stupidity 1964 Volvo 122S - Amazonian rustforest. Ok. I'm sorry. I washed it.

[EyesWeldedShut]

21 hours ago, juular said:

Looks like the alternator regulator is fried.

Did I mention it's a new alternator?

I bought one just before Christmas for the Ovlov - it was fecked from the get go. Full refund after some mild* emails to the company involved. 
It's just the sheer hassle and delay of fitting/testing/removing something that's meant to be working that grates - pain in the arse.
Good luck @ Rustival, I see you are travelling in convoy with your personal recovery van with smol trailer full of spare parts?

[juular]

1 hour ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

I see you are travelling in convoy with your personal recovery van with smol trailer full of spare parts?

That's just the square sausage part of the convoy.

Gretna services achieved.

[EyesWeldedShut]

3 hours ago, juular said:

That's just the square sausage part of the convoy.

Gretna services achieved.

You're bring a van load of Lorne sausage down the M6? I may have to lie up in wait and do The Dandy Highwayman on it....
Got any fruit pudding?
Safe journey 

[juular]

Arrived no problem, despite the minor issue of headlight failure about 20 miles from destination. Even managed around 32mpg at a GPS 70 by initial fag packet maths. 

[juular]

Detailing

[juular]

Detailing, furiously detailing

 

[Sunny Jim]

Fair play to you man, you did it! Really looking forward to seeing you and @MrsJuular at Rustival - I'll be there with the hound in the C15.

[Matty]

Inspirational ( also mildly guilt inducing)! Have a good un 👍 

[juular]

Somewhat missing the point by adding shiny tat, but that's me done.

Also, look at this.

[Lacquer Peel]

Overdrive.

34.6 mpg is great from a 1960s car at high speeds. 

[juular]

Made it!

[Dick Longbridge]

1 hour ago, juular said:

Made it!

Great work that man! The old slag has tried everything to avoid mixing with other old rammel but your perseverance has clearly paid off - superb work!

[juular]

That was a fun day. I'll stick up some photos later once I've recovered.

Amazon tried to jettison its gearbox on the M40 while attempting to chase @chaseracer

That Dyane is absolutely ace in every possible way.

Anyway, yes, one gearbox to bellhousing bolt is now stuck in someone's front grille. The other was held in by mere hope. As such the gearbox was shunting back and forward against the engine and it popped out of gear a few times. 

All fixed now thankfully! The solution was to fling away the original Volvo bolts that have Allen heads and are difficult to torque without rounding out, and replace them with normal hex head bolts.

Still proud of the old heap.

[wesacosa]

4 minutes ago, juular said:

That was a fun day. I'll stick up some photos later once I've recovered.

Amazon tried to jettison its gearbox on the M40 while attempting to chase @chaseracer

That Dyane is absolutely ace in every possible way.

Anyway, yes, one gearbox to bellhousing bolt is now stuck in someone's front grille. The other was held in by mere hope. As such the gearbox was shunting back and forward against the engine and it popped out of gear a few times. 

All fixed now thankfully! The solution was to fling away the original Volvo bolts that have Allen heads and are difficult to torque without rounding out, and replace them with normal hex head bolts.

Still proud of the old heap.

Ah I didn't realise this was an AS car (I was parked next to it in the C class).  Would have said hello. glad it made it

 

[Six-cylinder]

13 hours ago, wesacosa said:

Ah I didn't realise this was an AS car (I was parked next to it in the C class).  Would have said hello. glad it made it

 

The W210 the other side of you was Talbot from the forum!

[wesacosa]

10 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

The W210 the other side of you was Talbot from the forum!

ah ok, sorry for pinching the spot between you both @Talbot @juular. I had assumed as it was a sell out and each place would end up full and seemed a good idea to park next to a similar era Merc but hadn't realised both your cars were together 

 

 

[juular]

5 hours ago, wesacosa said:

ah ok, sorry for pinching the spot between you both @Talbot @juular. I had assumed as it was a sell out and each place would end up full and seemed a good idea to park next to a similar era Merc but hadn't realised both your cars were together 

 

 

The space just happened without any particular intent. Glad to have an AS representative next door.

[warninglight]

Lovely to meet you and Mrs Juular yesterday, and fantastic to see and even drive your Amazon. It's come a long way in the 3 years since I sold it.

[juular]

Homeward journey in the Amazon went well. It absolutely tanned the M6 north. Without the pressure to get to a destination intact, we both opened it right up and enjoyed it. @Ronkey wanted inspiration to get his finished. Get stuck in, because it'll be worth it!

A couple of stops for coffee, but mainly to tip jerry cans into the frustratingly small fuel tank. That fuel tank seemed increasingly small on the way back as with the car being pushed hard, let's just say the earlier 34mpg was a distant fantasy. But who cares!

Stopped off at @warninglights place for a cup of tea, and to poke round his collection of really interesting Volvo projects. The Laplander is something to behold and is already looking like a completely different beast to when he got it. I won't give away anything, but this is going to be brilliant.

Lolvo meets Volvo.

And home.

I enjoyed every minute of driving this.

It was comfortable, surprisingly rapid, and with very few modern touches, totally capable. With the longer diff installed the speedo no longer over-reads like most cars, and a 70 on the needle is a true GPS 70.

As such it felt like we were flying past the traffic.  It was keen for more, and without trying you'd notice you'd drifted up to GPS 80 and it had plenty left without being remotely loud. And that's before you flick the overdrive off, where you get a surprising burst of power available. 

The K cam and overdrive puts this right in the sweet spot for motorway driving as it's at the foot of the powerband. Having that at the flick of a stalk means you can really piss off middle lane drivers who don't want to move, but don't like being overtaken by a 60 year old shack.  Tough!

I am surprised Volvo never offered the M41+OD+1.41 axle combo in production cars, because it's just so right. It does rob a fair bit of your 0-60 and standing starts aren't as lively, but the K cam more than makes up for that, you just hold the gears a little longer.

Rustival was fun and I would do it again. The very best part of it was seeing people, @Talbot, @chaseracer, @mat_the_cat, @Puglet @Sunny Jim, @Six-cylinder, @Mrs6C, @Andyrew.  Thank you all for such a brilliant weekend. What a great bunch of lads.

Enjoyed the autojumbles, perhaps a little too much as we came home with a set of four Lucas driving lights.

 

The enjoyment of the trip spurred me into getting some more things sorted on the car, so I have now spaffed the best part of a grand on a branched manifold, sports exhaust, a better intake, and a full set of polybushes, plus a load of electrical parts to try and fix niggles and improve the (still bodged) lighting.

To round things off, when I got home I had a nice surprise waiting in the form of a Professional Prat.

[juular]

Feels like Christmas, and Rally Santa has been.

What's more, he's left me a pair of Prats this time.

Started on the upper wishbone bushes as they started being quite loose after Rustival.

Value for money has been fully extracted from these.

Those were so knackered I just poked them out with a finger. Absolutely shagged.

Poly bushes back on.

Next up will be to polybush the rest of the car, and fit the new exhaust, which should sound a little bit like this.

Or maybe like this?

https://m.facebook.com/reel/926911235414875/

 

[Spiny Norman]

My old one had a single pipe Simon Sport exhaust on it. Gave it a bit of a burble but not as farty as that Abarth one.

[motorpunk]

Fantastic thread, really good, brilliant to see such a long journey enjoyed in such an old car. I’m an AS member for threads just like this. Next time you’re heading south there’s a cuppa in LE7 at Schloß MotorPunk for you and the missus. 

[georgeinabz]

Have another , This guy obviously had a thing for Mercs , but one lone Volvo , trouble is in SA https://auction-platform-web-prod-irf24o2diq-ew.a.run.app/#/lot_details/65c4c6c18997576c096b83dd

Sent from my Pixel 8 using Tapatalk

[georgeinabz]

Lot 192

Sent from my Pixel 8 using Tapatalk

[motorpunk]

Dunno if any of you are on Twitter but PetrolTed (chap who founded PH, lovely person) is sticking a Yamaha V8 into an Amazon. Gotta love an old Swede.

[juular]

On 16/03/2024 at 09:26, motorpunk said:

Dunno if any of you are on Twitter but PetrolTed (chap who founded PH, lovely person) is sticking a Yamaha V8 into an Amazon. Gotta love an old Swede.

Has he got a thread for this? Sounds like something I'd love to see the engineering work involved in.

Personally I think it would suit an old loping pushrod V8 to go with its mini-US styling, but I've also heard of 1UZ and Rover V8 conversions which sound fantastic.

It's a wide enough engine bay, but that steering box / column really does screw things a bit!

[juular]

Some more stuff tackled. Trying to keep in my head all of the things I thought about fixing while on the Rustival trip. Writing notes? How quaint! Just stay awake at night trying to sift through jumbled thoughts until 3AM.

It would probably be good to sort out the broken headlights.  Brief recap. A few weeks ago I fitted a latching relay which allowed me to control the full beam entirely through the flasher stalk instead of the antiquated floor switch. This worked brilliantly until it didn't.  Turns out that £3 of Chinese "INDUSTRIAL CONTROL" electronics aren't suited for, you know,  anything.  So the PCB basically melted (it wasn't even carrying notable current).  Before the Rustival trip I simply reinstated the floor dip switch to get us on the road.

Turns out I wasn't wrong to try and get rid of the floor switch because as soon as it got dark, I went to switch between main and dip on a dual carriageway and lost all headlights. We pulled into a layby, consulted the wiring diagram, and crimped a couple of wires together so that we had headlights (but no mains).

Time to fix that permanently.  

The solution here is to use a 'proper' relay, in this case one designed for an old VW bus / beetle. The relay number is DNI 0127. There are also Meyle and Durite equivalents, so they are easily come by.

Step 1, remove floor switch and hurl it into the depths of the garden.

Step 2, crimp spades on the end of the wires to the floor switch.  Also tee-solder the smaller red wire into the bigger one, as that's more structurally sound than crimping two wires into one spade.

Step 3, RELAY

Here is the pinout.

And here is what that looks like in real life.

Step 4 : Replace the fuse you blew because you forgot to disconnect the battery, and touched the permanent +12V against the metal dash. Oh wait, there's no continental fuses left..  

So it turns out this lighting setup is even better than the one I set up previously with the INDUSTRIAL CONTROL relay.  

- When the dipped headlights are off, the flasher stalk operates as a main beam flasher.

- When the dipped headlights are on, the flasher stalk toggles the main beam on and off like a modern car.

- The relay also serves the purpose of being a relay for both the mains, flasher and dipped.  So it takes away the load from the light switch, provides full current to the headlights (brighter!)  plus it means I can remove the flasher relay and wiring in the engine bay as it is no longer required.

So far this seems a far more robust and efficient setup, time will tell.

Engine and gearbox mounts replaced.  The gearbox one was particularly hanging and the propshaft was bouncing off the bottom of the transmission tunnel.

A set of high performance air filters attached.  The purpose being twofold. The generic SU HS6 pancakes I had on would sometimes smack against the clutch master cylinder reservoir on hard cornering or acceleration.  I also felt they were strangling the engine as they were so thin and miserable looking.  These by comparison are offset specifically to fit the Amazon, and are significantly more chunky.

 

Y THO   |  Y THO

 

Test drove this and was quite impressed.  The wishbone poly bushes have sharpened up the steering a fair bit. The engine and gearbox mounts have changed the gearshifts significantly, and overdrive seems to snick on in a much more dignified fashion. 

A little bit of the induction roar from the pancakes has actually disappeared, but it still sounds great when opened up. I'll take it.

Next up, I'll be fitting the sports exhaust, more polybushes, and doing a number of electrical upgrades to make it more reliable.

[Talbot]

2 hours ago, juular said:

poly bushes
sharpened up steering
overdrive seems to snick on in a much more dignified fashion.
sounds great when opened up.
sports exhaust
more polybushes,
electrical upgrades

Bcoz Sprotscar.

I think this is fast becoming the car with the most difference between "how it looks" and "how it is mechanically"

[juular]

 

Begone, pea shooter.

 

 

Had to retap one of the threads on the head as idiot here used a wrong thread pitch manifold stud off another car.  

 

 

CHONK PIPE

 

 

It won't start now as I've fucked up the idle screws and choke position, and it got dark. So I'll have to wait till later to annoy everyone.

[juular]

It got later and I annoyed everyone.

Feels like it's added 30bhp, breathes so much more freely.  Not noisy either.

Then it tried to chuck an air filter off on the motorway.

Better bolts enroute. You'd think for 50 odd quid they'd include fixings..