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I have a 2005 v50 t5 wagon with 138,000 miles. It's from Vermont and currently resides in San Diego. It has rust on the body, which a body shop I know can repair for $500 (and get it back to it's black color), and he can repaint with a new color for another $500. It's a great deal, and he's doing a job on my Sprinter van right now and it looks great. However, I converted my Sprinter and want it to look good, get rid of rust, etc.
For the Volvo, I'm wondering if it's worth it. I'm trying to figure out how much longer it will last. If i take it to a shop for inspection it will be about $130--which includes visual inspection and codes. But I'm wondering your thoughts on all of this: if a $130 inspection is worth it, vs me just getting under the car and looking at the amount of rust and pushing on things and getting a sense of the structural integrity. I haven't used a mechanic out here because I mostly just work on the Volvo and my van when something needs repair. This Volvo has been strong and hasn't needed much.
Out here, I could buy a California t5 wagon (no rust, no rough winters) for ~4-6,000 (doubt any of these will be stick shift, which mine is, and I like). The interior would be pristine, which is not the case for my t5. There's a rip on my seat. Headliner was removed and could be replaced. The driver side mirror needs to be replaced; it's cracked. There's a cracked windshield. This world is filled with garbage, and I like the idea of holding onto something vs just scrapping it. Maybe keep it until I go with an EV. What are your thoughts? Should I invest $1000 in removing rust and a new paint job (would go with denim blue, kind of the iconic VW Beatle Blue), or just the $500 to rid the rust and match the paint, or just leave as is. I feel like it's one of the best looking (not mine : ) and functional cars out there (with the hatchback), and if it was an EV, I'd repaint in a heart beat.
Oof. You reminded me of one of the best reasons to live in the desert! ;-)
My thoughts are that $500 to get that rust "fixed" is probably a good investment, looking at the project as a VERY short-term solution. With rust popping out in that many places, you can be sure that it's in a lot of other places, just waiting to come through the paint. Still, if you can get another year or two out of the car looking good before it starts going south again, it makes sense to me (though really only because it's a MT car - an auto with the other issues, I'd be more tempted to just swap it out for something in better shape). Like this one that just popped up locally (love the looks of that car)...
I'd second that - to really fix rust you'd need to strip away way more paint, weld in fresh metal etc. Given the damage is on the sides of the car it will be easier to match colors since there's less fading but black is also the hardest color to repaint since it shows all the prep flaws. If you want to change colors - have you looked into having the car wrapped? I wouldn't go over the top investing a lot - if you have rust in the usual fender well spots, the underside will also have rust. You can't make it out to be a Cali car so I'd just do the basic repairs.
Thanks for this. Yeah, the painter seems to be good. He removed dents from my sprinter van and is painting it now and only charged $2200. He said he ordered some fiberglass for the Volvo, so I think he's planning on removing parts of the panels, using some bondo, and then repainting black (with the corresponding Volvo color). He said the rust wouldn't come back. For $500 more, it might be nice to have a new color (but then there would be clear coat on top of that). I don't know how he's doing it for as cheap as he is, but we've kind of become friends, so I think he's doing me a favor as well. So total, it would be $1000 to repaint it another color and fix the rust (I have denim blue left over from the van which is what I would probably use, though it's single stage, so would probably want to do clear coat over that, so it might be a little more than $1000). But yeah, the big question for me is how much of the underbody is soon to be toast/impossible to work on, and maybe that question is really something I would need a mechanic for (which would be $200 for reading the codes, diagnosing the reduced engine performance--I have the codes from OBD but this would be with VIDA), and looking at mechanical aspects of wagon.
2005 v50 t5; Worth it to repaint?
