welding project Juular's Scandi Noir. Volvo C70, 240 &122. Fok smash my doors.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

I’m not driving but I’ve been in Sweden for the last week (save for an afternoon in Copenhagen) and for the last few years we’ve been visiting two or three times a year.  It’s brilliant - and not as expensive as people assume.  I’ve been over to Norway a few times (Oslo and Narvik) and it’s equally fantastic.

If you visit Gothenburg, the ferry port to the South islands (Saltholmen) has a car park that is stuffed with Volvos that belong to the islanders.

We were in Älmhult the other day and came across this particular beauty:

[juular]

2 hours ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

and not as expensive as people assume

What I noticed was that if you wanted big branded western food like McDonalds or CocaCola it was ruinously expensive.  Eating out was also a little bit expensive, the main thing being the eye watering price of alcohol.

However buying stuff in a supermarket was about the same price as it is here. Seafood was especially cheap which makes total sense. On the whole anything produced in Norway tended to be extremely high quality while being a similar price to our normal stuff.

Really can't complain about any of that.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

36 minutes ago, juular said:

What I noticed was that if you wanted big branded western food like McDonalds or CocaCola it was ruinously expensive.  Eating out was also a little bit expensive, the main thing being the eye watering price of alcohol.

However buying stuff in a supermarket was about the same price as it is here. Seafood was especially cheap which makes total sense. On the whole anything produced in Norway tended to be extremely high quality while being a similar price to our normal stuff.

Really can't complain about any of that.

We went to an independent shop in the centre of Gothenburg yesterday and bought a Swedish-lambswool (Latvian-made) blanket for 729 SEK, which works out to just shy of 60 GBP.  Yes it was slightly discounted but trying to find anything EU-made of an equivalent quality, let alone in an independent shop and let alone in the centre of a major city would be very challenging in the UK.

We also got some Swedish-sourced and made gifts for family.  Not cheap but certainly not ruinous and the kind of things that will last for years.

You’re right about booze and eating out but if your food tastes are moderate and you go to the supermarkets, it’s not stupid.  We grabbed food in the Tivoli food court in Copenhagen.  About £20 a head all-in, so not inexpensive but really good quality.  And that’s probably about as expensive as a lease for a food stand is going to get.

Rail travel is decent value.  Hotels are roughly in line with the UK.   Getting to Gothenburg (our usual haunt) is very, very easy and the airport bus gets you to the city centre in less than half an hour.  Public transport is easy, runs late and goes a long way out.

If my partner could get an equivalently-paying job out here, we’d probably move without too much worry.  All from an off-handed joke I made years ago about wanting to visit the home of Goths and Volvos…

[juular]

The thing is the UK is getting so expensive for base level stuff that I don't grudge paying the same / a bit extra for stuff that's really good.

A random example, a jar of raspberry jam from KIWI in a small town in rural Norway. About the same price as a normal jar in Tesco but it has 70% fruit. The ones here are 30%. 

Looking at jam in a farm shop in Scotland the other day and the ridiculously expensive tiny jars of artisan jam.. 50% fruit.

Comparing apples to apples (or berries in this case) Norway actually feels cheaper.

[Dyslexic Viking]

As a Norwegian, this is interesting reading and confirms what I have been feeling that things here are not as expensive as some people think and those here who constantly whine about food being too expensive need to stop.

[juular]

240 hall sensor repair 

A quick prod with the multimeter was enough to prove that the wiring between the hall sensor plug and the ignition module was totally fine.  The problem was obvious when looking into the plug terminals though, as all of them looked loose and as if they had lost their spring tension.

Chop.

The replacement plugs were identical, but as expected the quality was absolute mince.

The old plug on the left vs new on the right.

The new one feels super lightweight and 3D printed.

It also had the problem where the spring clip was so weak it wouldn't hold it into the distributor at all.

That was solved by swapping the spring clip from the old plug to the new.

The rest of the plug kit was ok and so @MrsJuular cracked on and crimped the new terminals on to the existing wires.

Everything went together nicely.

After that it was just a case of plugging it in and going a drive.

Which went perfectly.

Nice to have it back. 

How many times have I parked this up for a while only to sort something simple, take it out a drive and be thrown by how good it is?  I think there's ample reason why these were so popular.  A stormy autumn night is the correct time to be experiencing a cosy old Volvo.

Bonus achievement. That's 4/4 fleet availability at the moment. Time for an asteroid to hit or something.

[danthecapriman]

Well done sorting that. Had all the makings of a nightmare intermittent fault that’s a pig to trace.

They really did well on that era of Volvo’s. There’s a lot right with them, and they’re lovely to drive even all these years later. 
I remember my old 244 felt like you were driving the most sturdy solid thing out there. It had a real invincible feeling to it!

[juular]

15 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

I remember my old 244 felt like you were driving the most sturdy solid thing out there. It had a real invincible feeling to it!

That's it.  Feels like it has such momentum and will just shrug off anything.  It feels weighty but it's quite a narrow car and  there always seems like so much road to play with.  I love the engine as well, so torquey, unfussy, and no matter what gear you're in you can just plant your foot and off it merrily goes to the redline.

That's half a tank of fuel through it now and not a single glitch. Calling that fixed.

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, juular said:

That's it.  Feels like it has such momentum and will just shrug off anything.  It feels weighty but it's quite a narrow car and  there always seems like so much road to play with.  I love the engine as well, so torquey, unfussy, and no matter what gear you're in you can just plant your foot and off it merrily goes to the redline.

That's half a tank of fuel through it now and not a single glitch. Calling that fixed.

Half a tank of fuel through it - that’ll be it getting off the driveway then😄

I do love that red block engine. Not the most sophisticated or efficient thing ever but absolutely solid and just keeps on going. Ridiculously simple engine too, like a Pinto engine but a bit more robust.

[chaseracer]

20 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

Well done sorting that. Had all the makings of a nightmare intermittent fault that’s a pig to trace.

They really did well on that era of Volvo’s. There’s a lot right with them, and they’re lovely to drive even all these years later. 
I remember my old 244 felt like you were driving the most sturdy solid thing out there. It had a real invincible feeling to it!

27 years on, I still miss my 240GLT.

[Six-cylinder]

I had 4 Volvo 240 estates as company cars, but my rank did not allow me to have higher than a GL.

I longed for a GLT!

[Bmwdumptruck]

Just read through all of this thread, hats off to you for all the work on the 240.   Grew up around quite a few of these myself, use to valet one for an old jewish fur trader fella in Luton back in the late 70’s.  Dad would go collect it first thing on a Saturday and I’d spend all day cleaning, hoovering and polishing it all for a couple of quid!!  These and the 740/760s were always a great car…..but BIG.   
 

Until you posted this pic…….

[juular]

Nothing much happening, just enjoying the 240 as the perfect winter car.

And an important milestone. Happy birthday.

[juular]

Haven't updated this in 4 months. Suffice to say winter absolutely crushed me this year, although looking back it seems a yearly thing. Northern Hemisphere living, great bunch of lads.

On top of the usual seasonal mental collapses so much has happened. We finally got away from the shitbox house next to the horrible dog owners and überkarens.

That was chaotic and ended with us picking up the keys to our new house minutes before the solicitor shut for the weekend, to move in in the dark and find a leaking roof and a flooded bathroom. Then our dog died. Then MrsJuular ended up in hospital.

Throughout this, one of my friends and multiple members of my family decided this was the perfect time to be thundering wallopers.

Yeah, fuck 2025. May auld acquaintances be forgot and all that.

I have been looking forward to a good reset and getting back to doing things that are fun, one of which is forgetting the modern world is a thing and messing around with old cars. Then driving them around / breaking down with nice people in nice places.

So let's get back to that shall we?

We moved to a small place that is like the land that time forgot. No public transport. No facilities. Extra potholes. But low house prices. That means a better house with a bit of space, and more importantly for the first time, a garage. Complete with a free range rover and zippy.

We also have a bit of space from the nearest house which is improving my state of mind more than anything else to be honest.   The views are tremendous.

Looking to the Ochils.

And to Ben Vorlich / Stuc a' Chroin.

Fleet news is straightforward for most of them.

Trafic just does van things. Gave it a set of winter tyres as we get a lot more snow up here.

The 240 has been on loan to @captain_70s while his 740 has been in the naughty corner. Thankfully it behaved during its stay. Has now returned to collect takeaways and blow the snow away with its viscous fan.

The C70 still works but was becoming rather clunky from the back axle so I've parked it until I can deal with that.

Most of the news is with the Amazon. Before we moved I parked it at a friend's place, but on the way I noticed it was spluttering and hesitating.

Trying to be proactive I bought a full ignition set for it before driving it to the new place. Leads, points, cap, the lot.

It really has been pickling in its rather damp storage location.

New kit installed. 

But unfortunately, no joy. It wouldn't even start. This was quickly identified as no spark.

After an hour of nasty language I tracked it down to the condenser connector shorting out on the dizzy case. Wiggling it would get spark to return intermittently. So I pulled the dizzy off and took it home. The bolt and nut here is the culprit.

The cause is all the bakelite insulation around the connector going to shit.

To solve this I ordered some new bakelite washers and some nylon top hat grommets to surround the bolt and prevent it from ever touching the dizzy case.

Good as new.

With that back on the car it fired into life in a couple of turns and ran lovely. So I could then repatriate it to the new place. As you can see snow is a common theme here. Note the stupid bonnet gap, which I've made moves to fix.

Shit weather meant it got abandoned for a while but with spring peeking round the corner I did have some small bursts of productivity.

I've finally pulled out the original seat belts. They were no longer locking properly and would sometimes fall out on corners. 

To replace them I had two options: a kit from Brookhouse at over £300 or to try and just find bits that fit.

I started by replacing the hoop on the transmission tunnel with a double buckle off a Meriva.  £6 versus the £HFM for a specific one.

Next up the belts. I could get a full set of questionable chinese belts for £20 but I opted for the £60 safety rated ones. These just used the original bolts and anchor points.

One less thing to worry about getting pulled over for.

The next job will be to deal with the door bottoms which as you can see are sub optimal.

Those are causing rust stains to run down the sills and all the way down the length of the car.

Another couple of potential jobs. Managed to source a decent bonnet to replace the fucked and twisted one on the car.

Also an airbox off a Dolomite Sprint. Hoping to adapt this to the twin SUs to try and cut down on fuel blowback smells.

And a small surprise bit of loot from @captain_70s 145 purchase. Some bonnet letters and indicator stalks. Amazon indicator stalks inevitably go shit and only latch on left turns meaning you have to hold the stalk up for right turns.  These ones latch in both directions. It's like Christmas!

So that's us for now. I think the next job will be to weld the door bottoms and make the car a bit more more presentable, by which I mean less significantly awful to the point I'm asking to be pulled over.

[danthecapriman]

Nice job on those belts👍

Great to hear you’ve got a better home now too. Living somewhere shit really does get you down. 
That definitely felt like a long miserable winter though, so thank god springs just about here.

[Crackers]

Congrats on the new place. The views look stunning. I'm envious of anyone who can wake up to that every morning, regardless of the weather. 

[warninglight]

2 hours ago, juular said:

Amazon indicator stalks inevitably go shit and only latch on left turns meaning you have to hold the stalk up for right turns.  These ones latch in both directions.

Great progress despite Scotch winter doing Scotch winter things. 

My Amazon always wound me up when getting the right indicator on nice and early getting to the lane end at our old place to prevent folk going for the overtake. Used to have to hold it on whilst braking. Never realised it was a TADTS.

They look like the same belts I've fitted to the Laplander too. 

[High Jetter]

Glad you're in a better place, both geographically and, by the sounds of it, mentally too. Hope Mrs J is OK now.

[Sunny Jim]

Wonderful to read of such positive progress on so many fronts. Joy of new home to you, hope you'll both be very happy there.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Congratulations on the new place, looks like a beautiful area and perfect for some Volvo bothering!

[juular]

Feels like we are right on the cusp of the seasons. One day we have this.

Yes that's snow, and the purple tinge is a lightning flash that happened just as I pressed the shutter.

Less than a week later it's 16C and getting sunsets like this.

It's still not quite weather for crawling around under cars so we've been focusing on getting the garage space turned into a nice workshop.

You know the lighting is bad when your phone wants to use 'stargazing mode' in the middle of the day with the light on and the door open.

This is largely down to there being around half a milliwatt of mood lighting coming from this thing.

I wasn't able to even tell the wattage on that because as soon as I went to unscrew it the glass simply sheared off the bayonet.

@MrsJuular being the designated electrical person wired up and helped me fit these.

And these.  They will be getting conduit and clamps presently.

And finally since we now have most of the cars parked in the one place, these.

With the new and improved workshop available I decided to go work on a car outside.

The 240 is making some nasty clunks and bangs over bumps, enough to warrant a check over.

I spent 3 hours going round it checking the bolts, prying things and lifting the wheels up and down with a crowbar but couldn't find a single problem.

I do know that the front lowering springs are very loose. When you raise the car up there's no preload on them at all and you can wobble them around by hand. This is probably what's causing all the noise but it's annoying nonetheless.

I gave up on that and started on the first small project of the year. 

I wanted to replace the twin pancake filters on the Amazon carbs with a proper airbox for a few reasons. The first is that the pancakes do quite a shit job of regulating the raw fuel blowback smell which is quite nasty on longer drives.  The other is that the rear carb has a tendency to get heatsoaked and throw the balance off, causing a bit of lumpy running when hot. 

There is an OEM airbox available which was fitted to the 140 series but they are now impossible to source. So I guess I'll just have to make one.

I'm starting with the airbox from early TR7 / Dolomite setup as they are cheap enough to cut up without worrying, and air filters are fairly cheap and easy to get.

The aim is to install it like this.  You might notice the minor issue of the clutch fluid reservoir and steering column being mega close to the carbs, a bit of a RHD adaption issue on these cars.

While it fits ok the holes obviously are miles out.

The plan here is simply to create and weld on a new backplate.

That's now ready for the correct holes to be cut.

I did a water leak test on that and some of my shitty gasless welds have holes which is not surprising, so I have marked them and will take another run at those bits.

In the meantime the other half of the box got cleaned up and painted with a random can of paint that was lying around.

The colour wasn't intentional, I just wanted to use up a random rattle can. It has turned out fairly close to the colour of the pancakes though!

Next job will be mocking up the holes in some card and then drilling them.

[warninglight]

Polestar blue intake!

Great work, and the new garage looks great. Can't have too many lights.

[juular]

Re-welded the leaky bits on the airbox base, then offered it up to the carbs and marked the first hole position. From there I could then measure and mark the rest of it.

Quite pleased with that, fully expected to have to reshape the holes with a file.

All bolted up. It fits! The colour of the intake surely has to add +25bhp.

 

While I could run it like this, I've got one final step to complete before I call it finished.

On the pancake filters there's a pipe which connects to the crankcase breather inlet which you can see here.

 

I will need to replicate that on the airbox. I had some exact size pipe lying around that I seem to have lost in the house move, so it'll have to wait till I get some more.

I've also got plans to upgrade the rest of the breather system. 

On early cars the breather outlet comes straight out of the side of the block and vents down at the road.

On newer cars it feeds back into the manifold to burn the vapours. My manifold has a port for that but it's currently blanked.

I need to swap that blanking screw with a  vacuum port, and thankfully I have a spare manifold lying around which has one I can nick.

Last year I also picked up the later style breather outlet at an autojumble, so all I need to do is screw the bits on and join them with some hose. 

Also, exciting new body panels arrived.

I'd planned to be mega frugal and replicate the existing rusty bits with fiberglass, but in the end, I decided to just spend the money.

These are cheap copies and a little rough around the edges, but it's nothing a bit of tapping and filling won't cure.

[loserone]

This seems like a good start to a day in the office 

[Mr Livered]

This is one of those threads that pass me by somehow, then I discover them and go "bloody hell this is gold", superb cars but also fantastic information. The rust prevention product comparison on page 18 or something, for example, should not be buried in the middle of a thread but part of some kind of resource where important stuff can be easily located and referred to by shiters in the future.

I wonder if some kind of index could be created to better organise the immense knowledge and experience on this forum.

[cort1977]

Congratulations on your new place, old car botherers need a bit of space. 

[danthecapriman]

Air box looks really nice, very neatly made. Definitely will add at least 25hp I’d say, and if you put a pin stripe down it that’s an easy additional 25hp too!😄

[Surface Rust]

Nice work on the air box. For maximum BHPs you might benefit from some stub stacks on the carb inlets to smooth the airflow. I'm sure someone on here recently posted loads of useful info about them.

 

Edit, it was @Bfg

 

 

[Bfg]

15 hours ago, Surface Rust said:

Nice work on the air box. For maximum BHPs you might benefit from some stub stacks on the carb inlets to smooth the airflow. I'm sure someone on here recently posted loads of useful info about them.

 

Edit, it was @Bfg

 

 

I originally fitted these short stacks to my Triumph ..so this may help with a more detailed explanation >  https://www.trforums.com/index.php?/topic/69490-that-was-a-year-that-was/page/75/#findComment-809960

[juular]

Picked up some 14mm tube for the crankcase breather to finish off the new airbox.

I've gone back to gas mig welding since I'm mostly indoors for this stuff.

What struck me is how much I'd adapted to gasless welding and my technique was all over the place, so the welds were far too fat. But it's stuck on so that's fine.

Couple of coats of zinc then some satin black.

Next up, stripping all the labels and crap paint off the new rear quarter panels.

And trying something new. Undercoated these in zinc then a coat of British Rail spec 81 paint, thinking if it works for trains being left out in the weather, it might work for cars as well.

You can see here how bad the old ones are getting.

This also highlights how bad my door bottoms are getting. There's nothing else for it but to bite the bullet and have a look.

Haven't had that sinking feeling in a while.

Back to the cardboard templates.

Again still getting used to remembering to turn the gas on. 

Flipped the door over and had a look at the outer.

It doesn't go as far as I feared. Fairly simple strip to let in.

My plan is to simply bend / bash that over in stages then hammer it flat along the bottom. I'm not being precious.

Surprisingly this tactic worked ok and the resulting curvature just sort of neatly matched.

The main issue here, in surprise to nobody, is that the big expanse of door panel has warped slightly.

I was careful with the heat input but it really takes very little for the warping to happen.

There's always filler and paint.

Concours etc.

I ran out of flap discs so I will come back and flatten that off at a later stage.

Only 3 more doors to go.