My Volvo 850R project is finally ready for paint!

This weekend marks a huge milestone in my Volvo 850R restoration project — the car is finally fully prepped for paint! What started three months ago as the cheapest Volvo 850R on Marketplace (with faded pink paint, rust, and dents everywhere) has slowly turned into a massive DIY bodywork project.

In this video, me and my friend Leon spend an entire day working on the door sills. Since we welded in brand-new sills earlier, they needed a lot of finishing work before paint. That meant hours of sanding welds, applying bondo filler, sanding again, and repeating the process three times until the surface was smooth. What looked like a “small job” actually took us from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M.! We also masked the door openings to keep dust and primer overspray out of the interior — which turned out to be way trickier than expected.

On Sunday, we finally got to spray primer on the remaining chassis parts: the roof, sills, trunk lid, and spoiler. The only problem? Rain. So every time it stopped, we had to push the 850R outside, spray a panel, then pull it back inside with my Volvo V70 before the rain started again. A frustrating but funny process!

Now the car is completely ready for its fresh red respray. After four weekends of sanding, bondo, welding, and primer, the 850R is finally at the stage I’ve been waiting for. Next up: the actual paint job!