welding project Juular's Scandi Noir. Volvo C70, 240 &122. It wasn't K-Jet.

[hairnet]

11 hours ago, juular said:

 

 

 

 

 

but realistically I need to replace the fusebox, which I've ordered a blade replacement for.

#yesssssssss

 

[juular]

Shit Volvo news, continuing from the story of the C70 pissing itself everywhere.

I managed to find a used C70 trans cooler on eBay which saved me from having to hack together a solution involving a universal cooler.

Slight problem though, it came with the rubber hoses still attached, and as soon as I tried to remove them it just sheared the soft aluminium pipes off.

So I had to cut the pipes back to a good bit of metal and lose the flared ends.

Next up, dropping the damaged cooler. Only 2 bolts and no need to take the bumper off.

No matter how careful I tried to be I of course dumped a load of ATF on my just washed driveway. Then left a nice trail all the way to the back garden as I carried it to the bin. 

It was clearly fucked and leaking in several places.

The replacement went on no problem but highlighted a new challenge in that the rubber hoses from the gearbox no longer reached the now shorter pipes on the cooler.

So I cut the metal crimps off the rubber hoses and removed them, exposing useful flared metal pipe ends.

It was then a case of replacing those with some fuel hose I had lying around in the 240s boot.

Last job to do on the C70 was fix the mess below. The inner driveshaft boot showed up on the MOT as an advisory, and it didn't last long after.

First attempt was made to replace it with a split glued boot. It almost succeeded.

Unfortunately the big end on the boot was just marginally too wide to be clamped down properly.

I tried another brand of boot and found it a tad too short, with no way round that either.

For what it's worth I expended some violence in trying to separate them again at the glued edges in the name of science. I failed. So there's no need to be sceptical of those glued joins holding up in my opinion.

In the end I noticed that the outer boot was starting to look a bit cracked and gave in and bought a complete new driveshaft.

No more fucking around, job done. I now also have a spare driveshaft that I'll re-boot when I can be bothered.

Did another complete dump and refill of the ATF to try and make it as clean as possible.

And finally a proper road test up to temperature.

No more leaks!

Another swede returned to the road.

240

Meanwhile the 240 was providing fine service as my main car. What a fine looking thing it is.

More ice cream was consumed.

I also treated it to a biennial scraping-off of bird shit.

The plan is to drive this 814 miles round trip to the 2CV racing at Pembrey at the weekend, as my campervan is needing a replacement gearbox.

Amazon

I haven't been driving the Amazon much for no reason other than not having the time and opportunity.

The last thing I did was to replace the leaking radiator with a new one and hack together a gearbox mount out of an old 240 engine mount.

However at the weekend I had the chance to wheel it out for the Bridge of Allan car show, seen here in front of Stirling castle with @captain_70s Acclaim for company.

The show contained delights such as this unforgettable hand sculpted Morris Minor.

And this rare MK1 Ford Transit in Saloon guise.

The good news is that the new Amazon radiator works fine and doesn't leak at all.

The bad news is my attempt to homebrew a gearbox mount failed completely. I was getting a lot of squeaking and banging while driving back from the show. I checked underneath today with a crowbar and could clearly see that the gearbox mount has already begun to separate from its metal pads, likely due to the heat of me having to use the welder on it.

So, that's the next and hopefully last bit of work to do for quite a while.

[juular]

On 13/05/2025 at 21:10, juular said:

So, that's the next and hopefully last bit of work to do for quite a while.

I know. Even as I was typing this out, I knew.

I could feel the presence of the impending doom cloud creeping over the horizon cackling at my impudence at thinking 'that'll be the last job for a while'.

Let's rewind and start with something positive. 

We took the 240 down to Pembrey for the 2CV racing, a nigh on 900 mile round trip. It was fab.

Both the racing and the 240.

The event coincided with @MrsJuulars 40th which was obviously celebrated with cake and beer.

Mr @Talbot brought along his 1 man tent, as usual.

We admired the Pete Sparrow Ami. It's way better in the metal.

The truck racing was on. It was frankly spectacular.

The journey home was mostly uneventful, with an 8 hour drive and a couple of stops at Hilton Park and Preston.

POTATOCAM

Around Birmingham I noticed the 240 sounded a little tappity, but it was hard to really diagnose as the top end sounded quiet enough.

I topped up the engine oil at Preston as it looked a little low and thought no more of it.

We got home at nearly 3AM, with no issues.

Ok, it was a few days later.

We were on the M8 in peak traffic when I heard the engine becoming suddenly very tappy, followed by an enormous bang and what sounded like the engine consuming itself. 

I really feared the worst at this point, but was a little confused as I rolled to a stop and noticed the engine was in fact still running, but only on 3 cylinders.

I was somewhat relieved when I opened the bonnet and saw the cause immediately: the number 3 spark plug and HT lead lying innocently on the front slam panel.

At this point the ticking made sense, clearly the plug had been slowly unwinding itself for some time, until the point where combustion gases started to leak past the threads.

I was too pissed off to take a photo of the spark plug which got duly launched into oblivion, but I did see that on its way out it had taken some of the head with it.

Luckily I did have some spare plugs in the boot, but the chewed up threads made it difficult to know how much I could wind one in before damaging the head completely.

Gingerly I managed to get a plug in, sort of, then drove the car onwards and eventually home.

A few days of sulking later, I got over myself and decided to see if I could save the head.

Luckily the plug I mashed in to get us home didn't seem to have caused any more damage and no more thread material came out as I removed it. Looking down the hole I could see that only around the top 10% of thread was actually damaged.

Bullet dodged, hopefully!

I decided it may be possible to rescue the situation by chasing the remaining threads, so I made up a precision engineered tool.

With that gently wound in and out a few times the threads started to feel pretty good again, and I could wind it right in to the bottom using only a bit of 8mm fuel hose on the ceramic insulator and gentle pressure.

I spun the engine over a few times with no plug to try and blow out any swarf. Regardless, a few bits of aluminium are unlikely to be of concern and are more likely to be vapourised instantly.

Happy with this, I stuck a set of brand new plugs in and gave it a good thrashing locally.

Zero issues.

I'm now declaring it fixed.

Since I was in about it I treated it to a couple of other little jobs.

I've been ignoring the fact it's quite grumpy on start-up for a while, mainly because it's KJet and There Be Dragons. If it runs, don't fuck with it.

Let's fuck with it.

The auxiliary air valve is here. It gives the engine a little bit of extra throttle when it's cold, and automatically closes up as it gets warm. 

Looking through it, I seemed to remember it should be a little bit more open than this on a first start.

Adjusted. I did say a little bit. Small adjustments have quite a significant effect.

Since I was there, I also took off the warmup regulator and modified it a little bit. 

I'd already added a bolt and nut to make it adjustable, but the nut had a habit of just digging into the casing when screwed down. So I added some washers.

I also gave the inlet filter a good clean out. It wasn't bad, but it did have some shit lying in it.

I didn't do any adjustments to the fuelling as it was so warm outside it was almost fully on the leaned-out setting purely from the ambient temperature. I'll do that properly on a colder morning.

Still, the aux air adjustment was a good call. Small changes, big effect. It now starts a lot better from cold.

So, this would be a happy ending, but for the fact the Amazon has now developed a non trivial problem.

More on that later. Two working cars is not to be sniffed at when the shite gods are watching.

[juular]

To bring the Amazon catalogue of maladies up to date, the last thing I mentioned was the gearbox mount.

The aftermarket Volvo mount I used here was rock solid and more like plastic than rubber. I replaced that with a modified 240 engine mount, which was a daft idea. The reason I had a spare 240 engine mount in the first place is because it was knackered and I forgot to bin it.

I fixed the problem properly by buying another set of Land Rover engine mounts from Glencoyne which are made out of rubber that is almost exactly the same as factory. 

These mounts are much wider than the Volvo ones but that was easy enough to sort by taking a small cut off one edge so that it would fit on the gearbox crossmember.

That then worked perfectly. 

The difference with these mounts on both the engine and gearbox is huge, with the deep vibration from the engine completely gone.

This almost brings the year-long issue with bad droning noises to a close.

I say almost, because in the new found peace and quiet I can now hear that the diff is fucked.

It doesn't whine like you'd expect, but there's a clear problem with the backlash as every time you either shift gears or go on the power there's a loud clunk from the back end.

Worse, there's an unpleasant groaning / rumbling noise on over-run which makes driving at a set speed on light throttle quite unpleasant.

If I grab the propshaft and rotate it with the wheels on the ground, I can move it quite a long way before it engages drive in either direction.

The propshaft itself seems absolutely fine with no movement. There's nothing else for it but to pull the diff out and have a look. 

To complicate matters the diff fitted to this car is an early style ENV unit for which there's not much in the way of documentation or parts available. A member of the Volvo owners group has very kindly sent me a copy of a manual from the 1960s showing the rebuild process, and I'm going to have a shot at it.

On the plus side it looks like the same diff was used in early Land Rovers which means there must be someone available nearby who will dig me out of the hole I inevitably create for myself!

Stay tuned for more self flagellation.

[Talbot]

On 26/05/2025 at 15:02, juular said:

Mr @Talbot brought along his 1 man tent, as usual.

I will accept any and all critique of having gone a tadge overboard on the tentage for this event.

[Ronkey]

Might be worth a chat with Rob Henchoz at Amazon Cars in Ipswich in regard to the diff. I know they have reduced what they do at the start of the year, but they are still listing on ebay. When I called in late last there I'm sure that there were complete  used ENV axles there. 

[juular]

Small and uninteresting but actually significant upgrade done to the 240 at the weekend. I finally spent the money to buy a new replacement fuse box that takes blade fuses rather than the horrible continental ones.

It's a like for like swap, so basically just have to move the wires across.

The big immediate improvement is that the fuse box is no longer overheating. In the longer term I can now also get replacement fuses easy enough at services or supermarkets if need be, rather than having to find more specialist places.

The other good news is that the car doesn't seem to have suffered from its spontaneous spark plug ejection incident. I've put a hundred or so miles on it and there's no signs of plug movement at all.

I've been half heartedly thinking about sorting the paint as really it's the last thing stopping the car from being perfect.

I did spray the areas that I repaired a few years ago, but weird things started to happen about a year afterwards.

It started off going a bit leathery and cracked looking.

And then in some places started falling off completely.

Not really sure what has happened there. I'm guessing maybe the paint has reacted with the clear lacquer, but I don't know how to prevent that happening again.

I've also had some thoughts on how to sort the Amazon diff.

I obtained some tools that feel far too grown up for me to be using.

My plan is to take the diff internals out of the casing and swap them with the spare ENV axle I took off the spares car. I'm glad I didn't bin it as they're pretty rare.

Hopefully the other diff will be usable, and it'll get the car on the road while I diagnose and repair the current one.

The reason I don't want to do a permanent swap is the other diff is a 4.56:1 ratio rather than the 4.1:1 so it will be a bit louder and revvier at cruise.

At the same time it will also give quicker acceleration so it might be fun to try it out for a while if nothing else!

[Supernaut]

I envy your nice, leisurely diffs.

I drove the S1 Land Rover to Fraserburgh and back yesterday. It's maybe 30-40 minutes in a "normal car" that can do 60mph.

The Land Rover has a 1.00 4th gear and 4.70 diffs. Screams its head off at about 40mph.

[juular]

The 0.77 overdrive with the 4.1 diff is surprisingly chilled. Under 3000rpm at 70mph.

[captain_70s]

Very impressive gearing for a car of that era. Wouldn't be commonplace until the 5-speed became common in the mid 80s.

For the reference, the Cresta:

And Cresta with the very rare aftermarket Laycock Overdrive...

The Dolly just screams along. No rev counter, no worries...

[warninglight]

4 hours ago, captain_70s said:

Very impressive gearing for a car of that era. Wouldn't be commonplace until the 5-speed became common in the mid 80s.

I think @juularhas combined the 'saloon non-overdrive' diff (the longest legged Amazon diff ratio) with the overdrive, giving it proper long legs. Longer than Volvo ever intended! It's what I did with mine, and worked well on the motorway.

[juular]

Well, that plan failed.

Went out to have a look at the spare 4.56 axle I had in storage.

Half shafts out. Not much corrosion and the bearings looked good which I thought was promising.

Diff unbolted no problem.

A bit of oil still in the pan, again seemed positive.

Diff out. 

Unfortunately I couldn't get it to turn.

This will be why. The main bearings are rusted solid.

There's also a bit of rust on the teeth of the crownwheel.

The plan is to dismantle it and see if the rust on the teeth goes deep or is mostly flash rust / cosmetic.

At the very least it'll need bearings, so no straight swap over for me.

If nothing else it'll be practice in dismantling the diff before I do the one on the car properly.

[chaseracer]

On 28/05/2025 at 13:23, Talbot said:

I will accept any and all critique of having gone a tadge overboard on the tentage for this event.

@Talbot: if I bring my Absurdocampbed to Snet, may I rent a corner of the east wing, pliz thankyoo? 😀

[juular]

Minor update regarding the spare Amazon diff.

I decided to clean up the rust on the crownwheel to see just how bad it was. 

The answer is not great, but not awful.

I wouldn't want to run that for any length of time but it would probably do the job if needed.

I decided to carry on and dismantle the diff completely.

Firstly, cutting off the bearings. They are absolutely wrecked with rust and I don't have the correct two leg puller to remove them, but a cut with the grinder and a good smack with a chisel gets them loose.

At least now I have the numbers off them, but the news isn't fantastic here either. The bearings have been pretty much discontinued and the only ones left on shelves are £300-£600. That's per bearing.

Looking at the timken catalogue there appears to be a bearing which is almost identical - one digit out on the part number.  However that one can be had for about £40.

The only difference between the two is the radius of the curvature on the bottom of the bearing, shown here.

It's quite a big radius, designed to accommodate the very chunky fillet on the bottom of the bearing stub.

On the other hand the other part number bearing has a smaller radius edge on the bottom.

I'm thinking that it probably would be ok to buy the cheaper bearing and grind down the edge to create a larger radius. This will probably be the way forward should I decide to rebuild this diff.

It's still too early to say whether I'll need to actually replace the bearings on the diff which is still on the car. I'm trying to sell my house and the last thing I need is a rat look Amazon on stands missing its rear axle, so I'll be doing that later.

In the meantime enjoy this view of the disassembled diff, just because it's kind of cool to look at in pieces.

 

[juular]

It's been a while.

Trafic 

We decided at short notice to go to Norway for a summer holiday in the Trafic.  That meant that I needed to stop procrastinating and fix the problems with it, lest we be stranded 2000 miles away from home.

I paid for the utterly horrible sounding gearbox to be rebuilt, which only highlighted the even more horrible sounding alternator which could be likened to bricks in a tumble dryer.

Guess how you get to the alternator?

See if you can spot it.

No?

How about now?

As usual everything on this requires the entire front end off, but I'm so used to it now that it only takes 20 minutes to cut the structural cable ties that's now holding it together.

While I was in there I thought I'd try replacing the condenser in the hope of having AC working on the continent, but apparently the one part number references two different parts..

Anyway, skip that. I finished up by replacing the straps on the diesel tank which had fallen off and allowed filling of the 90L tank to a rather worrying 110L due to the bulging.

Then it was off to Scandinavia.

SO MUCH TAT.

SUCH BIG DONKEYS

SO MANY SCENES 

SO MANY INSTRUCTIONS

Finally we ended our holiday by meeting @Dyslexic Viking. Is this the first official Norwegian Autoshite event?

It was a real pleasure to put a face to the forum name and enjoy a coffee and a good chat. I hope we can do it again soon.

Then with a heavy heart, home again.

On the way back we went to the 2CV 24H at Snetterton, then home for 3 days and back out again to convoy with @blackboilersuit and @captain_70s to Rustival.

That leads me on to the 240.

240.

This was supposed to be going down to rustival and I'd had absolutely no worries taking this the distance as it had never really let me down.

Unfortunately I took it to work the day before and, well, it did.

I have no idea what happened, but it just cut out instantly on the motorway.

After about 15 seconds of cranking it burst into life, backfired loudly then died again.

I waited 5 minutes, restarted it and it ran fine. Something getting heat soaked? 

Anyway, I limped it to a services and dumped it.

After work I came back to it and drove it home as if nothing ever happened.

I honestly don't have a clue. It sounds like ignition. 

Anyway, this is a good opportunity to do a shuffle.

C70

Nothing to report. Currently works.

Amazon.

The last update on the Amazon was that I needed to fix the clunking and grumbling rear end.

As it turned out after taking the rear drums off I found that there was almost no lash whatsoever in between the half shafts and the pinion flange. This is great news as it meant I wouldn't have to remove and sort the diff itself. A massive sigh of relief.

What I did find was the following.

One of the woodruff keys at the rear drums had been installed wrong (probably by me) and this had fucked both the key and the keyway on the drum.

This in turn shredded the felt seal at the hub.

To add to that I also noticed that the pinion seal was pissing oil, and that the prop shaft itself had a couple of loose or seized universal joints.

Oil drained, diff seal pulled and replaced.

U-joints replaced. These were so seized I had to use the hydraulic press to remove them, and they scattered their rusty needle bearings all over the place.

New ones ready to go on.

Finally I also noticed the centre support bearing on the prop was really rough, so this was a good time to sort that.

This required purchase of a massive tool to loosen the big nut.

This also served the purpose of a press tool to get the bearing out.

Final little detail was to weld a nut onto one of the brake adjustes as the dodgy square drive on it is impossible to get hold of properly to loosen or tighten it on the car.

Almost there!

Refilled the diff oil, did an engine oil change, then went out and enjoyed it.

A nice gentle drive.

 

And a bit of lunch.

It drives so much better now. All of the noises from the back end have gone.

The car sounds better too.

 

[Ronkey]

@juular - have you got a photo of the right way for the woodruff key? Sounds like something I need to know.

[juular]

2 minutes ago, Ronkey said:

@juular - have you got a photo of the right way for the woodruff key? Sounds like something I need to know.

The tapered end goes down against the half shaft, and towards the centre of the car.

It should make sense when you look at it, as the keyway on the shaft rises to meet the tapered end.

There is another thing to watch. If the key goes in too far it will rise upwards, and as you tighten the drum on it will damage it.

I think this is how I mangled mine.

The advice I was given is to have the key protruding onto the threads of the half shaft and use the nut and washer to push it into place as you tighten the drum.

[Ronkey]

Top man - thanks. As suspected they are currently wrong as the felt seals are knackered 👍🏻

[juular]

Took a drive out in the fog last night. Could barely see a few feet in front of the bumper at some points, but this photo turned out nice.

I'd like to do some more black and whites as well .

[juular]

Time to sort this out.

Recap : it started partially cutting out and coming back to life while driving before eventually cutting out completely on the motorway. Then, once cool, drove home no problem.

It's clearly an ignition problem as it would sometimes backfire when cutting out. 

I'd already replaced the plugs, rotor, leads and cap not long ago so it can only be one of three things : coil, ignition module or the hall sensor.

The hall sensor is a pain in the arse so I started with the other two.

I had a spare ignition module in the glovebox so I stuck that on.

A replacement coil arrived today.

With that fitted the car started lovely on half a turn, but it still leaves a question mark as to whether I'd solved the problem.

I thought why not give the hall sensor a poke.. and the engine died immediately.

Ah, fuck.

Well, thankfully it looks like it's just the wiring to the sensor that's the problem.

With the rubber boot removed it doesn't look that bad.

However if you try to move the cable while running, it cuts out.

 

I'm quite pleased to have narrowed down the issue, but it's not a straightforward fix. Wiring harnesses are no longer available and there's the chance it could either be the wiring or the plug itself.

Looking at the wiring diagram I'll need to find some 3 core shielded cable to splice in.

Thankfully the plugs are available for very little money so I've ordered a couple.

Plan is to wire in a tail to a new plug, then splice it into the existing wiring.

Hopefully that will be a cheap fix to get this back on the road.

[JakeT]

We also did a Norway trip this summer, well. Spring. It was great! We did the Hook Van Holland ferry to NL, up to the top of Denmark, and then Hirtshals to Stavanger overnight. Loved it, and a proper sense of adventure.

[juular]

2 hours ago, JakeT said:

We also did a Norway trip this summer, well. Spring. It was great! We did the Hook Van Holland ferry to NL, up to the top of Denmark, and then Hirtshals to Stavanger overnight. Loved it, and a proper sense of adventure.

It's properly lovely isn't it? 

We went the long way there, Falkirk-Dover-Calais then up over the big bridges from Denmark to Sweden.  While it was relatively cheap and very awesome on the bridges, it did feel like it took forever.

We came back via Kristiansand, Hirtshals and Hoek van Holland it and it made Norway feel comparatively nearby. 

It's now my favourite place on this earth. We will be going back.

[danthecapriman]

I’d love to go see that part of the world too.

Id actually really like to take my Volvo with me and drive it right up into the arctic circle and see the northern lights from there. What a trip it’d be!

[juular]

1 hour ago, danthecapriman said:

I’d love to go see that part of the world too.

Id actually really like to take my Volvo with me and drive it right up into the arctic circle and see the northern lights from there. What a trip it’d be!

I also want to do this.

It seems to me it's the kind of place that if you broke down in the middle of nowhere in an old Volvo there would be no problem finding obscure parts to get it sorted.

[danthecapriman]

11 minutes ago, juular said:

I also want to do this.

It seems to me it's the kind of place that if you broke down in the middle of nowhere in an old Volvo there would be no problem finding obscure parts to get it sorted.

Maybe we could organise an Autoshite convoy journey up there!😄

[DSdriver]

17 hours ago, juular said:

Time to sort this out.

Recap : it started partially cutting out and coming back to life while driving before eventually cutting out completely on the motorway. Then, once cool, drove home no problem.

It's clearly an ignition problem as it would sometimes backfire when cutting out. 

I'd already replaced the plugs, rotor, leads and cap not long ago so it can only be one of three things : coil, ignition module or the hall sensor.

The hall sensor is a pain in the arse so I started with the other two.

I had a spare ignition module in the glovebox so I stuck that on.

A replacement coil arrived today.

With that fitted the car started lovely on half a turn, but it still leaves a question mark as to whether I'd solved the problem.

I thought why not give the hall sensor a poke.. and the engine died immediately.

Ah, fuck.

Well, thankfully it looks like it's just the wiring to the sensor that's the problem.

With the rubber boot removed it doesn't look that bad.

However if you try to move the cable while running, it cuts out.

 

I'm quite pleased to have narrowed down the issue, but it's not a straightforward fix. Wiring harnesses are no longer available and there's the chance it could either be the wiring or the plug itself.

Looking at the wiring diagram I'll need to find some 3 core shielded cable to splice in.

Thankfully the plugs are available for very little money so I've ordered a couple.

Plan is to wire in a tail to a new plug, then splice it into the existing wiring.

Hopefully that will be a cheap fix to get this back on the road.

One of my Volvos had a habbit of cutting out at embarrasing time. It was eventually tacked down to the fuel pump relay.

[Dyslexic Viking]

14 minutes ago, DSdriver said:

One of my Volvos had a habbit of cutting out at embarrasing time. It was eventually tacked down to the fuel pump relay.

Yes, it's a known problem. The fuel pump relay gets hot and cuts power to the fuel pump and when it cools down it starts working again if I remember correctly.

[Dyslexic Viking]

51 minutes ago, juular said:

It seems to me it's the kind of place that if you broke down in the middle of nowhere in an old Volvo there would be no problem finding obscure parts to get it sorted.

This was my thought when I drove to the North Cape through Norway, Sweden and Finland in 2014 with the Volvo 740 I had then. Most mechanics who have been around for a few years and especially in rural areas know them and parts should not be a problem. And this is especially true in northern Sweden and Finland where there are many old cars still in daily use.

[juular]

39 minutes ago, DSdriver said:

One of my Volvos had a habbit of cutting out at embarrasing time. It was eventually tacked down to the fuel pump relay.

I thought this too, but I've ruled this out as I have a hotwire 'get me home' switch that bypasses the relay.   

[JakeT]

7 hours ago, juular said:

It's properly lovely isn't it? 

We went the long way there, Falkirk-Dover-Calais then up over the big bridges from Denmark to Sweden.  While it was relatively cheap and very awesome on the bridges, it did feel like it took forever.

We came back via Kristiansand, Hirtshals and Hoek van Holland it and it made Norway feel comparatively nearby. 

It's now my favourite place on this earth. We will be going back.

Absolutely! The bridges are excellent, too. Weirdly after heading around Norway, we then got the ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen. Then did a few days around Sweden, which was also great.

 

Agreed, we’ll be back! I’d also love to do Finland and the Baltics.