stupidity 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Sorting the steering.

[mat_the_cat]

How well do the tapers match? I wonder if it wasn't seating as well as it ought. I've come across a vehicle where the nut had bottomed out on the thread  before seating the taper - which in this case manifested itself as a clonk rather than working loose however.

I've heard of nylocks working loose, but only from those selling an alternative solution, and never a real-life situation!

[Dave_Q]

11 minutes ago, mat_the_cat said:

How well do the tapers match? I wonder if it wasn't seating as well as it ought. I've come across a vehicle where the nut had bottomed out on the thread  before seating the taper - which in this case manifested itself as a clonk rather than working loose however.

I've heard of nylocks working loose, but only from those selling an alternative solution, and never a real-life situation!

It's definitely rare and like you mention you would normally hear a knock/clonk as the first sign that something was up, for the whole joint to let go like that it could easily be something else, it's a weird one.

@juular if it's any consolation working as an engineer for a firm in the automotive industry it is really common for people to think adding a locking device of some sort to a thread can solve an issue. 

For a very simple mechanism which we have been knocking out since the industrial revolution, bolted joints are not well understood by most people. 

We had this bloke in to do a training course once, he was excellent. https://www.boltscience.com/

[EyesWeldedShut]

39 minutes ago, Dave_Q said:

We had this bloke in to do a training course once, he was excellent. https://www.boltscience.com/

Well, there's my coffee break reading - fascinating, I like this "Do not use plain washers..."

[Talbot]

Looking at the setup of this ball-joint, a few things spring to mind:

• The entire load of the front suspension is taken on the ball joint in question.  The lower arm is being "pushed down" by the spring, and hence it's that balljoint that carries all the load.  Because of the orientation, it takes that load in tension rather than compression.
• If the taper doesn't lock, then the threads will turn in relation to the lower arm every time the steering is turned.  As there is so much load, now only being held on a nut, it's entirely understandable that turning one way will wind the nut relative to the thread, but turning the other way, the nut will move relative to the arm.  Essentially creating a friction ratchet.
• A loose nut and loose taper will not be detectable by a clonk, as the entire arrangement is under tension all the time.  You could move the suspension any way you like and not feel movement.  It would only be found if the car is jacked up on the lower arm, thus removing the load from the suspension.
• The use of nylock nuts for a critical application like this is far from sensible
• This needs to be done up tight enough that the taper locks solid and does not rotate.

It's a very similar design to what Chrysler/Talbot used to use on the Alpine, Solara and Horizon.  They also had a single-point-failure balljoint under tension between the lower arm and the hub.  It was the other way up (ball in the hub and threads pointing down) but the same theory.  The nut on that had a torque spec of about 100lb-ft and was a bastard to undo.  The taper locked in really solid.

It also had the same effect that if the ball was worn or the taper lose it was almost impossible to detect, and would easily pass an MOT even with severe wear.  It was not unheard of for the ball to pop out of the joint, thus slamming the lower arm into the road and leaving the wheel at a very jaunty angle.

It's not a brilliant bit of design.  Ideally the balljoint would be the other way around, with the weight of the vehicle actively pushing the ball into the socket rather than trying to pull it out, and also actively keeping the tapers together, rather than trying to pull them apart.  Many other cars are designed this way, so IMO there's no real excuse for this.

[juular]

24 minutes ago, Talbot said:

Looking at the setup of this ball-joint, a few things spring to mind:

• The entire load of the front suspension is taken on the ball joint in question.  The lower arm is being "pushed down" by the spring, and hence it's that balljoint that carries all the load.  Because of the orientation, it takes that load in tension rather than compression.
• If the taper doesn't lock, then the threads will turn in relation to the lower arm every time the steering is turned.  As there is so much load, now only being held on a nut, it's entirely understandable that turning one way will wind the nut relative to the thread, but turning the other way, the nut will move relative to the arm.  Essentially creating a friction ratchet.
• A loose nut and loose taper will not be detectable by a clonk, as the entire arrangement is under tension all the time.  You could move the suspension any way you like and not feel movement.  It would only be found if the car is jacked up on the lower arm, thus removing the load from the suspension.
• The use of nylock nuts for a critical application like this is far from sensible
• This needs to be done up tight enough that the taper locks solid and does not rotate.

It's a very similar design to what Chrysler/Talbot used to use on the Alpine, Solara and Horizon.  They also had a single-point-failure balljoint under tension between the lower arm and the hub.  It was the other way up (ball in the hub and threads pointing down) but the same theory.  The nut on that had a torque spec of about 100lb-ft and was a bastard to undo.  The taper locked in really solid.

It also had the same effect that if the ball was worn or the taper lose it was almost impossible to detect, and would easily pass an MOT even with severe wear.  It was not unheard of for the ball to pop out of the joint, thus slamming the lower arm into the road and leaving the wheel at a very jaunty angle.

It's not a brilliant bit of design.  Ideally the balljoint would be the other way around, with the weight of the vehicle actively pushing the ball into the socket rather than trying to pull it out, and also actively keeping the tapers together, rather than trying to pull them apart.  Many other cars are designed this way, so IMO there's no real excuse for this.

All of this is exactly what I was trying to explain, especially regarding the tension causing a ratchet effect, but the way you've put it is much more succinct.

Frighteningly, the other side is also loose. It's not quite got as far as ratcheting itself off the stud, because the taper has locked nice and solid. I was able to remove the nut with my fingers, which also suggests that it's not a quality Nylock nut, rather a plain nut with 'blue' in it.

Needless to say that's now been done up with a castle nut and split pin as well.

[Talbot]

11 minutes ago, juular said:

Frighteningly, the other side is also loose. It's not quite got as far as ratcheting itself off the stud, because the taper has locked nice and solid. I was able to remove the nut with my fingers, which also suggests that it's not a quality Nylock nut, rather a plain nut with 'blue' in it.

Castle nut and split pin seems like a VERY good upgrade here!

[juular]

11 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

We had this bloke in to do a training course once, he was excellent. https://www.boltscience.com

What a very interesting rabbit hole.

[alcyonecorporation]

The front of mine is clonking over bumps. 

I'm going to check the ball joints after what happened to you. 

[Ronkey]

On 20/12/2023 at 15:13, Talbot said:

Looking at the setup of this ball-joint, a few things spring to mind:

• The entire load of the front suspension is taken on the ball joint in question.  The lower arm is being "pushed down" by the spring, and hence it's that balljoint that carries all the load.  Because of the orientation, it takes that load in tension rather than compression.
• If the taper doesn't lock, then the threads will turn in relation to the lower arm every time the steering is turned.  As there is so much load, now only being held on a nut, it's entirely understandable that turning one way will wind the nut relative to the thread, but turning the other way, the nut will move relative to the arm.  Essentially creating a friction ratchet.
• A loose nut and loose taper will not be detectable by a clonk, as the entire arrangement is under tension all the time.  You could move the suspension any way you like and not feel movement.  It would only be found if the car is jacked up on the lower arm, thus removing the load from the suspension.
• The use of nylock nuts for a critical application like this is far from sensible
• This needs to be done up tight enough that the taper locks solid and does not rotate.

It's a very similar design to what Chrysler/Talbot used to use on the Alpine, Solara and Horizon.  They also had a single-point-failure balljoint under tension between the lower arm and the hub.  It was the other way up (ball in the hub and threads pointing down) but the same theory.  The nut on that had a torque spec of about 100lb-ft and was a bastard to undo.  The taper locked in really solid.

It also had the same effect that if the ball was worn or the taper lose it was almost impossible to detect, and would easily pass an MOT even with severe wear.  It was not unheard of for the ball to pop out of the joint, thus slamming the lower arm into the road and leaving the wheel at a very jaunty angle.

It's not a brilliant bit of design.  Ideally the balljoint would be the other way around, with the weight of the vehicle actively pushing the ball into the socket rather than trying to pull it out, and also actively keeping the tapers together, rather than trying to pull them apart.  Many other cars are designed this way, so IMO there's no real excuse for this.

Bloody hell that has brought back memories. My first car was a Talbot Horizon (blue of course - no singing please) and the ball joint separated in the driver's side. Thankfully at low speed and nothing hurt but pride. I was turning in a housing estate at the time. Blocked everything 😬

[juular]

I took the Amazon out a test drive after putting the suspension back together. Seemed mostly OK but I was concerned that the alignment seemed very off. The steering wheel was around 90 degrees to the right and there was a strong left pull.

Had another look.

I didn't notice it from above with the wheel off, but from the front you can see that tie rod doesn't look quite right. Since that was noticed during the Christmas shutdown, I parked it up, ordered a new part and forgot about it.

Just got round to looking at this today, and you can see how bad it is.  Presumably the wheel being shoved at an odd angle has bent the rod.

As straight as Ricky Martin that is.

New part fitted, along with some new poly drop link and anti roll bar bushes as the whole lot was a little bit sloppy.

While I was under there I noticed a small drip from the radiator so the test drive has to wait until I sort that.

In the meantime I've also run into snag with the front windows in that they feel a bit loose and occasionally they don't want to wind down.

Here's why.

The glass retainer has rotted out and no longer grips the bottom of the window.

To fix that I chopped the retainer section off and made a new one.

That's meant to be held to the window with a rubber grip, but in the absence of those I just epoxied the glass in which seems to work well.

[juular]

Took the Amazon a couple of short drives. Wheel alignment was awful, so I spent ages setting up my alignment rig and trying to adjust the left and right independently as you do on a normal rack and pinion setup.

I then realised what an idiot I was and that it can't be done this way. Looking below, once the steering box is centred the offside toe is fixed and you have to adjust everything from the centre bar (#12 below) which moves the nearside wheel in and out. 

So I abandoned all science and just wound the bar, went for a drive, wound it again, drove, until it started to feel right, using the patented method of letting go of the steering wheel at speed and seeing what happened.

It took quite a lot of winding the front toe inwards but got it close enough.

Went a drive with @Talbot at the weekend to pick up a tarp for the Ami, and noted that the steering was quite wandery.

Sounds a bit like too much toe-out to me as that normally manifests in the wheels wanting to follow every single dip in the surface.

Gave it another good wad of toe-in, bunged some rad sealer in, and went for another drive today.

So, the steering feels a lot less nervous now and will hold its path even on a bumpy road. The final piece in that puzzle is to take the steering wheel off and put it back on straight.

Unfortunately the rad is still dripping a little bit from one corner despite the rad sealer being put in. 

I'm still quite nervous about driving this car because of what happened, which is just silly after all the work that I put into it. For that reason I'm considering taking it down to Rustival in March. Hopefully 600 miles will help my daft brain deal with it.

Oh.. and when I was doing the suspension repairs after the ball joint incident I ordered a pair of track rod ends from Classic Swede. The money was taken but then complete radio silence from them, and now their email address is refusing emails. The Volvo owners club seem to think this is normal behaviour but frankly I disagree and is a shit state of affairs. One for the avoid list!

[N Dentressangle]

You're not the only one having issues with that guy:

https://www.facebook.com/classicswede.co.uk/reviews

The car looks ace - I'd just gently preserve the patina it has if it were mine. Saw a much shinier 122 in Aldi car park today and thought what a smart thing it was.

[warninglight]

15 hours ago, juular said:

Oh.. and when I was doing the suspension repairs after the ball joint incident I ordered a pair of track rod ends from Classic Swede. The money was taken but then complete radio silence from them, and now their email address is refusing emails. The Volvo owners club seem to think this is normal behaviour but frankly I disagree and is a shit state of affairs. One for the avoid list!

I used Dai once for a reasonably priced 240 wiper motor and he did get it to me quickly, but the poor communication and delays to orders has been a theme for 10+ years. He used to be into lpg conversions too, with mixed reviews.

 

[juular]

15 hours ago, N Dentressangle said:

You're not the only one having issues with that guy:

https://www.facebook.com/classicswede.co.uk/reviews

The car looks ace - I'd just gently preserve the patina it has if it were mine. Saw a much shinier 122 in Aldi car park today and thought what a smart thing it was.

Damn, I wish I'd seen that before ordering. I'm not on Facebook so I can't reach that page without being given a direct link like you have done.

Going through past Volvo owners club forum posts it sounds like he has been unreliable for a very long time.

I'm swaying between keeping the patina and trying to make it look smart. I'd like to keep it as is but I'm worried about panels beginning to rot through if I don't deal with the rust and paint it.

[juular]

1 hour ago, warninglight said:

I used Dai once for a reasonably priced 240 wiper motor and he did get it to me quickly, but the poor communication and delays to orders has been a theme for 10+ years. He used to be into lpg conversions too, with mixed reviews.

 

The delay would be tolerable if there was some communication. The complete silence coupled with not answering the phone and emails being bounced back means it rings every scammer alarm bell.

I've tried to cancel the order and I'm getting ignored. What's the betting they now turn up making it even harder to get a refund?

[N Dentressangle]

I try to pay by Paypal if I can. They will deal with a refund, and if the seller won't respond then they refund automatically in your favour.

Maybe try Ankor wax or something on the paintwork? There look to be many different potions available.

[juular]

Ordered track rod ends from Brookhouse as it was clear Classicswede were just taking the piss and they were never going to arrive. Less than 24 hours after ordering from Brookhouse they turned up, with free sweets. A bit more expensive but at least if you need something you can rely on it turning up fast.

Easiest car in the world to do track rod ends on. Don't even need to jack it up. Just pull the split pins, undo the nuts, couple of smacks with a pickle fork and the bar comes off ready for the ends to be swapped. Keeping the bar the same length means no alignment needs to be done after.

Dreaded nylocs on these, but the difference is they're so stiff I had to jam the tapers in using a trolley jack to get the nuts on otherwise they'd just spin. Clearly good quality fasteners for a change and quite reassuring.

Next niggle. The boot wouldn't lock so I was wary of leaving the car anywhere.

In the process of removing the latch and handle I broke the linkage.

Once again the spares car has saved the day! Linkage pilfered.

Last job. Noticed a rather significant ice cube in the spare wheel well. I guess there's a leak!

Ran a drill through this to make a drain hole.

Test drive time.

Massive improvement with the new track rod ends. Steering is tight as a drum, steering wheel dead straight. This is how I like cars to drive as nothing pisses me off more than crap steering and suspension.

The next and possibly final job to do for a long time is to pull the gearbox off and replace the front and rear seals as I've got a significant trail of oil. That can wait till it's not minus bloody seven outside though!

[Saabnut]

14 hours ago, juular said:

The next and possibly final job to do for a long time is to pull the gearbox off and replace the front and rear seals as I've got a significant trail of oil. That can wait till it's not minus bloody seven outside though!

Don't forget I have that 5 speed in my shed for you, I will try to get it dropped into you sometime soon

[juular]

Having some more fun in the Amazon.

This post could not be completed because a weather occurred.

 

 

[juular]

Plopsies.

Got sick of this leaking everywhere and had the seals lying around, so cracked on at the first lull in the weather.

I found 5 leaks.

Front seal.

Shifter and reverse switch housing.

Rear seal and Speedo drive.

Pulled the output flange off and replaced the seal.

Reverse switch sealed up with rtv.

Front bearing housing removed, seal changed and new gasket made.

There's a top hat seal for the speedo that I'll replace when the cable goes back on.

The shifter leak was probably from the oil being slightly overfilled wile the gearstick wasn't bolted in fully.

Ready to go back in, but have lost the motivation.

[loserone]

You've fixed FIVE LEAKS and have lost motivation?!

[Lankytim]

On 15/01/2024 at 16:42, juular said:

Took the Amazon a couple of short drives. Wheel alignment was awful, so I spent ages setting up my alignment rig and trying to adjust the left and right independently as you do on a normal rack and pinion setup.

I then realised what an idiot I was and that it can't be done this way. Looking below, once the steering box is centred the offside toe is fixed and you have to adjust everything from the centre bar (#12 below) which moves the nearside wheel in and out. 

So I abandoned all science and just wound the bar, went for a drive, wound it again, drove, until it started to feel right, using the patented method of letting go of the steering wheel at speed and seeing what happened.

It took quite a lot of winding the front toe inwards but got it close enough.

Went a drive with @Talbot at the weekend to pick up a tarp for the Ami, and noted that the steering was quite wandery.

Sounds a bit like too much toe-out to me as that normally manifests in the wheels wanting to follow every single dip in the surface.

Gave it another good wad of toe-in, bunged some rad sealer in, and went for another drive today.

So, the steering feels a lot less nervous now and will hold its path even on a bumpy road. The final piece in that puzzle is to take the steering wheel off and put it back on straight.

Unfortunately the rad is still dripping a little bit from one corner despite the rad sealer being put in. 

I'm still quite nervous about driving this car because of what happened, which is just silly after all the work that I put into it. For that reason I'm considering taking it down to Rustival in March. Hopefully 600 miles will help my daft brain deal with it.

Oh.. and when I was doing the suspension repairs after the ball joint incident I ordered a pair of track rod ends from Classic Swede. The money was taken but then complete radio silence from them, and now their email address is refusing emails. The Volvo owners club seem to think this is normal behaviour but frankly I disagree and is a shit state of affairs. One for the avoid list!

If it’s anything like my 145 you can alter camber and castor angles by adding and removing shims on the top wishbone. The crossmember tends to bend in over the decades and shims need to be removed from the wishbone to keep everything straight. Apparently Volvo dealers had a special hydraulic press to splay the crossmember back out on high mileage cars. 

I’ve read that this castor/camber is very difficult to get right and places like ATS won’t know how to set it correctly so it’s a case of trial and error and DIY. 

[Talbot]

1 hour ago, Lankytim said:

The crossmember tends to bend in over the decades and shims need to be removed from the wishbone to keep everything straight. Apparently Volvo dealers had a special hydraulic press to splay the crossmember back out on high mileage cars.

I love the crude nature of the engineering for this:

"the subframe has bent".

"we'll just bend that back again then"

[Rust Collector]

10 minutes ago, Talbot said:

I love the crude nature of the engineering for this:

"the subframe has bent".

"we'll just bend that back again then"

There is something beautifully utilitarian about it, isn't there.

[juular]

3 hours ago, Lankytim said:

If it’s anything like my 145 you can alter camber and castor angles by adding and removing shims on the top wishbone. The crossmember tends to bend in over the decades and shims need to be removed from the wishbone to keep everything straight. Apparently Volvo dealers had a special hydraulic press to splay the crossmember back out on high mileage cars. 

I’ve read that this castor/camber is very difficult to get right and places like ATS won’t know how to set it correctly so it’s a case of trial and error and DIY. 

I am surprised that subframe bends to be honest, it looks similar to the 240 one in that it would survive a nuclear blast. 

I did shim it when I put it back on, but who knows how it was shimmed when it came off because inevitable chaos.

Anyway I'm quite happy with how it drives now. Seems to be dead straight and doesn't seem overly keen on following the ruts, so it must at least be fairly close.

[Lacquer Peel]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

I love the crude nature of the engineering for this:

"the subframe has bent".

"we'll just bend that back again then"

I might have dreamt it but I vaguely remember stories about rally drivers abusing 1960s Saabs intentionally to bend the rear beam axle as they preferred the handling with a bent axle.

[juular]

So with the gearbox back in (note to self. Use two jacks.) I had to go through the inevitable period of the overdrive working then not working.  But it seems to be alright.

The leaks seem to have mostly stopped although I'm still getting a small drip from the bell housing. I don't know if that is just oil which has been lying in there or if the input bearing cover is still leaking. I will run it for a while and check again.

Anyway forget about that. Look at this.

I felt the original ZH needles were a little weak and in fact when timing and fuelling were set correctly for low-mid range I'd get pinging at high revs under load. When richened, the low-mid range was boggy.

The ZH needles are considered weak even in unmodified B18A engines so with this car having a high compression head and a D cam it really could do with a bit more fuel to unlock its potential.

So I swapped these for a set of KD needles which I believe are the richest available and also commonly used in rally builds.

£40 and 10 minutes work for a remap M9? I'll take it.

After fitting those the first thing I did was wash the car.

No. No I didn't.

I kicked fuck out of it. And it was an enormous amount of fun even without properly retuning the carbs and ignition. Big, big improvement in low end shove which tapers off really nicely into the high rpm range.

A little bit of tweaking to the carbs to obtain a better plug colour was done, followed by more hooning around the back roads. Repeat as required.

After a longer drive I found it was running quite rich so it's still going to need a lot of tinkering, but it does feel like it's unlocked quite a number of extra hamsters.

Thankfully there's a helpful reference to let me know when I've flipped the car.

[juular]

Minor ailments with this currently include one of the carb needles becoming loose resulting in raw fuel being dumped out of the exhaust (pretty stains on pavement) and a somewhat temperamental fusebox connection. Both easy fixes I suppose.

In preparation for a long journey down to Rustival, a 700 mile round trip, I thought it would be good to add a few features.

First up is a working 12v socket. The wiring had long since disintegrated from this do it had to be redone.

To begin I stuck it in phosphoric acid to clean up the rusty insides.

Then made up new wiring. Originally this is fed off the ignition switch and is both permanently live and unfused. Not happy with this, I've made the wiring to fit into a switched live on the fusebox, and added a tail onto it for future use.

That meant I could then use a portable inflator to pump the tyres up that were all sitting at 20psi.

Next up, I wanted to do something about the high-low beam toggle which is operated by a foot switch next to the clutch pedal. 

That's not it in location but you get the idea. My problem is my feet are way too big to use the switch and I keep pressing the clutch instead.

The full beam can also be flashed by pulling the indicator stalk towards you so my plan was to modify this so that it can be used as a toggle switch, then I could do away with the floor switch.

The advantage here is that the stalk flash is fed through a relay, so I can make modifications that don't need to handle the current. The floor switch by comparison is straight wired to the headlamps and is consequently chunky as hell.

So here's the plan. Splice into the feed to the flasher stalk and wire in a bistable (latching) relay. That way you have one flick for full beam on, then another for full beam off.

The relay is easy to come by for a staggering £3.43.

And here is how it wires in.

Temporary wired in with alligator clips.

That'll do.

Next plan is to improve the indicators. You'll have to take my word for it, but as standard they're so damn slow. Going all the way round a roundabout it'll probably flash twice, which I feel is dangerous as the non-lit time is far too long.

This one is simple enough to fix, the original flasher relay is binned and a modern relay with adjustable speed wired in.

No need to explain this really as it's a like for like swap, I just had to make up a couple of wires to connect the pins into the existing plug. I kept the old plug so that for any reason the old flasher can be put back on.

Waaaaay better.

Final electrical mod: hazards. Seems odd for a Volvo not to have hazard lights but there you go.

This required splicing into the yellow wire coming from the flasher relay, adding a 4 pin switch, and splicing the output straight to both left and right indicator bulb wires, bypassing the stalk.

Hardest part of that was cutting the loom wrap in the right place to find the green and blue wires for the indicators to cut into them.

I'll feel a bit better about using motorways now.

Time to celebrate with a chippy.

 

 

[juular]

At's no right..

You might hear the rattle above after the shift to 2nd and at around 2500-3000rpm.

First thing I thought was pinging, but it continued after turning the mix up and timing back.

Then I thought bottom end. However when revved stationary it sounds more like valve train.

You can definitely hear it in this one.

Not good. 

Clearances reset. No change.

Aux belt off. No change.

Took the timing cover off to check the timing gear. Intact and solid as a rock.

Next thing on the list would be the cam followers. Which means head off.

Hhhhhhhhh.

They are all intact, but..

That has seen better times.

Given the state of that there's no option but to take the camshaft out as that follower will have probably damaged it.

Straight in the bin with that.

A new K cam and followers on their way.

As for the noise, I reckon it may actually be coming from the fuel pump, as the lobe for that looks particularly tired.

[juular]

Well. 

That escalated quickly.