warninglight

Rewire complete. 

Have made a few changes. The switched fusebox is fed from a master 100A relay which is triggered from the ignition key. This takes the heavy load off the ignition barrel which could get extremely hot with all of the current for all systems passing through it.
The coil is fed straight off the barrel and is unfused, as it should be, so even if the relay fails the engine won't stop.
Apart from that I made sure all cable ends had good quality spade connectors and heat shrink wrap with adhesive. This way they're pretty tough and reliable and eliminates some of the nasty and corroded original connectors.
The engine bay is much cleaner now without the fusebox, relays, and associated wiring nests.

Wiring for the reverse lights and overdrive now run inside, and I've packed the gap around the gearstick with insulation to cut down on road noise.

Important upgrade done to the brake lights. The original brake light switch is a fluid pressure switch which tends to only activate when you're standing on the pedal. 
I've changed it for an electrical pedal switch, which needed a bracket made up.

A real pain to drill the bolt holes for this in the pedal box so the top hole is in at an awkward angle.

Still it does the trick and is a massive upgrade. The lights now come on as soon as you touch the pedal.
While the steering wheel was off I swapped the steering column coupling bush as it was really sloppy.


The steering column shroud also got a coat of paint after I did some repairs to the cracking brittle plastic with some epoxy.


Last few bits done inside. A new hazard switch.

I then remembered I bought a set of instrument panel stickers off Demon Tweeks.

So I then did what I originally meant to and sorted the dash light graphics.
Before.

After.

More than just a bhp figure, I think it's about the gearing, and having enough torque to keep in that top gear.
My modern V70 diesel manual is doing about 1500rpm at 70, my 1964 Austin 1100 was with the original diff doing 4700rpm at the same speed. The Volvo is about 100bhp/tonne and the Austin probably 50bhp/tonne, but the Volvo could manage with quite a lot less for cruising.

Back in the mid '90s I was on a trip to Italy and bought a car magazine.  On the back page was an advert for the Porsche 911 (993), which mentioned that when cruising at the 130km/h Autostrada speed limit in 6th gear, the engine was making exactly 37bhp.

More than just a bhp figure, I think it's about the gearing, and having enough torque to keep in that top gear.
My modern V70 diesel manual is doing about 1500rpm at 70, my 1964 Austin 1100 was with the original diff doing 4700rpm at the same speed. The Volvo is about 100bhp/tonne and the Austin probably 50bhp/tonne, but the Volvo could manage with quite a lot less for cruising.

You'll have to wait for the sound video because I just did this.



The wiring on this was getting on my tits.  Had a lot of instances whereby things work but not quite all the time, or fuses randomly blowing.  The original factory wiring is shite. I have now ripped out EVERYTHING.
You can see on the right here that the back of the fuel gauge stands in as an unfused positive terminal for almost everything under the dash including the wiper motor, indicators, heater fan and who knows what else, held on by a piddly 6mm nut. That is going to change.

I present the main light switch. Again, unfused and permanently live, with the permanent live cut and twisted into the feed to the small footwell lights, from factory.

The big feed to the wiper switch. Again, some dodgy chaining of big positive wires going on here.

The circuits which are fused are run off a shitty engine bay fusebox which is riveted together, and the rivets are starting to come loose causing random dropouts. That and the small issue of continental/glass fuses being total shite and hard to come by when you need them most.
Solution : bin off the fusebox in the engine bay, and run everything off a pair of blade fuseboxes inside the footwell.

The fusebox on the left is the permanent live one, which will run the interior dome light, indicators / hazards, and headlamps.
The box on the right will be ignition switched, but I am also going to add a main ignition relay so that the ignition switch isn't constantly handling all of the current running through the entire car.  I know it's designed to take it, but the switch (and key!) can get very hot and I'm just waiting on the contacts burning out, especially if I decide to add any more load in the future.
The important thing is that everything is going to be fused, and that the fuses are going to be easier to replace when needed.
I seem to be doing this all off the top of my head, WCPGW.

You work fast! Mine hasn't moved since you saw it, but I have ordered a fuel filter.
I'm off to Derby this weekend to meet some friends, both Amazon owners. One is driving his up from Kent. Your trip is making me seriously consider taking mine down.

It got later and I annoyed everyone.
Feels like it's added 30bhp, breathes so much more freely.  Not noisy either.
Then it tried to chuck an air filter off on the motorway.
Better bolts enroute. You'd think for 50 odd quid they'd include fixings..

Begone, pea shooter.
 

 
Had to retap one of the threads on the head as idiot here used a wrong thread pitch manifold stud off another car.  
 

 
CHONK PIPE
 






 
It won't start now as I've fucked up the idle screws and choke position, and it got dark. So I'll have to wait till later to annoy everyone.

Bcoz Sprotscar.
I think this is fast becoming the car with the most difference between "how it looks" and "how it is mechanically"

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Some more stuff tackled. Trying to keep in my head all of the things I thought about fixing while on the Rustival trip. Writing notes? How quaint! Just stay awake at night trying to sift through jumbled thoughts until 3AM.
It would probably be good to sort out the broken headlights.  Brief recap. A few weeks ago I fitted a latching relay which allowed me to control the full beam entirely through the flasher stalk instead of the antiquated floor switch. This worked brilliantly until it didn't.  Turns out that £3 of Chinese "INDUSTRIAL CONTROL" electronics aren't suited for, you know,  anything.  So the PCB basically melted (it wasn't even carrying notable current).  Before the Rustival trip I simply reinstated the floor dip switch to get us on the road.
Turns out I wasn't wrong to try and get rid of the floor switch because as soon as it got dark, I went to switch between main and dip on a dual carriageway and lost all headlights. We pulled into a layby, consulted the wiring diagram, and crimped a couple of wires together so that we had headlights (but no mains).
Time to fix that permanently.  
The solution here is to use a 'proper' relay, in this case one designed for an old VW bus / beetle. The relay number is DNI 0127. There are also Meyle and Durite equivalents, so they are easily come by.
Step 1, remove floor switch and hurl it into the depths of the garden.
Step 2, crimp spades on the end of the wires to the floor switch.  Also tee-solder the smaller red wire into the bigger one, as that's more structurally sound than crimping two wires into one spade.

Step 3, RELAY

Here is the pinout.

And here is what that looks like in real life.

Step 4 : Replace the fuse you blew because you forgot to disconnect the battery, and touched the permanent +12V against the metal dash. Oh wait, there's no continental fuses left..  

So it turns out this lighting setup is even better than the one I set up previously with the INDUSTRIAL CONTROL relay.  
- When the dipped headlights are off, the flasher stalk operates as a main beam flasher.
- When the dipped headlights are on, the flasher stalk toggles the main beam on and off like a modern car.
- The relay also serves the purpose of being a relay for both the mains, flasher and dipped.  So it takes away the load from the light switch, provides full current to the headlights (brighter!)  plus it means I can remove the flasher relay and wiring in the engine bay as it is no longer required.
So far this seems a far more robust and efficient setup, time will tell.
Engine and gearbox mounts replaced.  The gearbox one was particularly hanging and the propshaft was bouncing off the bottom of the transmission tunnel.

A set of high performance air filters attached.  The purpose being twofold. The generic SU HS6 pancakes I had on would sometimes smack against the clutch master cylinder reservoir on hard cornering or acceleration.  I also felt they were strangling the engine as they were so thin and miserable looking.  These by comparison are offset specifically to fit the Amazon, and are significantly more chunky.

 
Y THO   |  Y THO

 
Test drove this and was quite impressed.  The wishbone poly bushes have sharpened up the steering a fair bit. The engine and gearbox mounts have changed the gearshifts significantly, and overdrive seems to snick on in a much more dignified fashion. 
A little bit of the induction roar from the pancakes has actually disappeared, but it still sounds great when opened up. I'll take it.
Next up, I'll be fitting the sports exhaust, more polybushes, and doing a number of electrical upgrades to make it more reliable.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Homeward journey in the Amazon went well. It absolutely tanned the M6 north. Without the pressure to get to a destination intact, we both opened it right up and enjoyed it. @Ronkey wanted inspiration to get his finished. Get stuck in, because it'll be worth it!


A couple of stops for coffee, but mainly to tip jerry cans into the frustratingly small fuel tank. That fuel tank seemed increasingly small on the way back as with the car being pushed hard, let's just say the earlier 34mpg was a distant fantasy. But who cares!

Stopped off at @warninglights place for a cup of tea, and to poke round his collection of really interesting Volvo projects. The Laplander is something to behold and is already looking like a completely different beast to when he got it. I won't give away anything, but this is going to be brilliant.
Lolvo meets Volvo.

And home.

I enjoyed every minute of driving this.
It was comfortable, surprisingly rapid, and with very few modern touches, totally capable. With the longer diff installed the speedo no longer over-reads like most cars, and a 70 on the needle is a true GPS 70.
As such it felt like we were flying past the traffic.  It was keen for more, and without trying you'd notice you'd drifted up to GPS 80 and it had plenty left without being remotely loud. And that's before you flick the overdrive off, where you get a surprising burst of power available. 
The K cam and overdrive puts this right in the sweet spot for motorway driving as it's at the foot of the powerband. Having that at the flick of a stalk means you can really piss off middle lane drivers who don't want to move, but don't like being overtaken by a 60 year old shack.  Tough!
I am surprised Volvo never offered the M41+OD+1.41 axle combo in production cars, because it's just so right. It does rob a fair bit of your 0-60 and standing starts aren't as lively, but the K cam more than makes up for that, you just hold the gears a little longer.
Rustival was fun and I would do it again. The very best part of it was seeing people, @Talbot, @chaseracer, @mat_the_cat, @Puglet @Sunny Jim, @Six-cylinder, @Mrs6C, @Andyrew.  Thank you all for such a brilliant weekend. What a great bunch of lads.
Enjoyed the autojumbles, perhaps a little too much as we came home with a set of four Lucas driving lights.
 
The enjoyment of the trip spurred me into getting some more things sorted on the car, so I have now spaffed the best part of a grand on a branched manifold, sports exhaust, a better intake, and a full set of polybushes, plus a load of electrical parts to try and fix niggles and improve the (still bodged) lighting.
To round things off, when I got home I had a nice surprise waiting in the form of a Professional Prat.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.