Volvo Amazons, Just bought a pair

Two four doors, red one's a '65, mostly complete (the bumper is in the bed of my truck), new tires, just got it running last night. Needs brakes, and then will probably become my daily driver.

Gray Primer/Blue one's a '62, floors by Flintstone, interior mostly nonexistent, Road Hugger bias ply tires on white wagon wheels from c.a. 1975, but supposedly was being driven up to about a year ago. Scary.

I swapped the single Zenith carb and manifold from the '62 onto the '65; the '65's twin SUs are pretty crusty and will take some time to rebuild right. I've only ever driven Amazons with twin SUs, so I will be curious to see how much performance drops with the single carb. But hopefully it'll get better fuel economy; I have a 40 mile round trip daily commute (as you can see by the pic, I live pretty far out in the sticks, and in South Carolina, that's saying something!)

Challenge price?

The '62 would be pretty interesting at the challenge, I think.

^^^^^ what he said. ^^^^^

The '62 could make a good challenge car. I paid less than challenge money for the pair, so I'd be open to offers. I even have another 4 door I could make a package deal with. It was crashed on the driver's side, but has solid floors and other good body bits that could be used to rebuild the '62. As a bonus, the crashed on has an automatic, which used a larger transmission tunnel that could be grafted into the '62 to allow room for...a t5 perhaps?

The crashed one:

http://www.roadflares.org/blog/?p=440#comments

Mike, I think that they were suggesting that YOU bring them to the challenge.

I went from dual SUs to a single throttle body (GM 2.0 TBI) on my 122 wagon . When I did my megasquirt setup the goal was slightly better fuel economy and significantly better driveability, which I achieved, but I'm definitely down a bit on power. Sure, I could go to a bigger (2 barrel) throttle body pretty easily, but I'm rarely in a hurry in our 122....we do lots of steady state, rural highway driving with it. I suspect you'll experience similarly reduced performance, it's pretty simple math if your smaller carb becomes a new restriction.

The 122 would make a great challenge car, IMO. It'd be pretty straight forward to stick a turbo Volvo engine in there, which make plenty of power in short bursts. Handling would be a fun trick, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up in lightness/simplicity. The concourse would be a breeze, the cars just look cool to start with.

Bryce

Nice. If you were closer to Central PA, I know a guy who would be all over the blue/grey one.

In reply to Nashco:

I mostly drive rural highways on my commute, too, with occassional blasts to pass slow moving farm vehicles. But, I'm driving a '78 Mercedes 300d and a '64 Corvair (110 hp) now, so I'm used to slow-as-dirt cars.

We LeMons an Amazon now, and the handling is surprisingly good. I'd love to do a Challenge Amazon, but money and time are figuring heavily right now. Plus, I have other ideas for the Challenge...

I saw a 544 with a B21 motor crammed under the hood. If it fit in a 544, a turbo set up should go in a 122 no problem.