welding project Juular's Scandi Noir. Volvo C70, 240 &122. Earth day.

[loserone]

I am incredibly in awe of that car and drive.  

[Jim Bell]

Looks fantastic. It's one of those cars that looks good from all angles and looks right at home in the snowscape. 

[juular]

8 hours ago, captain_70s said:

Boxy style.

Do we know the cause behind the SUV stance at the front?

It does seem to be settling a little, but it's exaggerated by the rear springs being very tired I think.

I need to check the front spring codes when it's dry and see if PFS parts sent me the right springs for a GLT. It's possible they are the wrong springs which sit a bit higher.

[Shirley Knott]

Great to see the work you've put into this paying off!

This could be a red herring, but when it comes to trouble starting, and revs hunting when first started it might be worth looking at the coolant temperature sensor if this has one.

The last red block I had ran (Or didn't) exactly as you describe after I'd fitted a coolant sensor from 'Volvo parts Sweden' on eBay. Fine after the first five minutes, but initial start up was sketchy. After replacing it with a Bosch item normal service was resumed. 

As mentioned, I'm not sure whether this has a CTS, but my 940 definitely did.

 

[juular]

9 minutes ago, Shirley Knott said:

As mentioned, I'm not sure whether this has a CTS, but my 940 definitely did.

 

It appears to have two. One is purely for the dash temperature gauge, the other is the thermotime switch which apparently controls the 5th injector to help cold starts. 

I'm fairly sure the 5th injector is working. In fact my hunch is that on a cold start it's only running off the fuel from that, and when that is used up, it cuts out.

It may be I still have a vac leak somewhere and the 5th injector is keeping it rich enough to cope with it, but normal fuel delivery makes it too lean.

The difficult part is after around a minute all the symptoms of a vac leak disappear (temperature causing it to close up?) and it becomes more difficult to trace.

I think I might redo the inlet manifold gasket and add some flange sealant on top of that to see if it helps.

[juular]

A few more from LP. I do love a good empty road.

 

[Shirley Knott]

7 minutes ago, juular said:

It appears to have two. One is purely for the dash temperature gauge, the other is the thermotime switch which apparently controls the 5th injector to help cold starts. 

I'm fairly sure the 5th injector is working. In fact my hunch is that on a cold start it's only running off the fuel from that, and when that is used up, it cuts out.

 

Yep It's the the one that controls fuelling that caused the issues for me rather than the one that operates the cabin gauge. It tested fine when checked with a multimeter, resistance etc was all ok, but alas a replacement resolved things

 

 

[juular]

Just adding another one as I really liked how this came out.

 

[Jim Bell]

46 minutes ago, juular said:

Just adding another one as I really liked how this came out.

 

Fantastic shot. 

[KitKat]

7 hours ago, juular said:

Just adding another one as I really liked how this came out.

 

Looks properly Scandi-noir that does, and a body in the boot would explain the ride height 🙂

[juular]

240 is in bits again, mostly to try and diagnose the cold start problem.

The symptom is that on first and second start, it will rev to 2000rpm then die.  It always runs on a third start, but bogs down, hunts, and stalls if you touch the accelerator. Once warmed up, it runs fine for the rest of the day.

My first guess was that the cold start injector wasn't running, but I ruled that out pretty quickly by pointing it into a jar and turning the engine over.  That resulted in a perfect spray and plenty of fuel.

The remaining guesses are that there's a vacuum leak, or that the warm-up regulator isn't working properly.

So, I dive into it again. It's so simple to work on that it's not a chore.

With the intake manifold off again I could see that the new gasket I fitted seems a bit odd looking, very wet in places.  I also noticed that the PCV box that I cleaned up looked to be sitting at a jaunty angle.

When I pulled it off I found this underneath.

Not a great start and potentially a vac leak.

A trip to an independent motor factor got me a handful of replacement O-rings for a pound.  

I then pulled off the warmup regulator.  This has a mesh filter on the inlet port that is known to gunk up. 

Lovely! That got drowned in carb cleaner.  I also opened it up and checked that the heating element and bimetal spring were still working - which they were, so I cleaned that out too.

This time when refitting the intake manifold gasket I put on a smear of flange sealant for belt and braces.

And another new gasket (still only £1 from ECP, they must be getting rid of NOS).

Just to rule it out I also replaced the brake servo hose with some new pipe.

 

Finally, I wanted to rule out a fuelling issue.  What pointed me here was a very loud noise from the main fuel pump once the fuel got below a certain level. My instinct was that maybe there was air getting in between the lift pump and the high pressure pump - and I was right.  Here is the pipe that joins the lift pump to the sender unit.

Looks ok.. but..

And with the hose replaced:

 

Since I'd bought some new hose anyway, I went ahead and replaced the old fuel lines from the tank.

Unfortunately things went south at this point, as when I tried to refit the sender, the float ball fell off in the tank, I broke a bit of the pump wiring, and I somehow managed to tear the fuel strainer sock on the end of the pump.

Two of the replacement strainers I've ordered have went missing, and one was completely the wrong size.  4th time lucky, maybe?

 

[Jim Bell]

It was all going swimmingly up until...... Is how all the best stories go. 

[MorrisItalSLX]

Make sure that hose on the pump is submersible grade, otherwise the petrol will dissolve it from the outside in.

[juular]

13 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Make sure that hose on the pump is submersible grade, otherwise the petrol will dissolve it from the outside in.

It's the stuff that came with the pump - it came with 5 different sizes of hose, so I'm going to assume it is submersible!

[juular]

4th time lucky, the filter sock and float have arrived.

I'll also need to resolder the end of this copper wire back onto the connector.

I'm curious to know why both the positive and negative have a big copper coil between the wire and the pump, encased in that orange plastic?

[juular]

Pump back together, with a bit of resoldering in the process.

Rear springs changed.

Fan clutch replaced.

 

End result : Cold start problem is still there.  Noisy fuel pump at 1/4 tank or lower, still there.  Weird stance, still there.

Fan no longer goes VOOO all the time. Small victory.

Still love driving it.

 

 

Had a nice wee day out fixing shit and talking shit with @Supernaut and @DodgyBastard

I'm not sure where to turn next with the cold start and fuel pump issues, however.

[juular]

With the Lexus having been fixed it's the C70s turn to sit in the naughty corner.

There's nothing actually wrong with it - but it does need front tyres and an inner tie rod replaced and I can't be bothered doing that right now.

I am the proud owner of a new 240.

One to add to the fleet.

I did some more work on trying to get to the bottom of the cold start issue.

I removed the K-Jet fuel pressure regulator (AKA warmup regulator / WUR) and stripped it down completely to clean and check everything, and to make a modification.

For those who are interested, the K-Jet system gets a bit of a reputation for being a complete headfuck, but in reality it's actually a very simple and pleasingly analogue system.

Incoming intake air (blue arrows) lifts a plate, which in turn moves a plunger up and down inside a barrel.  The position of the plunger dictates the fuel pressure reaching the injectors (red arrows). Really - that's it. 

There's no ECU, and the only electrical components are a couple of heating elements that warm up the system.

There is one component that controls how lean / rich the fuel mixture is depending on temperature, and that is the control pressure regulator / WUR. Even this is stunningly simple in design. Here are the complete contents of the WUR.

Fuel flows over the top of the aforementioned plunger through the WUR, and then back to the tank.  As it flows through the WUR it comes in via the centre hole and out via the small hole to the left.

The amount of fuel allowed to flow back to the tank is regulated by a little flexible metal diaphragm over the holes.

On the other side of that is a notch where a pin presses into the flexible diaphragm to move it up and down and 'dose' the fuel.

 

The pin is attached to a bimetallic strip that curls / bends depending on temperature - the gold strip below.

The spring sits against the base of the unit and provides the base setting.   The green bit in the middle is a heater, which heats up the strip slowly as the engine warms up.  The strip is held in on the right by a nut.

So, as that strip curls due to temperature, it adjusts the shape of the diaphragm. By restricting flow, it puts more pressure on top of the metering plunger and restricts its ability to lift with the air intake, thus making the mixture leaner. 

TLDR; Magic box makes car go VOOO.

Anyway, before I do any tuning I decided to follow a guide to make the WUR easily adjustable. This involves drilling and tapping a hole for a bolt that you can then use to move the adjustment pin in or out.

The adjustment pin is the dimple on the left and I want the nut, bolt and washer screwed into it.

Drill

Tapped to M5.

A bit of threadlocker.

 

Done.

 

So, to adjust the cold mixture, you'd tap the bolt in with a hammer to move the entire assembly down and change the base pressure on the diaphragm.  It is of course possible to tap it down too far, wreck the mixture and the car won't start at all.  That's what the nut is for - you tighten it down and it pulls the pin back up if needed.

Does it work? Ask me when it stops snowing.

[Jim Bell]

Adjust it with a hammer for the win. 

Excellent modding man. Hope this is an end to any running issues. 

[Slartibartfast]

I'm ten pages in and I think this thread might have just nudged 40+ tons of Boatshite off the top of my favourite threads ever on this site.

[juular]

New car alert.

@Lacquer Peel sold his XUD powered 205 to me as it needed a bit of attention. It wasn't starting, and the brakes were very spongy, plus it needs the odd little bit of welding and TLC.

We initially tried starting it from a can of diesel which didn't work. This pointed to a faulty fuel pump. I managed to source another one, but as the car was sitting out on the road we thought it best to get it shifted.  We did a short towing mission using LPs 850 which was mildly eventful as the 205's towing eye snapped off in the middle of the street.  With the rope wound around a wishbone we got it safely into a place where I could work on it. 

Ideally I wanted to get it running to my place under its own steam to save me from having to hire a trailer.

The offending item.

Good advice was received from @Supernautwho steered me towards pulling the starter motor off and jamming an allen key through a small hole behind it, through into the flywheel to achieve TDC.

A 6mm bolt screwed through the pump pulley locks it in place so that you don't need to remove the belt to change the pump.

 

A replacement pump was sourced from @DodgyBastard.

 

 The pump is a bit of a pain in the arse to bleed, but we used the priming bulb to push fresh diesel through the filter, which was then filled and bled, and then to the pump which was bled using the screw.  An injector line was cracked open and the engine cranked until fuel could be seen running out.  This was then nipped back up, and after what felt like an eternity of cranking it was happy to run.

I drove it home to HQ without any issues at all.

The car even fits in my driveway... just!  That's now 6 cars at HQ and 1 at Volvo special branch.

The plans are to replace the master cylinder, give it a little bit of a tickle around the slam panel, stick some new tyres on it and enjoy it for a while.  It may have arrived at just the right time given the cost of fuel as it should manage 50-60mpg.

Back in volvo land, I built a K-Jet pressure test kit using parts from ebay. This came to around £25 which is a bit better than the £100+ for premade kits.  It was a bit leaky at first, but I just needed to do the fittings up with a little bit of threadlocker and it was fine.

Unfortunately this didn't go well as the glycerine filled pressure gauge shat itself, jamming at 6.5 bar.

I managed to get an Amazon prime delivery quickly and received this one which works better.

That's reading the base system pressure at around 4.6 bar which is too low.  It should be around 5.5 bar. 

This can be fixed by taking off the main pressure regulator and adding a shim to it.

In this case I added a copper washer that I filed down to size.

Unfortunately that was as far as I got, as the O-ring perished when I tried to reinstall it.  

Next weekend...

[DodgyBastard]

Glad the pump is working ok.

There's a white 240 estate at my yard being banger raced and the guy was asking if I knew anyone wanting bits cheap. He's apparently removing the engine and fitting something else so engine and autobox available as well as all the other bits banger racers usually discard.

[loserone]

You could have a 240 with two engines like those 4x4 2cvs.

[juular]

2 hours ago, loserone said:

You could have a 240 with two engines like those 4x4 2cvs.

I'm only going down the twin engine route if I can have a pair of V8s.

 

[loserone]

Got to be better fuel economy than a diesel 205 at least

[juular]

15 hours ago, loserone said:

Got to be better fuel economy than a diesel 205 at least

Twice the engines, four times the cylinders, half the power required = eleventy times the economy.

[juular]

18 hours ago, DodgyBastard said:

Glad the pump is working ok.

There's a white 240 estate at my yard being banger raced and the guy was asking if I knew anyone wanting bits cheap. He's apparently removing the engine and fitting something else so engine and autobox available as well as all the other bits banger racers usually discard.

If it's injected, I might be interested in some of the fuel system (fuel pump, accumulator)

[juular]

A fairly big update due to the fleet news so I'll break it up, and start with the Two Hundred and Five.

 

Before this became 'on road' I wanted to fix the dodgy brakes. They sort of worked, but the pedal would always contact the floor before full braking effort was achieved, which was frankly a bit terrifying.

The brakes are fairly new with a couple of brand new front calipers.  I decided to replace the master cylinder since they're pretty cheap and easy to come by.

When it came to refilling and bleeding the system, I went round with some diesel and soaked all the bleed screws the day before.  Three came out without drama, one snapped off.

Being drums on the back it's easy enough to just pull the wheel cylinder out. It was also good to see that the shoes and fitting kit were very new looking.

I used the tried and tested method of building up weld on top of the broken bleed screw, then hammering on a bolt extractor and using the impact gun to release it.

 

Saved.

 

 

With the brakes bled up, the pedal felt N^eleventy times better.  I chucked on a set of new tyres, then aligned the steering using the fishing line method with a small twist.  I used a couple of old chopping boards under the wheels to act as movable plates. This way the wheels are free to steer without the friction on the ground, which makes doing the tracking a lot more accurate.

Car drives fab now.

 

One last minor job. The gearstick was falling to bits, so I replaced it with a generic Halfrauds handle.

 

 

It's such a cheerful little motor, providing you put the wafer thin protection against becoming meat paste to the back of your mind.

The way it corners inspires laughter.  The eager engine note (especially surprising for a diesel) and the gargly exhaust make it ooze character. 

I'll keep it a little while as a cheap runaround then I'll sell it.

 

 

[juular]

Next up in Volvo land, the rest of the 240 updates. Hold on to your 14.4k modems, you may wish to increase your baud rate.

So in the last update I was adding a shim to the main pressure regulator as the system pressure was too low.  The O-ring disintegrated in the process, so I replaced that and tried again.  The pressure ended up being even lower than before, I mean way down 1 Bar instead of the original 4.8. How could this be?

What happened was that bits of the chewed up o-ring had made their way into the regulator and metering head and were blocking some of the ports. So I took off the whole airflow plate / metering head assembly and blasted carb cleaner backwards through the system until bits of green rubber stopped falling out.

With everything refitted and the small copper washer added to the regulator as a shim, the pressure was sitting at a much happier 5.2 bar.  The specs say 5.5 but really anything over 5 can be considered a win.

With that set I could then move on to checking the cold and hot pressures on the warmup regulator.

At around 7 degrees ambient it should be sitting at around 0.6 bar.  In reality it was at 4 bar so not even on the same planet.  The real world effect of this is a really lean mix when the engine is cold, which is pretty much bang on what I suspected given the really difficult starting until some heat got into the engine.

To sort this, I grabbed the hammer and started smacking the adjustment bolt on top of the WUR down.  As the adjuster drops into the unit the pressure also drops.   With a lot of hammering I got it down past 1 bar.

At that point I started tapping the hammer lightly on the pin and got the magic 0.6 bar right on the nose.

Next you need to warm the regulator up and check what pressures it's showing when hot.  Rather than starting the engine, you can feed the pins on the regulator with 12v from the battery and it will warm up the internal heater strip, simulating a hot engine.

As the heater powers up, you can watch the needle on the gauge climb.  It should eventually settle at around 3.4 bar.

Very close!  To sort that I gave the other end of the regulator a good smack with the hammer and it instantly settled at 3.4 bar.  

The moment of truth, after reassembling everything:

A perfect cold start!   I took it out a drive and noticed that it revs much more happily and seems to have a fair chunk more power too.  I'm well chuffed with that.

Of course that highlighted another problem, a knackered front wheel bearing going WWWRRRAAAAAAR. Because you're never allowed to celebrate in peace.

Thankfully the bearings on this car are a DIY job.

MINT.

Removing the inner races is as simple as pulling the hub off and tapping them out with a screwdriver.  The new ones just tap back in.

The bearings themselves just push on to the stub axle, you push the hub on by hand, then tighten the hub nut in two stages and stick a split pin through it.  Why can't all bearings be that easy?

While I was waiting for the bearings to arrive I had a go at making the car more presentable less hanging.

If you've seen it in person you'd understand. The car had been sitting near the coast under a tree for over a decade and was ingrained with dead insects, moss, tree sap, bitumen and who knows what else.

 I'd compounded the look with leftover duct tape, grinding dust, coffee mug rings, primer overspray, and added quite a few dents and scratches for good measure. @320touring very diplomatically commented that the car "wears its miles".

The plus side of a car like that is that you always get space around you in a car park. 

I started by giving the car its first wash in probably 14 years or so. Not an exaggeration.  

This achieved approximately fuck all to be honest.

I decided to go one step further and clay bar the bonnet and roof. Frankly I had no idea what I was doing, but surprisingly this made a huge difference and got the majority of the shit out of the paint. Colour me impressed!

 

Unfortunately something seems to have discoloured the clear coat in places, maybe tree sap or something, and that ain't coming out. It's still a LOT better though.

 

Decided it was paint time!

Started with the rear arches, filling, sanding, filling etc.

Then filler primer.

I wasn't happy with it, so it got some more filler, sanding, primer, repeat ad nauseum.

Looks alright.

Then a quick blast with a rattle can.

 

Colour match is surprisingly good!  The finish isn't brilliant as you can still see where I've been hammering, but you know what, it's better than rust!

Smartens up the back end quite nicely I think.

Did the other side as well.

Impressed with that, I decided to carry on and tidy up the windscreen surround and scuttle.

At some point I'll do a post-mortem of sorts of what worked on this car and what didn't, but for the moment I'll say this.  The majority of the Bilt Hamber stuff I've used has been utter shit.  Which is surprising given that everyone and their granny recommends them.  Almost nothing of theirs has actually done its job remotely well.

This is the after-effect of the combination of Hydrate 80, Electrox zinc primer, and epoxy mastic. This hasn't even been eight weeks and it's utterly fucked. The metal wasn't even rusty to begin with!

 

I took that right back to bare metal, treated it with strong phosphoric acid (my new favourite gloop), then overpainted with Zinga (my other favourite gloop). 

Then lots of filling, priming, filling, sanding etc etc.

 

Then paint.

 

You know what, it isn't awful.

Certainly "less horrible".

After it has cured I'll wet sand it, polish it and see how it all looks.  For the moment I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Once all the trim has been refitted it should lessen the effect of any lumpy-bumpy metalwork I've left behind.

 

[loserone]

What a weinerwinner

[Fumbler]

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.