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Panda (Classic) Sisley Panda restoration

Introduction

Just at the tail end of a restoration of a Sisley 4x4 - few pics attached
My wife has been after one since seeing them knocking about in the hills in Italy, and eventually picked one up this summer.
Overall not too bad but pretty fugly- painted over in some nice green bathroom gloss paint which was harder than rocks to sand off - only a few rusty bits including a couple of chunks of the sills that needed cutting out/repairing, but there were quite a lot of broken bits of trim, raggedy carpet and the wrong wheels but luckily a mint but rotten sisleuy came up in the area so bought that to scavenge the best bits off..
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Panda stripped out to do the welding on the shell and assess the interior parts.
Was originally blue - overpainted with nasty green - Wife has selected Verdi tropico green for the final finish
 

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Work begins on stripping the paint back and assessing the dents and rust - luckily not too much of the latter. Luckily the car had been fitted with some nice rust free replacement doors before we bought it.
 

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After a hell of a lot of sanding, a bit of dent removal and some repairs to the screen pillars, finally masked up and put in primer
 

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Verdi tropico and clearcut applied, and starting the build up, either refurbishing parts, using better from the donor or the odd new part
 

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The best door trims/seatbelts/carpet/seats were selected from the original and donor cars and fitted - the trim in the donor car was fantastic. The seats in the donor not so good but had the headrests the original car was missing. Headrests swapped over after figuring out how to get them out.
 

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Need to get rid of those wheels!
Proper 4xr rims on the donor though very rusty. Took a long time to clean up, prime and spray in 2k alpine white
 

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Aside from the body and interior, it needed a few machanical jobs attending to -
Engine ran like a dog till I finally noticed the idle solenoid wire was detached..
Carb was stripped and cleaned, same with distributor and a thorough tune-up.
One of the front shocks had been replaced with a standard panda shock so the car was tilting - donor car came up trumps again.
New steering radius arms fitted and lower ball joints - much improved steering
What looked like engine oil drained from gearbox, and replaced with ep80/90 - together with new gear linkage bushes the gearchange is transformed.
Still a few outstanding jobs - heater matrix replacement next as current one is blocked solid, a couple of rims need changing as the thin metal around the valves finally gave way, and need to find a replacement rear sunroof latch.
 

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Love that you spent so much time and effort getting it immaculate, then took it mud plugging! Well done that man(y)
Just waiting for the warnings of impending doom over your choice of gearbox oil now though:eek:
 
Thanks - it was bought for my wife who is mad on them and we do a lot of off roading. The one small perk she gets of living with a car restorer is a free resto every now and then.
I'm sure the oil will be fine, it's a 26 year old gearbox anyway so it's only going one way - and the new oil has dramatically improved gearchange and noise so I'm pretty happy so far!
 
Saw this one and carandclassic a while ago. Nice to see that someone restored it to its former glory, great job there and love that you've posted so many pictures! You'll get lots of fun out of that Sisley now! :)
 
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