Here is a list of things done with Gurthang as a project car. At the beginning most of the tasks will be "managerial", but later on the restoration will really get started.
2011
Updating webpages is nowadays just so yesterday... If interested, go and see the story written in Finnish (with photos in English!) from Ruumisauto.fi discussion forum.
2007
The Iron of Death is once again woken up from hibernation. All we needed was some extra power from a donor and heart started to pump again. It is easy to get new twisty feeling to a mother's day (second sunday of May in Finland) weekend with a hearse - specially if the exhaustion pipe of the hearse is heavily rusted during winter...
2006
It's alive! In the beginnin of July The Iron of Death was brought back to life. It was inspected if it fulfils all the technical vechile requirements. The inspection was passed without any remarks. The inspector just said: "It's a harsh one."
Before the inspection all lubrication oils and spark plugs were changed. The brakes were also checked. Being stored for some time the car was also a little dusty. After outside wash, inside vacuuming and new hoodemblem the car was like "brand new". Even the air inside was breahtleble without major difficulties.
Let's hit the road! After 1000 kilometre roadtrip the hearse was brought back to homebase without any problems on the road. Even the fuel consumption remained reasonable and the engine didn't lose oil. =)
2005
The year 2005 was as silent as a night on your local graveyard.
2004
- 21.02.2004 - The hearse came to Finland from Germany. Thank you Henkka! =)
- 24.02.2004 - To the customs and motor vechile inspection.
- 19.03.2004 - Motor vechile tax (29%) 443,70 euro and VAT (12,4%) 55,01 euro. Together 498,71 euro, which is too much! The customs randomized and came to the conclusion that the taxation value of the car is 1700 euro.
- 20.03.2004 - The car passed the motor vechile inspection on second attempt. ;)
- 26.03.2004 - The motor vechile tax payed.
- 09.04.2004 - I sent an e-mail to Rappold with few photos and German registeration book. I asked about production amount and other things like that. Let's see if they'll answer after the Easter holidays...
- 13.04.2004 - The managing director Ingo Rappold himself answered to my questions. He didn't tell me the exact number of production (too much trouble to go through archives just for me). They have produced about 5 of this type of hearses! Less than ten for sure. Here are few quotes from Ingo Rappold :
- "It's correct, that this hearse is a Rappold one."
- "There had been some of them with this S-Class-face-lifting, perhaps about 10 hearses."
- "At that time we produced nearly the half of the hearses as short wheel base and the half of them with long wheel base."
- 19.04.2004 - The rusty Iron of Death is now registered in Finland and the registeration number is ???-666. =)
- 22.05.2004 - The hearse has been moved to the deep forests nearby "the burial ground of Hornets" (A Finnish Airforce F-18 Hornet crashed there in 2001. Read the story.) to wait for the restoration.
- 01.09.2004 - I bought "new" 15 by 7.5 inch wheels for the hearse. The wheels have to be polished again and the back sides have to painted red.
latest update: 07/19/11
