factory in Born (destined to make Minis from next year).

That is where I was greeted by the purpose of the trip:

I wasn't completely crazy as Danny had sent me lots of pictures of all possible trouble spots beforehand, so I knew what it was going to be like. Reality showed that the pictures were accurate, which was a relief. Danny took me to a local office which could deal with exports and deregistration, and the appropriate Dutch paperwork was presented to me for ?25.

The next task was to load the car onto the van. This was made harder by the fact that the car had decided to choose that moment not to start. Happily, after a couple of replacement batteries and much head-scratching, a loose connection onto the starter motor was found and reconnected! And so, the 343 was loaded onto the van:

Driving with a 343 on the back was interesting, but ultimately okay.

We got a few hoots and waves from a couple of other British vans too. Unfortunately, extremely heavy traffic on the Brussels ring road at Friday rush hour meant that we missed our planned ferry back too, but the next sailing wasn't much later. I was very relieved to have got to Calais:

The journey back to Cambridge was slow but uneventful, and the next morning came. Now, because I am completely insane, I had booked the car for an MOT on Saturday morning at 11:30, so I could use the van to take it there. I tested everything, and the windscreen washer pump connectors needed a clean to make it work, but everything else worked. Until we tried to start it! In no way was the car going to idle, and would only run with my foot slightly on the throttle. At which point we abandoned the MOT idea and suddenly felt much better about life!

We then spent the rest of the day having some fun with the car.

First step was trying to get it to idle. I adjusted the idle mixture, then eventually after buying some clean petrol and revving the nuts off it to clean everything out (the driveway was quite black at that point!), it settled to a lovely idle. I then adjusted the idle speed, but only by ear.

All ignition components look fairly new, as does the alternator. We patched up a small exhaust leak.

Next job was to replace the headlamps with right hand drive units. This was actually not a bad job, but the spare headlamps I had were connected by multi-plugs - the ones on the car were just a mass of solid wires. So I decided that the easiest solution was to simply swap over the glass lens.

Next job was to fit the proper '77 chrome door mirrors. One is brand new and perfect, the other is pitted and the arm is completely seized (happily in the correct location). But hey, it looks better than the plastic ones:

The interior of the car is really in damn good condition for a '77. The air vents are intact, the dash is not warped, and even the steering wheel isn't too badly faded. The only real issue is that the seats are quite badly torn. The glovebox works, the ashtray works, the rear door cards are immaculate. The front ones are held on by screws along the top, which is inevitable. The only thing which was actually seriously broken was the seat winder mechanism for both front seats - they were completely smashed, almost as if someone had kicked them. Anyway, I'd noticed this in the pictures so had already got spares lined up, which fitted beautifully (although they are black not brown - the other side was much worse and is completely black).

Next job was to sort out the wheels, which were obviously from a 86- car. I'd bought some spares along with the car, so got some decent tyres fitted to those on Sunday afternoon. I'm now just waiting for some hub-cap pins so they can stay in place. When fitting the new wheels, I was pleased at how solid the jacking points were...until I got to the rear left jacking point. All appeared well until the tyre cleared the ground, at which point the sill made some crunching noises and parted company with the jacking point. Oops.

The only other bits of significant rust are a few small spots in the engine bay, and one on the front crossmember bar:

There are a few small spots dotted around, but nothing major:

I'm told that the car was restored a few years ago, before being bought by an old lady. It had a respray at that time, which is showing some signs of wear. The bonnet is not original, and is yellow underneath the gold paint.

I've found a few small problems with the car, but again, nothing major.
The hazard warning switch has snapped in half. It just about works via a gaffer-tape repair, but that's not really satisfactory. It was also wired incorrectly, so I have re-connected it according to the green manual.
There is a small coolant leak from the top of the radiator somewhere.
The tube going from the air filter to the exhaust manifold is missing, and indeed the recipient on the manifold has rusted off completely. I'll try to take a picture at some stage, I've forgotten so far.
The boot light is missing.
I can't get the vario selector into park, although Danny managed to do so when the car was on the truck.
The handbrake is basically ineffective as I managed to drive down the driveway without realising it was still fully on.
The driver's seat tipping wire has come loose, but I'm about to fix it.
The driver's door rests too far from the body, can't quite work out why.
The driver's door lock button doesn't work, I've had a look inside the door and the little pin that it should push down just won't budge - I might get a 'new' lock from a scrapyard.
The interior rear-view mirror is not original.

Oh the other thing is it doesn't like starting. No matter what I do, it won't idle without a good few goes and some enthusiastic revving.

It's going for its MOT on Saturday, which I'm sure it will fail now that that sill has decided to be rusty. And the handbrake doesn't work. I've been told by the tester that an MPH speedo is not necessary for the test, but it would be useful to have one if I can ever find one. Once it's MOTd, I can sort out registering it with the UK vehicle agency.

Anyway, here are a few more uncensored frivolous images of brown '77 brilliance:

'77 meets '79:

And finally a video of me driving it - I cut out a good 3 minutes of me failing to reverse a LHD car in a straight line:


Enjoy!

Congratulations! Nice to see so many pictures of a beautiful car. I hope it passes MOT in a couple of months and you could get it registered there

That sir just looks like a dream to me
Congratulations with the new car and I wish you good luck with the restoration!

Welcome to this site! You are probably the owner of the most valueble volvo 343-carpark that we can imagine....
If you would like to have the same bumper-striping on your new car as on the red one, please send me a message

It's a very nice 343 you got there! The gold color of the exterior and the brown of the interior, it's awesome. I bet you even smell the 70's in there

I had one with exactly the same combination of colors myself, it was a 78 (MY79) 343 DL Special automatic. I liked that car a lot, but unfortunately it also had a lot of problems (didn't run, lots of rusty metal) that I can't repair on my own, and it had to go Now that car is replaced by a nice 90's 343

If it will help you, I think I may have the rearviewmirror of my 343 in my garage. No idea if it is the same as one of '76 (it's not the same as a modern one), but you can have it for costs of sending if you want. I think I think I may have one or two windowwinders like the one on your photo too.

Nice find, congratulations!

I know there's a member with a '76 that needs to go.. There's a big chance he will respond here very soon!

awesome!
good luck with the car, it's definately worth all the efforts to get it back on the road again.

Concerning the wiring of the headlights; I sorted out the wires a couple of years ago. Never thought someone would/could actually use it
forum.volvo300club.nl/showthread.php?t=6678

It is in Dutch, if you need a translation just let me know.

awesome indeed!
is the original B14.0E still in there?

Thank you all for your kind comments .

AvdAkker - yes, it is the original B14.0, I'm a little worried as it has reached almost 120,000 KM :hmmz2:

volvofiel - thanks, that may be very useful if I need to do it again. I hadn't realised before that the really early headlamps were wired differently.

General Custom - that would be very kind of you - could you maybe send me a picture of the rear-view mirror?

Great car!
Good Luck with it, this one is in better shape than the 77 you where asking for that is in my shed.