We had a bunch of Volvos growing up, including a 122S coupe, a 142, and a 242 that got the engine and trans out of the 142 after that one rusted away. My dad liked their simplicity and robustness but left the brand when as he says "they became luxury cars by putting the word luxury in front of the word car." I really never expected to have another, but Covid has both of us looking for a diversion, so I started shopping for something fun to play around with that he and I would enjoy together (hence the reverse father & son aspect).
The 122s speak to both of us, and after a few tries on BaT we ended up with this '68, built in 2004ish as a vintage rally car. It's quite interesting, and very nicely put together. Carl Heideman's recent post on sorting shows the kind of stuff that needs to be done to get it really nice, along with new floors, but this is good winter work. I hope to have updates soon.
That looks really nice. It'll be fun to see your progress.
I was watching this auction on BaT, but the bidding went past my limit pretty quickly. Got me looking at other Amazons now, though. Glad to see this here - I'll be following for updates.
Pretty car, nice color. Cool start to a project.
Nice! Plans to use it for competition rally in the future? I don't see a cage, so I assume it was a road rally car vice a stage rally car with a logbook?
Either way, old Volvos are cool as hell :)
No signs of a roll cage, and the events in the stickers look like road rallys. That's a plus for us as we intend to use it as a nice street car, although I hear there are some rallycross events not too far away...
The car came with a temporary FIVA card which will be another thing to track down along with the rally history and the build. Someone clearly put a lot of thought into the car - it may be the first old car I've owned that didn't have puke-inducing additional wiring.
It's not that there aren't electrical weirdnesses, but at least someone else wondered the same thing as me.
I haven't been able to drive the car much, COVID means that you need an appointment at either DMV (3 months hence) or local agency (only 5 weeks!). So I mailed everything off to Richmond and hope they don't lose papers.
The previous owners had word that the car was built by Tony Barrett, The Old Volvo Man in the UK, but hadn't tracked him down. A little Google-fu got me his email address, and a pile of useful info and what my pal Adam would call Damn Fine specs:
We built the engine. Reground the crankshaft, rebored the block, lightened the flywheel by one kilo. Connecting rods balanced. New main, big end, and camshaft bearings. New camshaft (probably an 'F') and followers and steel timing gears. Front and rear covers machined to take neoprene seals (instead of felt). New oil pump. New core plugs.
Cylinder head. Quite rare over here, its what we call the big valve head. It is a 2-liter injection head without the injector holes drilled. A nice head with flowed ports. New valves and guides and springs (yellow stripe).
Assembled with genuine Volvo oil filter, because it has a valve in it! Painted Volvo red!
Engine run-in with Castrol 'running-in' oil. Then oil changed for fully synthetic oil, it lasts twice as long and can stand very high temperatures.
The car has no tach so we've been babying it and it's quite content to be driven around, with a little popping at low revs. EBag tach should be here this week and we can see how much happier the engine is with some revs.
First order of business is fluid changes, although I definitely feel better that the spare parts coming with the car included Mahle filters and good synthetic oil.
Next up is to do something about the Armstrong power steering. My folks drove plenty of manual steering cars back in the day including the 122 and 142, and I put 150k miles on a manual-steer Miata, but we're all older and less patient, and this thing has a nice but small Grant steering wheel.
Amazons of course weren't optioned with power steering, but the wonders of the Interwebs and incredibly helpful people on forums provided all of the knowledge needed to retrofit mid-2000s GM electric PS. Ebag to the rescue again, and a Pontiac Torrent EPAS module arrived today.
I like the electric power steering option ,
does the control box just turn it off and on , or is it variable depending on speed or ????
There are a couple of options. One provides constant boost based on a potentiometer knob, the other gets wired into the torque sensor of the PS unit and provides some level of boost based on how hard you're turning the wheel. I'll be trying that one.
If you're good with electronics you could easily make it really speed sensitive, but that's probably overkill.
paddygarcia said:
If you're good with electronics you could easily make it really speed sensitive, but that's probably overkill.
I would just like it to work for parking and low speeds ,
but then I might get spoiled and want it all the time :)
Give yourself to the dark side.
I figure that most people probably set the boost level and forget it, so went with the torque sensor. If you really have issues, build a little timer so you only get boost for N seconds after pressing a button.
People don't give squirrels enough credit. Most of them just harvest nuts and drive dogs crazy, but some of them go into car stereo installation. They don't do a very good job of it, but it's impressive what those little teeth can do.
At times like these I think "WWFGDIBWH" (What Would The Factory Guys Do If The Beancounters Went Home)?
And as is often the case, the answers have already been created. In this case, around 1970 by the gang at Volvo Competition Service. We'll be cribbing only some of their work, though...
In the "official Volvo" photo above, what's the thing that looks like a really good torque curve, between the switches and the chrome bar under the instruments?
Took me a while when I first saw, but I'm pretty sure that's a cable to allow for a remote/external handle on the battery cut-off switch.
This evening I worked up a panel that prints right on paper, so ready to go to Front Panel Express for production. It covers the radio rathole and the space where the ashtray was, pulls the switches up from the under-dash panel and - this part is crazy - puts labels on them.
I'm paddygarcia and I approve of this message.
Still no plates or title. The mail-in option looked better in September than an October or December in-person appointment, but Richmond says they're running 6-7 weeks so check back in mid-November.
Not really a problem, though, as I got pretty far into the EPAS installation: old column out, then a lot of time lying on the floor looking at the underside of the dash to figure out how it'll go together. Made a test bracket for the booster and can see how the shafts will get assembled but now I need a machine shop to do some boring and welding. I don't weld so much as wield a Very Hot Glue Gun, and this stuff needs to work 100.0% of the time.
Another bunch of pondering has gone into where to mount the GM fuel tank selector so that it's shielded but reasonably accessible.
It took a little while to get the dash panel done in order to get color samples so it either matches (same red) or contrasts (black, silver). Front Panel Express's Ruby Red powder is quite close to the non-factory red, I'll post an installed pic but here's what it looks like being wired up:
Finally, just got word that a pile of stuff from the West Coast is on the way, including a 240 trans top cover, shifter, OD controls and transmission hump. Better get the steering done.
#frontpanel #frontpanelexpress
love the build. where in VA are you? We're in Midlothian just outside Richmond.
Thanks! It's fun, and hopefully my folks will be down for Thanksgiving (we're all locking down after election day and crossing fingers) so we might actually wrench a little on Volvos together for old time's sake.
I'm up by the top of the state, in Loudoun county, west of Leesburg.
My Porsche shop pointed me to a fabricator who's interested in doing the steering shaft work, so I pressed on with hanging the EPAS unit in order to get some dimensions for the finished shafts. This is actually bracket #2, the first had only one set of bolts and I thought it'd be better if the device was better clamped to the cowl sheet metal.
You can see from the welding why the steering shaft work gets sent out. A man's got to know his limitations.
The topside captive bolts are from the junk drawer, leftovers from my 944 suspension I think.
Also done is the heater blower motor. These use a bushing of sorts, with each end of the motor shaft supported by a ball that rides directly in the motor frame, with a felt ring to hold oil. Inevitably they're not regularly maintained and they seize up like this one did. There apparently used to be a guy who would refit the motors with oilite bushings, but not anymore.
The wisdom of the interwebs said that a 627-2Z bearing could replace the bushing (actually where the felt ring was), but it turns out that the bore on mine is somewhere between 22mm (627) and 20mm (620). So I used a 620 bearing and a shim of the closest fit available. Brass or steel would be better than copper but I think this should be OK. Certainly works.
Two steps forward, one step back: took the power steering stuff down to the fabricators, who surprised no one by having much better ideas about how to hang the steering wheel. So I'll pop the spare steering shaft back in and move on to finishing the gauge panel while waiting for tags.
Dug more into the electricals and found not so much hateful as weird. There is a nice aux fuse block near the battery from which 4 new circuits were run for aux lights, fiamm horns, and the overdrive. Good. Then judging from the change in wiring style someone put relays in those circuits. Also good, but now there is a 20A dedicated circuit for each switch, and separate individual 20 to 30A circuits that the relays switch - belt and suspenders. And the suspenders are a mess:
Notice the inline fuse holder - that makes 3 styles of fuses in one car. I'll rationalize that fuse block and remove this rats nest.
Picked up another EPAS unit, this time with wiring harness and the upper column + shaft. We think this can be modified to replace the Volvo piece rather than cut the original. Note the tilt lever - if you didn't mind cutting the dash you could probably get tilt without much trouble.
I also picked up Braden's book on Weber carbs to sort out the stinking rich mixture. My hypothesis is that since the engine was built by an expert and raced for years it must have been spot-on at one time. Seems unlikely that prior owners/mechanics would monkey with stuff like jetting since that's scary and requires parts, but probably twiddled screws and never checked the float bowl level which seems like a good bet for stinking rich.
