Boxy, but good. 1989 Volvo 740

Great thread.

Those plugs look to be in good order so burning correctly, but could it be a loose HT lead or split somewherecausing a mini-arc?

The leads aren't that old (were replaced by the previous owner) but to be fair have no branding on them.
You might notice in the pic above I have them bungeed up - so I didn't get near them when running while feeding the manifold. When I was a teenager I saw my dad get a belt off a lead on his 240 and he didn't rate it high on the list of things he'd like to do again.

It is in the plan to put a new cap, rotor arm and set of decent leads on it soon, as the cap terminals are quite nicely spark-eroded.

It doesn't sound like an electrical click to me but good shout, perhaps I'll bring that forwards.

New Boots and Panties!!

I'd been putting this off on the off chance that a set of unkerbed 15" alloys might have come available, but after spending some time on the M5 in the pouring rain last week, I decided delaying any more was stupid.
I was acutely aware of the state of these two which although legal, were certainly past their best. My joking suggestion that the cracks add to the tread depth didn't hold true:


Erm....:

They've certainly done their time!

And the other two, some 2020 dated Avons, had worrying looking cracking on the inner sidewalls.


Its been quite a while since I've had to buy my own tyres. Previously I'd always gone for Michelin Pilots, but they don't even make the newest ones below 17" now!
In the end I plumped for a full set of Michelin Primacy 4's. Following a post on here where I learned that Asda sell tyres, they were considerably cheaper than anywhere else at £324 for all 4 fitted.

A workshop very local to us working out of some former agricultural buildings that we have used a couple of times before were on the fitters list so I had them do that this afternoon.


Things should be a lot more composed in the rain now!

If I'm honest I've not even looked at it yet.
All I can think of is that is is either that, or an anti-run-on valve to shut the air right off when you turn off the ignition.
Really, I need to get the old VADIS discs (that I hope are still up in the loft) installed on a cheap XP laptop, as that is essentially all of the 'green books'. VIDA which is totally filling this machine only has parts listings for the 700's.

Before I mess around with that I've got a pile building up in my office of other parts to fit, If I can get a few days where I don't think the weather is going to screw me. Sitting in the puddle forming in the tray I was using to keep myself off the wet ground while changing the C70's rear springs last March wasn't a particular high point.

We made it to Rustival!!


(this old man with thinning greying hair persuaded my daughter to take a selfie with him lol (after asking her how to do it ))

Rustival was a new car show organised by youtubers 'Furious Driving' 'I drive a classic' and 'hubnut' (the last of which I hadn't come across before, but I've been watching furious driving for a few years) and hosted at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon.

When I saw it advertised again in early Feb, I thought it looked like it could be quite fun, but was uhmming and ahhing about it as the car had just started making that clacking noise.
Emily persuaded me in an ironic 'will you take me to mount splashmore?' kind of way -
'Dad, I want to go the the rustival, I want to got the the rustival...' In the end I said sod it, it'll be fine and booked the tickets. Great value at £17 for the two of us including entry to the British Motor Museum.

It was very well organised, our group were told to arrive 'from 10am' we got there at 10:08 having left at 7:30, and there was no queuing at all, some very experienced marshalls directed us and we were parked up in a matter of minutes. My brother also came all the way from Fishguard in West Wales, 4-1/2 hours, so he joined us at about 1pm in his S80 (that used to be mine)

It was an anything goes show, pre war to modern. I'd say there was 15-20% modern (to me, anything from 2001 on) out of the around 1000 cars there, so easily 800 what I would call 'retro' or classics there. We started at the back, and worked our way along each row stopping at anything that caught our eye. For me, I was attracted by a lot of what me and my mates had as teenagers - Mk2 Cavalier, Peugeot 205 gti, Citroen BX's, Volvo 480 (all volvos of course!) and I also have a serious wish to own some pre-80's american metal - there was a gorgeous Plymouth Fury there driven by a very young couple (20's I guess, fair play!) that I took a load of pictures of.
It took us until from when we arrived until about 2pm ish to get round everything in the car park before we even touched the museum. There really was something for everyone and plenty for us!

The car ran faultlessly, and recently it seems to have fixed itself! No sign of the clacking exhaust manifold so I'm minded to leave those studs well alone for a bit longer.
And my word, was it better on the motorway on the new tyres! I don't think the old ones were actually round...
Up the M5 to 11a, then across the Cotswolds to get there, then after the show we visited my sister who lives about half an hour away (on some utterly awful condition roads, I ended up straddling the white lines when it was clear and slowing to a crawl when not in order to avoid the worst of the ruts and potholes) for a pub tea before leaving there about 9pm and getting home at 11:25, with pretty much bang on 250 miles done.
A long day but well worth it, and Emily says she really enjoyed it, which is great as I was worried she might have got bored being a car nerd with me.

Got talking to a nice guy from a club called 'Nordik Rides', asked us to go to a meet up in Derbeyshire at the end of April. Seriously considering it, I might well get persuaded

Obligatory Volvo Content. There were a few 740 estates, but aside from 'furious driving's' E reg, mine was the only 740 saloon there.
I think I've lost a few volvo pics between my phone and here, but enough to give you a taste.

Nordik Rides convoy:


480 with no rust on the rear arches next to a Chevrolet Caprice:






I covet this blue 144!





I think this is only the second Volvo 66 I've seen in real life:



Had a lazy morning today and watched a few walkarounds from various people on youtube. One guy said he ddin't think there was much there to look at, but I guess he came to the wrong kind of show for him?
It was exactly what we expected and thoroughly recommended from us, anywhow.

After a trip to see Mum this afternoon I gave the car a quick swoosh over to remove 250 miles of salt.

Managed to get the front brakes renovated between rain showers on Good Friday and the Saturday before Easter.
The front calipers were a little bit sticky so had intended to do this sooner rather than later. I hadn't rebuilt a caliper before, but how hard could it be?

I had been getting the parts together for a little while, and had had them all ready to go since early Jan, but the constant rain meant I didn't really get chance to get to it. As it was I dodged the showers as best I could - get a caliper off, it starts raining. Start stripping that one, it stops raining. Run out and get the other one off, it starts again, and so on. In the end I didn't lose too much time waiting around.

In my pile of parts was a set of Genuine Volvo pads, a set of Bosch 262mm non-hub discs, a caliper rebuild kit including pistons from bigg red.
A full set of 6 flexible hoses by Febi, and some Ceratec anti-squeal paste.

First off mix up some special sauce to give me the best chance of getting the unions undone without having to make up new hard lines.
I actually like making hard lines up, and making them look identical to the original, but didn't fancy doing it in the rain and getting everything full of moisture:


After much careful cleaning with a pick and small wire brush I squirted a load on and left it for half an hour.


Whether it was the special sauce, or the fact that being a proper Volvo the lines were made out of Cupro-Nickel rather than the plastic coated steel my brother is struggling with again on his S80, I'm not sure, but all 6 came undone with a minimum of fuss.


After wire brushing as much of the old brake dust etc off the calipers as I felt necessay, a combination of compressed air from a stirrup pump, and grabbing them with molegrips got the old pistons out (I wouldn't have done the molegrips part had I intended to re-use them:


It looks as if someone had attempted to lubricate them with some kind of silvery grease (graphite?) which had subsequently hardened, which would account for the slight reluctance for them to retract after application of the brakes.
Further, where it had ended up inside the caliper it had formed a sticky silvery goo that took ages to clean out, but after quite a while with a small brass brush, most of a can of brake cleaner and lots of blue towel I had the bores looking as clean as they were going to:



With all the other removable bits dismantled (getting the remains of the old piston boots out was the hardest as they are a very tight interference fit in the caliper) it was time to lay out the rebuild kit and put them back together again.

I used just clean brake fluid used to lubricate the seals. The new pistons from bigg red had a little chamfer on them to help with pushing them in, so they went on easily.
The best way I found to do the boots was to fit the boot to the piston, press the piston into the bore an inch or so, then press the boot into the recess in the caliper, which took quite a lot of thumb pressure and patience as it would pop out one side or the other.
Anyway, eventually they were all in place and I put all the other new rubber bits on with plenty of the silicone grease. I found a 22 (or was it 24) mm socket was perfect for pressing the silver retaining rings onto the lower slide pin boots, and the quarter drive extension good for pushing the upper boot through the caliper.


Caliper brackets all cleaned up:


(Note I'm not going for flashy pretty paint jobs here, standard and functional is the order of the day)

Seating face on the hub cleaned up, then new discs fitted, calipers refitted, new pads with new spring clips and anti-squeal, and finally all six new flexi hoses fitted:


I had assumed the rebuild kit came with bleed nipples. It did not, so I have got some that I will change at some point in the future.

Whilst I was waiting for my wife to come home from town so she could do the old up-down with me :tounge_smile: I replaced the anti-roll bar drop links with some Meyle items. I had bought the complete links as I had seen so manypeople just shear the top off when trying to undo them, but it seems I could have gotten way with just the bushes themselves as the ATF/Acetone mix worked a treat.
The old ones were a bit ropey:

Both located and tightened to 42mm between the washers:


Back to the brakes, my wife tells me we spent an hour and a quarter bleeding them.
First I found that the first in sequence kept producing air. What solved it in the end was abandoning that one, completing the rest of the sequence, the going round again. I can only surmise it was drawing air from the remainder of the triangle on that circuit, given the whole system was empty.
In the end, a litre and a half of Dot4+ went through the system fully flushing it.

They feel quite nice now after bedding them in.

Shiny!

Since I'll have had the car a year in a few days, I thought I would actually do what I had been threatening to do since I got it, and replace the faded, cracked, leaky rear lights.

There was a bit of nailbiting when it turned out that DHL had handed the package over to parcel farce once it was in the UK, having previously seen them kick stuff up the garden path, but all turned out OK.


Faded, cracked and leaky:


New, with extra chrome (it gets you home):

In 24 years I've personally had three failures to proceed.
My 440 1.6i the catalytic converter disintegrated and blocked the exhaust up on the M5
My Wifes XC70 blew the camshaft seal and pumped all the oil out in very short order.
This ones cambelt failure (although the car still ran and drove, so does it even count? )

I love these