welding project Juular's Scandi Noir. Volvo C70, 240 &122. The 240 lives on.

[Zelandeth]

Great to see someone not being scared off by K-Jet.  Still astonishes me given the simplicity of it how well it works.  

Always meant to see about tweaking the WUR setting on my last Saab as it was obviously slightly lean on a cold start (it would start fine, invariably stumble and not quite stall after about ten seconds, then be absolutely spot on for the rest of the day) but it just never got to the top of the to do list.

I became intimately acquainted with the system on that when I had a fault which presented itself exactly like fuel starvation.  Turned out to be my having been given the wrong rotor arm in a kit of service parts.  Which worked fine for about two weeks but then started giving a weak spark when hot...cue it falling on its face when you touched the throttle and eventually cutting out and refusing to restart.  I spent well over a month fault finding that until I randomly found the old rotor arm in the boot and totally at a loss of what to try stuck it on...car immediately ran perfectly again.  At that point I uttered some totally unprintable curses and hurled the offending rotor arm across the car park in frustration.  I never did find where it landed...

K-Jet will rarely give trouble once it's set up right, as you've seen the biggest issues are it just getting full of crap these days, especially on a car that's been off the road for a long time.  With a couple of pressure gauges and some brain power it's far easier to fault find than most if not all electronic systems.

[juular]

1 hour ago, Fumbler said:

Wowzers, it lookin' good.

Shame your Bilt Hamber treatments have failed so badly- some of the stuff I did to my cars using their Dynax UB have outright failed. I think I'll just undercoat them with bar and chain oil from now on. At least it's cheaper.

That's my thinking now too. A bit of zinc paint and then bang some form of oil over everything. Perhaps topping it up yearly or so at service time.

It's surprising how many people have come out and said they've had similar issues with the BH stuff failing to work for them, especially given their reputation

[Shirley Knott]

That's a strange one RE the Bilthamber products.

I've honestly only had good experiences but TBF that's been limited to Hydrate 80, Dynax S50 and Dynax UB. I've actually used loads of the UB, but only ever in either the 5l pails or the 1l tubs, and I always tend to apply it about half an inch thick so it's difficult to honestly say what's going on underneath I suppose.

[Fumbler]

2 hours ago, juular said:

That's my thinking now too. A bit of zinc paint and then bang some form of oil over everything. Perhaps topping it up yearly or so at service time.

It's surprising how many people have come out and said they've had similar issues with the BH stuff failing to work for them, especially given their reputation

It's probably due to me not doing this enough:

2 minutes ago, Shirley Knott said:

 I always tend to apply it about half an inch thick so it's difficult to honestly say what's going on underneath I suppose.

That being said, the stuff FLOWS during the summer, but if there isn't enough of it on there in the first place, my guess is that it spreads out so thinly it can be washed off. It has lived up to its promise of not drying up or peeling away like Waxoyl, and it's anti-corrosion properties and creep properties appear pretty genuine if you trust the university investigation they cite on the website.

[GingerNuttz]

Vactan and the likes are a total waste of money imo.

Only way to get rid of rust is to cut it out and replace it or if it's surface and not coming from behind use phosphoric acid-primer-paint-wax but even then you need to keep on top of it or it'll just be back the following year. 

[KitKat]

Never had much luck with Bilt Hamber either. Really for pitted metal the only way to get it rust free is to blast it, then epoxy prime it straight afterwards. 

[juular]

Not been happy with the 240.

The wheel balancing was off thanks to the mobile fitter's van not being calibrated. The tracking was out a bit - although it was hard to tell since the wheel was wobbling so much.  I really really hate tracking being out. The sunroof had magically jammed itself into a slightly open position meaning it was constantly draughty. On top of that I was nervous driving it because of a very loud main fuel pump that made me think it's about to die at any second.

I decided to replace the pump.

Result? The new pump is quiet, but the car wouldn't start. I tried to tune the pressures from scratch as they didn't look right, but I'd come back 5 minutes later and the settings had shifted. Wtf? That's not right at all.

Verdict:it's DOA. With the new pump in, the pressures are all over the place and the gauge swings around like a faulty compass. It also won't hold rest pressure, dropping to zero almost instantly. Basically the car starts 1 try out of 10 and runs like a bag of shite when it does go.

While the car was tilted for me to access the pump, I noticed a very small drop of petrol leaking from the filler neck where it meets the tank.

That o-ring is not seated properly but a good smack with a hammer down onto the filler sorted that out.

That may be the cause of the noisy pump after all, since the tank is meant to be airtight. Could this be one step closer?

I put the old pump back on. I had to spend bloody ages tuning the car from scratch again as I'd messed it up earlier.

And wouldn't you know it the old pump is now silent!

What's more the car runs a lot better. One flick of the key and it starts. Furthermore it feels like I've gained about 50bhp. Previously 80mph on the motorway was something you'd have to circle on a calendar, but now it's a mere blip of the throttle away.  I'm not sure yet but I think the economy is a little better as well.

Gave the roof liner a clean as it was utterly howling and the car smelled like a derelict shed.

 

Shiny and nice smelling!

The sunroof turned out to be a very simple fix of taking the handle off and adjusting the small gearbox it goes into.

I took the wheels off and left them at national tyres, £6 a side for balancing. That'll do. The guy tried to offer me a welding job and buy the 205 off me..

Stuck the wheels back on and redid the fishing line wheel alignment.

A lot of small jobs done, but what a massive difference it is to have a car that smells nice, starts easily, drives straight and quiet and goes like stink when you want it to!

I liked this car even when it drove like shit. Now I'm absolutely hooked on it. 

One day I will fix the ride height, but that may be a date with a cutting disc.

[Jim Bell]

It's looks magnificent. 

It's gone from the gutter to dancing among the stars. 

[big_al_granvia]

amazing how a lump hammer can fix things

[danthecapriman]

Great work on this. Amazing how these old bricks become an obsession! They’re fantastic old cars, still capable of everything they were built to do all these decades later.

39 minutes ago, big_al_granvia said:

amazing how a lump hammer can fix things

If a lump hammer can’t fix it, then it can’t be fixed!

[juular]

1 hour ago, danthecapriman said:

Great work on this. Amazing how these old bricks become an obsession! They’re fantastic old cars, still capable of everything they were built to do all these decades later.

If a lump hammer can’t fix it, then it can’t be fixed!

I'd say it was one of the nicest cars I've driven. Comfy for 4 people, heated seats, handles really well, in many ways it handles better than a 205. Pulls like a turbo diesel. Refined at high speed. 30mpg which for a brick like this is not bad. Can fit multiple dead bodies or a few hundred grand worth of coke in the massive boot. 80 quid classic insurance. What else do you need?

[juular]

Every good story involves a big pile of rust on the driveway.

In this case it was the remnants of the 205's boot floor which I stupidly decided to prod.

 

One of the worst bits had a quality glued on repair.

 

Given that it looked like the edge of the floor had been repainted straight over existing rust, I decided not to hang around working out where the rust ended and I just chopped it all back to sound paintwork.

I could then start by repairing the rear section under the latch.

 

Then putting in new metal for the floor.

I may have cheated slightly by seam welding the floor to the rear section rather than folding and plug welding, but it does remove a section of double skinning right in a horrible rust trap. This may actually last longer than factory and should be just as strong.

While paint and sealant was drying I moved onto sorting another problem. 

The replacement fuel pump came from a different car, which for some reason had a different bracket on the front of it for the throttle cable.  This one has a one-piece bracket that has the throttle cable entry in a slightly different place, and the cold start cable won't reach the arm properly.  Below, circled in red is the cold start cable dangling free and the throttle hole thingy in the wrong place.

 

The effect of this is that the throttle cable doesn't seem to be adjustable to a point where it's properly taut, and in fact the accelerator pedal vibrates badly at idle. Also, cold starts are a bit grumpy requiring a little bit of throttle until it warms up.

The original 205 layout came with two separate brackets, one on the front and one on the side where the fuel lines go in. I took them off the old broken pump and swapped them over.  As you can see both the throttle cable and the cold start cable now fit nicely.

 

The last job was to take off this big aftermarket fuel filter and reroute the fuel hoses back through the OEM filter housing.  While it runs OK with the aftermarket filter, the lines are quite long and saggy. One section has caught the vacuum pump pulley and worn down to the cords, and the filter sometimes dangles precariously with only the jubilee clips keeping the fuel system intact. 

With that sorted and tidied up, it was nice to hear it clatter into life right away without any grumpiness.  I don't think there's much else this car needs to be pretty much fully sorted, so I might stick it in for a month (minus a day) early MOT just to see what they say.

The 240 is driving really well still. I took it out yesterday for Drive it Day.

I seem to recall doing the same with the C70 exactly a year ago and not really seeing any other interesting cars on the road. This time was the same! I don't know if people just get up mega early and go and do all the usual heavily worn routes like the Duke's Pass or the A82, but it doesn't seem to be a thing here as far as I can see.

Of course, I can't possibly have a fleet of fully working cars, so the 240 threw this at me.

Fuel gauge died, I suspected a broken solder joint but this is worse.  I tried to peen the end of the arm over to keep it on the sender, but when I refitted the unit the PCB with the resistor tracks on it snapped in two. 

Going with the routine of fix one thing, break something else.

 

[DodgyBastard]

Can't imagine many people going to Dalgety Bay for drive it day.

[juular]

7 minutes ago, DodgyBastard said:

Can't imagine many people going to Dalgety Bay for drive it day.

I did expect to at least see something as exotic as an mx5 around Linlithgow, Queensferry, Powmill to be fair.

I think I spotted you on the bike as I passed the front gate.

[juular]

Treated the 240 to a full 7 quid wash.  It showed me where all the scratches are.

We were out a run so we dropped in to see the previous owners in Arbroath as recommended by @Saabnut.  This is Simon with the car where it was when I first saw it (there's now a container in its parking spot).

He invited us round to the house so his son (who was originally left the car by his granddad) could have a look. I encouraged him to have a wee shot as well. He was well impressed, so hopefully this  may have dropped some seeds of boxy RWD Volvo appreciation!

A major birthday was reached.

It's also been pressed into service in engine dismantling and parts carrying duties.

 

What a bloody handsome thing it is!

[Saabnut]

Brilliant! Thank you for doing that, I am sure it will be well appreciated.

[juular]

Decided to take a punt on an early MOT for the 205.

The corrosion fails were somewhat expected. The CV boot just needs cleaned up apparently.  The oil leak isn't an oil leak, it's leftover from when I changed the fuel pump and the car had been previously fuelled with [undefined], and it ran all down the back of the engine. 

The brakes are an odd one as it has a new master cylinder and the system has been pressure bled. I've had one of the wheel cylinders off and it seemed to work OK, so that's going to need investigation.

As for the rust, guess where my weekend went.

This.

Turned into This.

 

Likewise for the other side.

 

 

 

A lot of this has come about from shitty previous repairs as seen here.  This is why you don't bang a patch over rust. It just makes it worse.

 

The nearside took a fair chunk of metal.  The wind really picked up and I could no longer weld using gas, so I went out and bought a roll of flux core. That was a bit of an experiment as I'd never tried it before, but it actually turned out pretty well. It's messy in some places, but it's strong.  I had to turn the voltage right down as it penetrates far further than the shielded welds, but that's no bad thing.

Driver's side.

The rust on the driver's side extended down to the front panel, which has a coolant hose running up against it. So I had to dump the coolant before I cut it off. I guess I should've found a bigger bucket..

Front panel cut out.

New panel tacked in. I ran out of time to finish this off, so I'll have to find some gaps in the weather this week to get it sorted so that I can get the free retest.

On the plus side the car won't have a single bit of corrosion left once this is done.

[Scruffy Bodger]

Good work. That little Pug is lucky it ended up with you.

[Jim Bell]

Stirling hole filling. No hole is safe. 

[Scruffy Bodger]

7 hours ago, Jim Bell said:

Stirling hole filling. No hole is safe. 

It appears Stirling is only a 20 minute drive so the prospect of a bit of double penetration on a bit of French fancy was too hard to resist. Comments about bigger buckets not withstanding.

[Back_For_More]

9 hours ago, Scruffy Bodger said:

It appears Stirling is only a 20 minute drive so the prospect of a bit of double penetration on a bit of French fancy was too hard to resist. Comments about bigger buckets not withstanding.

Bucket size aside - it IS how you fill it and what with...... Obviously top marks on how wet

@juular - top work on the front end rebuild. I still don't get how quickly a lot of you guys plough through these panel repairs....... officially in awe

[juular]

205 welding done.

Just needs paint.

The CV boot I cleaned , degreased then sealed up a small slit with some tigerseal as advised by the tester.

@Lacquer Peel helped diagnose the rear brake issue as being the shoes needing adjusted closer to the drums. It doesn't seem like the auto adjustment setup actually works very well. Anyway, both the handbrake and the pedal feel a lot better now so hopefully that's another one off the list.

The oil leak isn't an oil leak, so I'll clean up the bottom of the engine and hopefully that will get scored off the sheet.

Hoping to get this back in for a retest over the weekend.

I did find some time to give the 240 some attention.

The clips for the hockey stick trim were all broken so I ordered replacements from Brookhouse, which as usual came quickly with some free sweets.

All of the trim looked so tired so this got me into a bit of detailing.

Clay bar.

A coat of black paint on the sills to see it through.

New valve caps.

A good polish, wash and wax followed by a load of linseed oil on the plastics. It's amazing how quickly this rejuvenates old plastic.

Interior cleaned out and polished up with Flash Dash.

It's starting to look alright! Ride height aside.

Finally, I refitted the badges.

So all of that is just to make it a little bit more presentable, but in the longer term I still have a lot to do.

I need to fix the paint on the boot lid as it's quite badly stripped by some kind of chemical.

The sills and door pillars need some body coloured paint.

The front wings need a bit of touching up at the sill level and paint.

The doors need a bit of welding at the lower inner skins.

Finally I need to go over the bits I've rattlecanned with some wet and dry, get a proper machine polisher on it with someone that knows what they're doing (hi @Split_Pin!) , and try and get some more of the decades old crud out of the paint.

I've ordered some more paint, just need to find the motivation to get it sorted.

[Split_Pin]

That's come up really well.

I'd recommend getting some lacquer on the bits you painted, leave it a week and then you would be more than welcome to bring it round to my bit and we can get the machine polisher on it to cut it back.

[juular]

I should really bring this up to date.

The 205 repeatedly failed to achieve an MOT thanks to the rear brakes basically doing nothing on the rollers. I adjusted the shoes up to the drums and bled the system with a pressure bleeder.  No joy, another fail.

So I replaced everything. New cylinders, shoes, drums and wheel bearings.

Tried again. No joy. Still doing almost nothing on the rollers.

The master cylinder had already been replaced with a brand new one, but I replaced it again just in case I had a faulty unit.

Failed again!

At this point I changed MOT centres as my 2 week retest window had run out. I took it to my local tame mechanic who was happy to stick it on the rollers and let me see if anything I was doing was having any difference, and offered some ideas on what it could be.

Both of us were completely stumped until he mentioned that maybe there was a kink in one of the brake lines.  Since I noticed that the rear brake lines had been replaced at some point, I thought this was a good shout. 

Unfortunately the brake lines and the connections to the flexi hoses are above the fuel tank. Of course they are! Thankfully I didn't have to drop the exhaust and fuel tank completely.

That's me screwed.

Fitted new flexi pipes at the same time.  I decided to make a slight modification by making new brackets to hold the rear lines further back, which will make them much easier to change in the future - no fuel tank dropping.

I couldn't find any M10 unions for the back of the wheel cylinders, so I had to improvise with a power file, putting new flats on.

Finally I redid the unions at the master cylinder as they looked a bit shit, as if they'd been done haphazardly with a chinese flaring tool.  They also looked a bit damp.

Boom!

My original plan was to sell it, but as usual I end up feeling I've put too much work in to let it go..

It's such a handy thing to have around.

[Split_Pin]

Smashing wee car this, I enjoyed having a good look around it a few weeks ago.

[juular]

Seems like forever since I updated this.

I'll start with the 240.

It has been a trooper. Not that you'd expect anything else from it.  It did Shitefest '22 with such total competence that it's easy to totally forget it's a 34 year old car.  I've never had such a comfortable drive down and up the M6, cruising at 70 with zero effort and doing around 35mpg.

It was so good to meet everyone there, with the focus being on relaxing and socialising rather than stuffy adenoidal car shit that you'd get at any other car related event. Many approvals from me.

Highlight was meeting @Sunny Jim's doggo of course.

The trip did highlight a few things I really wanted to sort on the car. 

First, the radio never worked, acting like it had no power even though I'd traced the wiring back to the fusebox which seemed alright.  I took the unit out and gave it 12V from a good battery and it fired right up.  This got me checking the wiring again, scratching my head lots, and eventually giving in and running a new feed straight from the fusebox to the radio positive wire.  It fired into life instantly.. grand!

The wiper motor had been noisy ever since I got it running again, leaving me with that feeling that it's ready to shit itself as soon as the first downpour arrives.

The motor itself worked OK but the bearing on the shaft was causing all the noise.

I dropped this into a local bearing place and they gave me a replacement off the shelf for the princely sum of around £1.30.

I also found that the case magnets were a little loose and were rattling around, occasionally coming out of alignment and catching on the stator and causing a nasty grinding sound.  This was easy fixed with some araldite.

I also found that it wasn't working particularly well on high speed when plugged back in, so I upgraded the wiring internally to a thicker gauge.

Also, instead of relying of the shonky earth connection to the bulkhead, I added an extra earth straight to the battery using some solar cable.

The difference is immense, which is a good thing as these motors are really difficult to come by.

Next problem is a really wobbly idle which could get annoying when sitting at traffic lights.

The fuelling had been set spot on, so it was time to fling parts at it.

First up, new ignition leads, dizzy cap and rotor.

An anomaly on the Euro Crap Parts website meant that K-Jet injectors were being sold for £15 each. Of course I blagged a set. A few days later they went back up to their usual price of £65 each.

Finally, I decided enough was enough with the ridiculous stance.

40mm lowering springs versus brand new aftermarket GLT springs.

There we go!

Much better!

After all this TLC it kindly decided to shit itself by bursting one of the shocks in less than 100 miles.  I guess it didn't like being lowered much..

This happened on the day before it was booked to go to FOTU. Instead of trying to change shocks by the roadside somewhere, I decided to relegate it to the naughty corner and dig out the 205 for that instead..

[juular]

The 205 stuff.

Summer started with a wee ned flinging a brick at it.

I chased down the scrote and got some good photos of his ugly mug which were swiftly passed on to the police. The police were decent enough, but they're so underfunded and understaffed that I get the feeling this stuff goes on a lot without consequence.   The fake-tanned mother of the ned stopped us in a shop a week later and gave us mouthfuls of abuse and threats from her financed A Class, so it's clear to see how the brat ended up the way he did.  That event spurred the police into actually going and charging the little cretin and giving the mother an official warning, so hopefully that's the end of that.

It clearly didn't like having a brick flung at it, as it decided to go into a fit of flashing its headlights, indicators and running the wipers constantly.

Here's why.

That and a few other earths were cleaned up and fixed, and the shonky positive terminal replaced.

Next up it gained a habit of randomly dumping its coolant from THAT pipe in the driver's side wheel arch.

Since it had been pressed into FOTU duty at short notice I replaced it with a bit of straight stainless at 8AM on the morning of departure.

The stainless was the wrong size but we made it fit.

It was then FOTU approved.

 

A French convoy was created with @Lacquer Peel

The A66 was buggered, so we took the A69 then all the back roads through the hills, where the 205 is right at home. I enjoyed every second of it.

FOTU was great, easily the best 'official' car show I've been to and it was good to catch up with people from here, as well as the Scotoshite crew.

 

I was really looking forward to taking the 240 down, but kind of glad I got a chance to really drive the 205 on a proper trip.  I had lots of fun bombing it down all the lanes and back roads. Although I had plans to sell it, I think I may have actually bonded with it to the point I'll keep it for a bit longer.

@davehedgehog31 and I did a bit of a trade and now I've got a Bosch fuel pump that will drink the veg. That'll be the next plan for this little nugget, then we'll see how things go.

[juular]

This little puglet keeps flinging shit my way.

It started with a bit of a shaky idle while we were down at FOTU, but that was easily ignored and put down to a tired engine mount.

Last week the driveshaft carrier bearing started to howl. I also noticed the CV joint on that side had basically fallen off, so it was easy to justify the £40 or so for a complete driveshaft from J&R.

Another weekend doing stuff on cars when I'd rather be off doing.. actually I don't know anymore. I only fix things on cars it seems.

The hose is because I somehow assumed that pulling a driveshaft out of a gearbox wouldn't result in gearbox oil everywhere. 

Replaced the diff seal while I was in about it.

One problem down.

I also packed the lower mount with structural sikaflex.

Took it a drive. All good! Except the idle was getting worse and worse. I also noticed drips left behind in car park spaces which was a little worrying.

Oh fuck off!

I then made the mistake of tightening that fuel line, which just made things worse as I ended up showered in diesel while it ran on 3.

When I removed it, I noticed a big crack around the pipe circumference, just behind the flare.

I did have a full set of spare injector lines lying around somewhere, but after a few hours tearing the house and shed apart looking for them, no joy whatsoever.  I have a feeling I have accidentally binned them.  That's me; I hoard all the useless shit, and the stuff that might be useful one day I cheerily ram into a wheelie bin while whistling some inane tune.

This however, was a sign from the gods. The gods of VEGETALS.

I have this.

Bosch injection pump. This will chew through WVO, power steering fluid, lard, a takeway curry. Anything oily and calorific.  I also have a full set of injector lines for it, so that solves that problem at the same time.

Out with the prince of darkness Lucas pump.

In with the Bosch.... but wait!

Although the pump will fit happily on those studs, it will be around 15 degrees out of time as they're set in place for the Lucas pump.  They have to be removed and screwed back in to the adjacent threaded holes, in a clockwise direction.

Like so.

At this point since the timing belt is off, it's worth replacing it.

It's quite an easy engine to work on in this sense, despite the lack of access.  The crank, cam and fuel pump are all locked at TDC by pins / bolts which removes all ambiguity. If those pins are in, you can't go wrong. I like this a lot.

I had a toys out of the pram moment when I noticed that the fuel feed banjo for the Lucas wouldn't fit the Bosch pump, which left me with no way to attach the feed line.

@Lacquer Peel saved the day once again with his excellent supply of vegetable attachments.

While it no longer has a bleed screw on it, I improvised by loosening the banjo and pumping the hand primer until diesel was spilling out of the connection without bubbling.

Ready to turn the key.

It lives once more.

 

I had a bit of a problem with the injectors 'nailing' for the first few minutes which was quite frightening as it sounded like internal engine damage.  However that did clear up - presumably the injectors lying for so long and then being put into use with bits of air in the fuel wasn't the best thing for them.  

Stay tuned for experiments in feeding this car various types of fat.

[juular]

Full road test complete.

The Bosch pump has transformed the car.  The pump itself is much quieter - the Lucas one seemed to rattle on overrun. I feel like there's a boatload more torque though, I can overtake on the motorway without changing down to 4th.  I'm not sure why this would be the case as presumably the NA XUD pumps are all set up similarly. 

Vegetable based adventure updates soon.

[davehedgehog31]

Great work, glad the pump was ok. I bought it from a very rusty breaker 205 about 3 years back. I had heard it start and drive mind, so was sure it was fine.