Oakland Occult

Jordan here, and I’m Jim’s co-conspirator on all things vintage Volvo. We’re also roommates, which means that we poke at each other’s cars a lot.

Anyone who's owned a vintage car knows how much of a pain in the ass it is to find parts. My particular flavor of trouble is a 1978 Volvo 245DL (pictured above), which falls in the earlier years of the 240 series production. Thankfully, the Volvo 240 series was in production for 18 years, and despite minor differences, many of the parts are interchangeable between years. What this means for me, is that often the most economical way to get parts is by living off of the laziness/throwaway culture that sends older cars straight to the junkyard... I spend a lot of time looking up cars in junkyards. For anyone with a similar problem, I highly recommend looking at Row52.com. You can search by partial VIN number, and if you know what the VIN codes for, that means you can check if a local junkyard has a car with *exactly* the parts you're looking for.

So, off to the junkyard. Since I'll eventually be doing an engine upgrade to a B230FT (more to come on that ordeal in future posts), which has more horsepower than my current driveline and transmission can handle, I needed to find suitable replacements. I also needed an ECU, since the new engine has electronic fuel injection (LH 2.4 Jetronic), while my current car has some weird ancient pressure fuel injection system (K Jetronic).

Jim, my partner in crime on all things vehicular, went with me to one of the local pick-n-pull yards, and we set off to work on a 1995 940SE. I figured we'd start with the easy stuff first, so I let Jim tackle the ECU removal while I went to work on removing the driveshaft. Seeing as how the ECU lives inside the car, we first had to get in. It was locked, and the nice people at the Pick-N-Pull clearly didn't have keys, but they advised us that "Officially, we do not endorse the breaking of windows... but I didn't see anything." So we used Jim's fancy new Estwing 3 lb hammer to... *ahem*... "remove" a window.

Removing the driveshaft was a pretty straightforward job of removing each of the 4 bolts on the flanges at the ends, and unbolting the bracket that holds the carrier bearing, but as I moved on to remove the transmission, there was a problem. Despite all of my attempts with PB blaster, vicegrips, and a hammer, the bolts holding the transmission bell housing to the engine block simply would not budge. After about 20 minutes of uncomfortable and awkward hammer swinging and cursing, I felt a wave of laziness come over me, and decided that it wasn't worth it. So, all efforts were redirected to helping Jim remove the ECU.

While passing on the transmission was acceptable (there are numerous years and models that have the AW-71 I'm looking for), passing on the ECU was not an option here. The particular ECU in this car was suitable for all B230FT setups, and included the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) control option, which had until then proven a bit tricky for me to find. I was *not* leaving without it. After a lot of pushing, pulling, and strategic guessing at which wires to cut, we finally managed to pull the damn thing out, bringing our total bounty to one driveshaft and one ECU. I was pretty happy at this point, but there was one more thing I wanted to check for before we left the yard.

The seats in my 245 are pretty much destroyed. When we bought it, they came with tattered sheepskin covers over both the driver and passenger seats, and based on what little original vinyl and foam was showing through, I knew that they were basically a lost cause. You can buy new foam and seat covers for these seats, but at the price they sell for, you're better off just finding a donor 240 with decent seats. Since the seat rail design never changed during the history of the 240 line, you can easily swap out seats from any year 240 to any other.

So, I went 240 hunting, and as luck would have it, I managed to find a mid-eighties 240 with almost mint-condition seats. Removing them was a quick job of just unbolting the 4 seat rail bolts and yanking them out. I also noticed that the car had the original Volvo door speakers and speaker grills, so I nipped those as well, since mine were some aftermarket garbage that were rattling around on lose screws with busted covers.

All in all, we left with a turbo driveshaft, ECU, seats, and speakers. Not bad for a few hours work! After getting everything home, I found some good news, and some bad news. The good news was that the seats had heating pads in them, and while that's not particularly useful in California, it's a nice bonus. The bad news was that it seems that someone had left a candle on the passenger side *heated* seat. There was a big white wax spot. Ugh.

So, in order to turn my misfortune into your personal gain, in my next post I'll be showing you how to remove wax from your seats! 

- Jordan

What a Lucky Charms weekend; delicious diabetic inducing marshmallows mixed with grainy mouth-roof-slicing garbage O’s. Still made some decent progress in the goal to turn this vintage Volvo into a lovable daily driver. The price for this progress, however, is frustratingly typical for anyone making the journey with classic car ownership. Always. Be. Cursing. 

First up: the incredibly enlightening compression test!

So you might be asking; what’s a compression test? Without getting into too much detail It’s a pressure gauge screwed into your combustion chamber that checks the quality of seals your pistons have. A good seal means happy powerful explosions inside of your motor instead of elsewhere. Screw it in, turn the motor, watch the gauge float up to a number after a few turns of the motor, write the number down. Do that for all cylinders in your motor and look at the results! Bottom line: you want the numbers to be within 10psi of each other, and not below 120psi or otherwise you’re going to have a bad time, It can mean anything from a bad head gasket (late 90′s Gwen Stefani) to worn out piston rings (Gwen Stefani post Hollaback Girl).

And your Powerball numbers are.....not too bad! Those are within a sort-of jerrymandered congressional district of each other. Ice cream and tacos for everyone! Right? Not so fast. Let’s actually put down the Tecate and take a closer look. 

So these plug have the wear I’d expect from a pre-Cretaceous period maintenance schedule but there’s a bit of a burnt oily residue on the plugs. That means that there’s somehow oil getting into the combustion chamber (maybe). BUT FROM WHERE? BUT HOW? WILL SHINJI SURVIVE THE FIFTH ANGEL AND SAVE TOKYO-3!?!?

With only a few minutes before I had to help Jordan grab yet another motor, I decided to swap out the spark plugs, take a stupid photo op and grab into the other Volvo-- a 1978 model 245 that desperately wants a turbo upgrade because it accelerates the way as a block of perfectly level cheddar doesn’t.  

(a few hours later-- with an engine in the back of a wagon)

After dragging that hunk of red block into the garage it was time to start sniffing some problems out on the 544. When I bought the car there was some sludgy remnants of burnt oil just above the valve cover. No problem, just a $6 gasket and swap it out. Simple job, even for my insanely novice perspective. This little bit of work can also answer a few questions, like assessing the state of the valves. Good chance to do some inspector gadget work. Also I had nothing else to do because I bought the wrong carb cleaner (liquid instead of spray can) and I wasn’t going to reset the carbs while dangling the fiddly bits in some solution instead of just giving my hands spray cancer or some Californian restriction bullshit. Spoiler alert: we’re all going to die from the drought!

Time to yank the cover off. Odd to note: it’s screwed on with some janky philips instead of bolts. Holy shit was it barely attached. I could hand torque these screws. Yowsa.

That’s odd. The old gasket (right) isn’t worn as bad as I had anticipated. Just wasn’t screwed in. Oh well. New gasket it is.....

Something is missing though.

Above, I’m using my metallic pointy stick of science to poke at a thing that should not be where it is. It’s a valve seal, which should be sitting on top valve spring. That’s not the top of the valve spring. It looks like the rubber hardened, cracked and decided to take a swim into what leads to my compression chamber. There’s your source of that mystery oil on the spark plugs! 

So I pulled the remnants of the seals and ordered a new set. This is a surprisingly easy and cheap fix-- so I’m somewhat amazed that I managed to identify, diagnose and solve a problem with my car without having a panic attack and worrying that “oh no it’s all over and I’m an idiot.” 

While that might not seem like a major step, it is. While this is super basic stuff, it’s still an exploration of problem solving and keeping calm while you run through a series of solutions in your brain and furiously typing into google. Having the Green books helps. Having friends that know words is also great. IN short, ask a dozen questions to answer one and keep digging until there’s sense to be made.

Anyways, should get that later this week and swap them out before flying out to the midwest. I won’t have time next weekend to wrench, and then the next weekend is Thanksgiving, so you won’t hear from me for another couple weeks. Maybe. 

After spending around $3000 to get the car, transfer the title and obtain registration it was about time to drive the damn beast around to figure out what could possibly be wrong with it.

You don’t expect a car to run so well when you spend the price of a high end laptop for it. So, logically, we had to go and break it. 

First day out driving the clutch from a lack of inexperience and a profound sense of “getting in over my head” lead me to conclude that 1) 50 year old manuals are harder to drive than the 1989 Toyota Tercel I was taught on 10 years ago and 2) I really shouldn’t ride the damn clutch too much, like a moron.

This is typical of what you’ll come to expect in this blog series; a complete novice with more curiosity than sense attempting to suss out a classic 1965 Volvo PV544. Just about the only thing I know how to do is to type problems into google, which has so far fueled our entire tech industry for the past 15 years so why not implement it here? 

After driving around (poorly) for an hour we headed back home. A few terribly bad stalls and a one cringe-worthy gear grind later we eventually noticed that the car produced more heat than usual. No problem! We’ll check the oil temp gauge. 

It was not working. 

I decided to make a left turn and found out that instead of happily blinking its intention to fellow motorists the signal lever chatters an electronic buzzing morse code that roughly translates to “My Relay is Fried” 

Ordered a new one on eBay already.

Also noticed that the trunk lid seal couldn’t seal less if it was made from the bonafide mammal. Removing the (cough) shag carpet from the trunk is now a high priority, as any moisture locked there will just rot the entire rear end. Which is less than ideal.

Week one is complete. The following next few days will be some tests about reliability. Diagnosing a possible heat (?) issue and praying to Sagan that the damn clutch didn’t get worn away from my generic dumbassery.

Week 1: Vera is home. Car has been cleaned and tested. 

Up Next: Carb clean, determine clutch wear