Boxy, but good. 1989 Volvo 740

When we went to Rustival back in March, I met a guy called Kam Srih, who runs a club called Nordik Rides, who invited me to display the car at a meeting at The Great British Car Journey in Ambergate, Derbyshire
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Yesterday was the day, so on Friday after I picked my daughter up from school the two of us loaded the car up, brimmed it with shell V-power at the local station and set off on our road trip at about 4pm.
185 miles and 3hrs 40minutes later we rolled into the car park of the Premier Inn at Ripley, the wheels only having stopped turning to wait at a couple of roundabouts, with the fuel guage still showing well over half a tank.
After eating in the McDonalds next door, back in our room I introduced her to the cult classic film 'Tremors' before turning in for the night.

After our all you can eat breakfast, we popped to the local Sainsburys to get some lunch and then headed to the museum.
On the way an F-plate 240 pulled in front of us up ahead. "I bet thats going there" Emily said, and then - "ooh, can you smell that!" just as I noticed a slight bit of blueish smoke as it pulled away that I commented on - "Well, It could have 300k on it for all we know"
The reality, as it turned out, was that the mileage on that car once it was parked up, was 833,269 miles! I think its allowed to smoke a little bit at that age!

I didn't take that many pictures for some reason, but this was taken by a professional photographer (who has kindly given permission for us to use the 'facebook resolution' photos) as we drove in:

and a video with us arriving on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAdy9V7Y3s

After a few hours walking around the cars and getting into conversation with some really nice people, we went over to the museum itself.
Smaller than the museum at Gaydon, they still had a lot of cars packed in, and a very good interactive audio tour to take you round the display. We only spent about an hour and a quarter in there, I reckon we'd both have been happy to have had at least another hour to look at all the detail.
The other feature of the museum is that you can - for a fee - actually drive some of the cars there. Definitely one to come back to.

When people started to disperse, with a long drive ahead of us we nipped back to the Sainsburys again to get some more drinks and then I bottled it and refilled the tank again with their Super Unleaded in case the guage had got stuck or something. Turns out it hadn't, and on the run up the car had returned 32.2 mpg!

Another 185 miles back with Emily in charge of the playlist, we only hit a little traffic getting back at a sensible time for tea.

The car ran faultlessly (as expected) with only a moments mild panic when an awful noise started coming from (from my useless directional hearing perspective) the fuel pump area. As it turned out what had actually happened was my water bottle that was lying on the handbrake had shifted position and was squeaking against the centre console!
As I said to Emily (stolen from someone else) "Taking a road trip in a modern car is like going to the football and seeing a 0:0 draw. Taking a roadtrip in something 35 years old is like going to the football and getting to see a 5:5 thriller - the end result is the same but at any point you just never know what is going to happen".

Also rolled over to all the 8's, conveniently enough as we passed through the local industrial estate about 5 miles from home so I could pull into a car park to get a picture.

Only another 744,381 to catch up to that 240!

Having some spare time on Friday night, I finally got round to investigating this.
On hooking my multimeter up to it I discovered it is indeed as I suspected. When the engine is running and the gearbox is in R, D, 2 or 1, then 12v is supplied to the solenoid.
Then I tested the solenoid by unhooking the connections form the car, and putting 12V across it. It clicked, so the solenoid is functioning.

Went and grabbed a 13mm spanner and whipped it out to find it all gummed up as predicted:

After covering it in car cleaner and activating it several times I put it back in - to no discernable difference...

So I decided to remove the whole thing, remove the idle speed screw etc and clean it all out:


There is now a clean patch on my engine!

It is a gasket behind it, which came off in not too bad a condition but once refitted the engine ran like crap and a spray of easy start confirmed air was getting in past the sealing surface (oops!) I didn't have any gasket material left so a cereal box had to do temporarily. I've ordered some more gasket material so will replace asap.

With that in place and a liberal spraying of easy start proving I had no leaks there or anywhere else (tested manifold gasket, injectors etc while I was there) I set the idle (mostly by ear, the rev counter is intermittently leaving the chat at the moment) and gave it a try.

Still no discernable change, the idle still drops in drive, so I'm still on my current setting of ~1050 in P/N and 900 in D/R/etc.

What I didn't do, and will when its not raining, is test putting 12v to it while idling in P and see if the idle increases. It could be that it has been 'working' all this time and the idle drop would be even worse without it.

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A busy few hours cleaning the car on Saturday, following a post over in the P2 forum I bought some of this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BS6XV2F6?psc=1&r...
To treat the trim with which was starting to look a little pale. I only had time to do the front bumper, but I was pleased with the result:


If it lasts as promised (and people are reporting that it does) then it'll be worth doing the XC's bumpers too.

• *

On Sunday all three of us went to 'Swedish Day 2024'.
It was only 50 minutes away at Haselbury Plucknet so a nice family day out.
They had 176 people who filled in their forms, and I saw a lot more who had just on the seat so probably 200 cars in total.
On arrival my car was lost in a sea of Saabs:

Which is fine, I like Saabs, and the Sonett 3 behind me was wonderful.

As time went on various people came and went and there were a reasonable number of Volvos at various points, including this rather glorious 164E:

Another good day wandering around chatting to different people in the sunshine