Lazy Shiftless Ne'er-Do-Well!

So a funny thing happened a few weeks (months?) ago. I was cruising home from showing my hair stylist my sweet old Volvo when the dern thing just popped right out of four gear.Yeah, weird right? I shift it back in and a little while later it pops out again.

Well crap.

If you don't know much about cars, know this: Popping out of gear means a lot of money or time is about to be spent. Okay, that or a few bucks for a bungie cord to keep that sucker in position. Of course, me being fresh off of doing all sorts of cool stuff to this car I figure "how bad can it be to rebuild a transmission?"

Step 1 - Make Damn Sure It's The Transmission

On these cars, the shifter actuates a linkage that does the actual shifting in the gearbox. The bottom of the shifter sets in a little plastic bushing. If that bushing is worn it won't move the linkage enough to shift. So, step one: inspect the bushing.

Somewhere in this little puddle of goo...

Pump out the old oil, remove the busted bushing, install your shiny new bushing, put the shifter back in and go drive.

The End!

Step 2 - Damn, It's The Transmission...

Now that replacing that bushing didn't work, it's time to get dirty.

First some background. The Volvo 1800S in the US came with Volvo's M41 transmission. This is a four speed gearbox mated to an electronically controlled hydraulic overdrive. Basically this means you shift normally from reverse up to fourth gear, but you get to press a button to shift into fifth and that is cool as hell. You know, in the figurative sense. It also means that instead of one itty bitty box that weighs a few dozen pounds, you have a combo unit that weighs in excess of 90. Not the end of the world, but not quite something a tiny nerd like me could manhandle in and out of the car.

Before we get too far into it, this is not a rebuild guide. If you use my rantings as a guide to rebuild your transmission, I will have to call CPS (Car Protective Services) and have your wrenches taken away. If you want to do this to your own Volvo, first get the Hayne's manual, then read Phil Singher's excellent primer and rebuild guide. Then take your car to a shop anyway because it's gonna take a lot of time and probably make you bleed on several occasions, not to mention you will be without your car for weeks or months because you are slow and don't know what you're doing.

On with the show. . Start by removing the transmission from the car.

(For the sake of sensitive audience members, some details of this process have been removed)

It's going to be covered in slime. Clean it before you go any further. I used simple green and a pressure washer hooked up to the hot water that was supposed to run to the washing machine. Use caution around any orifices and avoid the black plastic doohicky - this houses the overdrive solenoid and you wouldn't want to have to replace it as well. Since you'll be replacing the fluid along with all the seals and gaskets, a little water intrusion otherwise is not going to end your day (as far as I know...).

Pressure washers are magical

Good work. Now pop the top by removing the remaining five bolts on the cover. The sixth was attached to wires, you did notice that in the guides, right? Now seems like a good time to go over the basics of a manual drivetrain. 

• The crankshaft connected to the flywheel
• The flywheel connected to the clutch house
• The clutch house connected to the pressure plate 
• The pressure plate connected to the input shaft
• The input shaft connected to the counter shaft
• The counter shaft connected to the output shaft 
• The output shaft connected to the drive shaft
• The drive shaft connected to the differential
• The differential connected to the wheel hub
• The wheel hub connected to the rubbery bits
• Now hear the word of Thor!

In other words, the engine turns the flywheel which can be connected or detached from the transmission input shaft using the clutch. The input shaft turns the counter shaft which turns the output shaft which make you go. The input, counter, and output shafts are literally bristling with gears which allows the output shaft to turn at a different rate from the input shaft, thus giving you first through fourth gears.

Open up... See what's inside...

Now that you've pulled the lid you can see the guts. The bars on top move to and fro, pushing a geared collar between two sets of gears. The one on the left is for third and fouth, the middle one is for first and second, the right hand one is for reverse. Underneath that a pile of gears.

In my case, the problem was caused by a bent shift fork. They really shouldn't bend unless you're doing bad things. Who knows, maybe the prior owner was doing bad things. Hard to tell from the pic here, but the one on the right was the original fork and had a noticeable bend to it. I measured several thousandths of an inch bend away from the fourth gear cog.

These are the same, right?

In my case, the problem was caused by a bent shift fork. They really shouldn't bend unless you're doing bad things. Who knows, maybe the prior owner was doing bad things. Hard to tell from the pic here, but the one on the right was the original fork and had a bend of a few thousandths of an inch.

Again, some steps (and several weeks) might have been omitted.

Since I was this far in I figured I'd pull more apart and replace more bits. Front and rear bearings were replaced, circlips refreshed, and no other issues found in there. Part of reassembly requires a surrogate spindle to hold all of the countershaft bearings and washers together. I cut a piece of copper pipe to length which worked splendidly. Also, for the love of Thor don't do what I did and try to pull the countershaft up to mesh with the rest of the gears, turn the whole gearbox upside down and everything just falls into place. Yes, it says this in Phil's guide. Yes, I struggled with it for a good half hour before re-reading the spindle assembly.

And we're all done!

Oh wait, we're not...

Reassembly had some of it's own challenges. First, I found the front cover was broken and had been from the start. I suspect it broke sometime before taking the transmission out - miniscule score marks were on the input shaft. I'm hoping to notice a better feeling clutch when I get back on the road, time will tell.

Speaking of that clutch!

Transmission needs to be out to replace the clutch, clutch kits are only a hundred bucks or so. Just replace it while you're in there. Future you will be grateful. Removal and replacement is very straightforward. Loosen the bolts around the housing a little at a time in a star pattern to keep the springs from bending anything. This kit is from Sachs and included a pilot bearing and handy dandy tool to align the pressure plate with the flywheel. This handy dandy tool naturally fits perfectly into the pilot bearing so can double as an extractor for said bearing. Pack the space behind the pilot bearing with grease, stick the tool in, tap with a mallet. Install the new bearing, stick the new clutch up there on the centering tool and bolt back in a bit at a time.

I seem to have stopped taking photos at this point, mostly because it's accompanied with heaps of cursing and swearing. Installing a transmission is not for the feint of heart. It's heavy, bulky, unwieldy, and generally a big pain in the bum. I used two jacks and a lot of elbow grease to get it up and bolted in. One jack to tilt the motor back a bit, one to lift the transmission into place. I could not seem to get this installed with the bell housing mounted on the transmission and spent many fruitless hours trying to make that work. I ended up installing the bell housing and clutch fork on the back of the motor, then installing the transmission and tightening up those hex bolts from the opening in the transmission tunnel.

So, how does she drive?

New clutch, (hopefully) repaired transmission, new transmission and motor mounts. Now all we need to do is put it on the ground and go for a drive! How could that could that possibly go wrong?

Coming up next week: Exactly how that could possibly go wrong while we repair an oil pan and replace an oil pump!

A place to put things (and something about more speakers...)

It may baffle those of you who are new here, but the 1800 has no glove box. That means no place to put your registration, pens, used bendy straws, maps, nothing! It's like the people who built these cars and the people who run Ikea stay on opposite signs of some Line of Storage and never the two shall meet.

License and registration, please.

Oh well. Let's finish up the sound system. That way when we get back to the important stuff, we'll have something to listen to. When we last left our intrepid hero, it just had a pair of speakers installed in a custom-built rear shelf. Excellent craftsmanship I say, as long as you don't look too closely... or better yet just don't look at all. Just listen. And feel.

Building More Boom

First, pick out some speakers. Easy breezy. I went with JL Audio TR650-CSi 6.5" component speakers. They're a good match to my rear speakers, decent size, and they don't break the bank. Plus, look at that classic black mesh grille!

It looks like I neglected to take any pictures of the design process with the cutting out of the baffle boards. Sorry, maybe if you guys increased my salary you wouldn't get such shoddy reporting. Measure and cut the speaker openings out of the same 5/8" MDF used for the rear shelf. I didn't simply want speaker boxes, I also needed a spot to put stuff. Y'know, like pencils and wads of fifties.

All this and I still suck at wrapping presents...

The speaker boxes are basically a baffle board with a post across the middle to act as a map shelf. The shelf angles down toward the front, giving clearance for the tweeter and making sure items placed on it don't slide off the back from the wicked acceleration out of the 110 ish horsepower 1.8 liter dual-carb inline four.

Wrap it up already, we've got things to do!

Mounting speakers is not difficult once the holes are cut. Place speaker in hole, insert screws, put on the grille. Don't forget the grille. These are kick panel speakers. They are gonna get kicked. I attached these to the kick panels with some two dozen brads from the brad nailer. It's not the right way to do it. The right way would have been to make a fiberglass form. Fiberglass is for sissies.

I model all my best work on the dolphin sheets, 'cause that's where the magic happens.

Play time is over guys, let's get back to fixing the broken stuff.

Trippin' Out

Day 1

I'm skipping some stuff. Between now and back when I should have written about it, I overhauled my rear brakes, some of my driveshaft, and some other stuff I'm forgetting about right now.

That's OK though, this will be worth it. You see, I've taken the Volvo on it's first road trip! Don't tell the missus, but she partook in the shakedown cruise where any (every?) number of things could have gone wrong, and (so far) didn't! The speedometer doesn't work, but the little app I downloaded to my phone says we averaged about 70 miles per hour. Of course, it also kept alternating between 36 and 68 miles per hour, so take that number however you want it.

The trip was uneventful, except for the fact that we drove from Reno to Sacramento in a sweet old Volvo that I rebuilt myself!!!

Nice hair, Poindexter

Tomorrow is the Golden Gate Volvo Club Of America (...what a mouthful) meeting in Davis where we will no doubt be overshadowed by sweeter old Volvos rebuilt and maintained by people far smarter than myself.

In case you haven't surmised yet, I'm writing this from a hotel in Sacramento - so there is plenty of time for all the things to go wrong. Stay tuned, updates to come...

Day 2

Delicious dinner with friends last night. Delicious Volvos at the park all day. Volvos of all shapes and sizes (but mostly squares) descend on the town's central park. Raffles, swap meets, and more enthusiasts than you could ever hope to talk to in one day. Also, the greatest concentration of 1800s this side of the tequila aisle at the liquor store! As usual, we showed up fashionably late and were directed to a parking spot down at the end with the rest of the fashionably late folks.

And fashionable we were!

My car will never be a concourse winner. It's built for me (and my budget, of course), with plenty of non-standard parts in plenty of non-standard places. These other cars though... Whoa, simply stunning. Daily drivers bought new in the 60s, gorgeous professional restorations, and more than a few lovingly pieced together in crowded home garages like mine.

Let's see a few!

You could eat off of some of these engine bays

Amazons

OG Wagons

When the only tool you have is a soldering torch, everything looks like it needs to be a steampunk roof rack.

544s

I also had the pleasure of putting several faces to familiar names of folks who I've chatted with on the forum. Bill, Dudek, the other Phil S, and plenty of others. That's the thing about events like these. They aren't about the cars. The cars are just something to gather around. The real reason we gather is for the stories. Had a Volvo? Have a Volvo? Want a Volvo? Saw a Volvo on TV once? Doesn't matter, all of the fun is in standing around telling (inventing?) stories about adventures gone by and adventures to come. Let's do it again soon!

There are many like it, but this one's mine.

Postscript

So, what's a 300 mile trip in a 45-year-old car assembled in your garage like? Luckily, rather uneventful. The car handled wonderfully. The suspension work gave us a smooth and predicable ride, predictably falling into every semi-truck rut on the freeway. It ate up the miles cruising comfortably at 70 MPH and had little trouble going up hills in overdrive. It's no performance car, but it's more than capable of backing up its good looks. Yes, the heater control valve doesn't seem to close all the way (but we already complained about that one...). Yes, something knocks against the transmission tunnel in a terrifying way whenever we go over a large enough bump. Yes, something important might have fallen off outside of Colfax (we'll find out when I go on my next missing bolt hunt). But, warm air from the heater box was made up for by the 2-70 AC (two open windows, 70 MPH), bumps and knocks add character, and if something fell off it couldn't have been that important if the car didn't drive any different. Ultimately we made it there and back again in comfort and style.

Next time - less tools, more dog.

The Little Things, Part I

Just wanted to outline a few little bits done to the car lately. I don't know if there will be Parts II or III of little bits. Probably. Maybe not. Who knows. Maybe if you people would bug me to write more, I'd write more. Don't look at me like that, we both know it's your fault.

Today's little things is all about heat.

Heater Tubing

Technically, it's a hose. But, everybody assumes the water hoses when I say hose, not the air hoses. Anyhow, the original paper/foil ducting from the heater box to the defroster vents turned to dust when I touched it. After much research I came across something called "carburetor preheat/emissions duct," Goodyear part #65924. Seems hard to find, but Summit could get it, lucky for me 'cause Summit has a big warehouse right nearby.

Looks something like this

I picked up three of them, but two would have worked if I measured things right. Good thing I got three. Anyhow, I could make up a lot of words to go in here, but it's pretty simple. Cut to length, squeeze onto the vents and heater box outlets. This isn't rocket surgery.

Snakes in a car.

More Heater Tubing

Hah, you thought this would be about something else! The Volvo 1800 uses a Ranco heater control valve. Reproductions are available but would cost about as much as I spent on the car. We'll save that for a last resort option. First resort was to use the valve I had. This worked fine until I tried to turn off the heater and dribbled coolant all over my passenger's shoe (sorry 'bout that, Dave). Well, the weather is turning warmer so an always-on heater is no longer an option.

El Cheapo Strikes Again!

What you're looking at is a generic straight-through heater control valve. Costs $15 on Amazon. You're also looking at a 180 degree bend hose and a back-flush kit. Here's how it works: Plug the existing line from the radiator into the outlet of the valve. Hook the 180 between the valve inlet and the back-flush kit. Plug the line from the motor into the other side of the back-flush kit. The back flush kit does a couple of things for us. First of all, it lets us couple the existing hose to the bent hose (most important function). Second, it is the high-point on the cooling system and is an excellent place to fill from to reduce the chance of trapping air (second most important function). Third, it let's you back-flush your cooling system (but who cares about that anyway?).

I'll seal off the opening eventually...

So, how does it work? Hmm... Not very well actually. The valve is fully actuated by the existing control, but it never seems to fully close off. Air goes from "hey, that's pretty warm" to "oh my god my toes are melting!" Of course, this could be from having a big black metal box mounted right behind the motor and picking up engine bay heat. Further analysis is needed, but I may end up swapping the control valve.

And with that, I leave you on a down note! Until next time!

The Hard Rock Devil Made Me Do It.

A radio without speakers is about as useful as a dog without a tail. I mean, sure it'll fill in the hole in the dash and tell me the time, but how am I supposed to know when it's happy? Happy dogs wag their tails. Happy dogs rock out. Let's get happy.

I'm going to start off with a caveat. I know about as much about installing car stereos as I do about raising kids. I don't have kids. In fact, when somebody hands me a baby, I'm afraid I'm going to break it or give it some sort of complex. All I'm saying here is don't do what I do without consulting somebody smarter. After all, the last child rearing advice I gave was "Figure out which end to put the food in and call it good."

Power

The Retrosound radio has a reasonably powerful built in amplifier putting out 25 watts per channel. More than enough power to blow up old speakers and just enough for smaller speakers. It won't quite cut it for the stereo I have in mind. Additionally, underpowering speakers has the potential to damage them from clipping and distortion. Of course, you need to play really freaking loud to get to that point.

Amped, Bro.

Power is only a tiny part of the picture. Signal to noise ratio of the amplifier, sensitivity and position of the speakers, I could make up stuff I saw on a box all day long. Frankly, in a small space like a car, power hardly matters. But, you know, if we only did what makes sense, we'd all be driving beige Camries. What you see here is an Alpine MRV-F300 amplifier with 50 watts into four channels picked up for cheap on Amazon. It's inexpensive, small, and the power is a good match for my speakers which are rated for 50 and 60 watts of continuous power.

Wiring an audio amplifier is *almost* trivial. Long big wire goes to the battery (don't forget a fuse near the battery). Short big wire goes to the chassis ground. Little wire goes to the "power antenna" or "amp turn on" wire from the radio (it will be blue). RCA wires for your sound, and regular speaker wires to the speaker. A side note on those wires, I picked up an amp kit made by Scosche on the internets. It's not quite twice the price of the typical kits, but is a surprisingly high-quality set of wires. Wire snakeskin cover over the engine-bay end of the power wire. Real live copper wiring (rather than the more common aluminum). Excellent strain reliefs molded into the connectors. I'm very pleased with the quality and glad I didn't cheap out. Does this sound like a plug? I promise I wasn't paid for it.

Make Some Noise!

About those speakers, in the rear I have a pair of JL Audio TR690-TXi 6x9 speakers rated for 60 watts of continuous power. The large speaker is to eliminate the need for a subwoofer. Sure, they're full range speakers, but high frequencies are quite directional and won't travel quite so well from the rear to the front. Low frequencies though, those travel through everything. You've probably noticed this when you stopped next to that crappy old beige Camry at the stoplight. You know the one: teenage driver, license plate and trunk all rattling from the bump in the trunk. Kids these days...

Anyhow, enough talk, let's build something already.

Baffling

To start, I built a baffle board by tracing what was left of my rotted old parcel shelf onto a piece of 5/8ths MDF and jigsawed out the holes for the speakers.

The New Rats Nest

Underneath the baffle board and covering as much of the axle-hump as possible is more Thinsulate Acoustic. This serves dual purposes of cutting back sound coming through the metal of the hump and cutting back the sound emanating from the back-side of the speaker which tends to cancel out the sounds coming from the front. You can see the amp nestled in there. Don't worry, it has plenty of room to breathe and stay cool.

To fit the fairly deep speakers, I bent the original parcel shelf mounting brackets slightly and installed them upside-down. This gave me the extra inch or so needed for the speakers to clear the hump.

Boom Box

A piece of 1/4" ply shores shores up the front of the parcel shelf and completes the shelf. Thinsulate Acoustic is wedged behind the plywood and eventually got stuffed into the space under the rear seat.

Final Touches

The cheapo eBay carpet kit had a replacement piece for the shelf. Unfortunately it was cut for the original shelf which was noticeably shorter. The rear seat hinges should keep that decently covered. Also, cutting cheap carpet with a dull razor is tough work.

Job's Done!

Now we get to the real reason I bought these speakers over all the other options out there. Plain black grilles. I was after an upper-midrange speaker - perusing the interwebs for Polks and Bostons. Everything has one problem though: ridiculous gaudy speaker grilles. Like giant plastic teeth trying to eat my speaker. After nearly settling on a reasonably tame looking set from Infinity, I found the JLs getting blown out on Amazon that ticked every box on my requirements list.

So, how does it sound then? Better than I had imagined. Far beyond what I get out of my other cars - even the old Nissan with the 10" subwoofer. I'm pretty well convinced now that subwoofers are a marketing ploy - something for high schoolers to put in the trunk of their Camry.

 Sound only coming from the rear means there's no stereo imaging. I've got a vague idea of what to do about that, maybe I'll turn the idea into a plan in a week or two and tell you guys about it next month.

Until then, stay classy.

The Second Coming of Smooth Jesus

Y'know, I've given this rant a tagline that I don't think I've been very true to. It's a story about:

Cars

Beer

Music (by Smooth Jesus himself)

and Dogs

All this time, I've been going on and on about cars (and a little about dogs). And you, dear reader, let me get away with it. How do you sleep at night? I'll let you off the hook this time and remedy one of these failings. Today, we'll talk about music. Or more specifically, about getting new music in a busted old Volvo.

Concourse aficionados beware, as with most of my brutish tasks on this project, this is not done with an eye toward originality. Originality would leave me with a single 4x6 speaker and an AM/FM radio. Originality will not rock out. Let's go shopping.

The Horror!

What we have here are a set of 6x9" speakers for a little bit of bump in the trunk (not to be confused with junk in the trunk), a set of 6.5" components for the main event, a four channel amplifier to power the whole shebang, a bunch of wires, all driven by a new head unit from RetroSound.

Let's start with the head unit. Here's a breakdown of my options:

• Use a standard DIN stereo. Pros: Best sound and features for the price. Cons: Requires additional dash carving, will look out of place
• Rebuild an original stereo with modern guts. Pros: Looks 100% original. Cons: High cost, need to source an original radio (even higher cost), and I really don't care if it looks 100% original.
• Get a modern stereo designed to look old. Pros: Fits with the design of the dash, generally provides a flexible installation. Cons: Somewhat higher cost than a typical head unit

I did some considerable research before shelling out for the RetroSound Model 2. Aesthetically, the manufacturer offers a staggering array of faceplate and knob kits to match virtually any installation. Mechanically, it has a fantastic bracket system allowing for extremely flexible installation options. Electronically it has five channel pre-amp outputs, two each USB and AUX inputs, and Bluetooth integration with my phone, or your phone if you've got a better Pandora station than I do.

In the box is a huge bag of nuts and screws, another bag full of plastic spacers and washers, two mounting brackets, the radio, and the controls and knobs. You'll need two spacers and six nuts. Use the rest to decorate your bicycle for Burning Man. You damn dirty hippie.

Brackets go here

I mounted the brackets fairly far forward. It could be more forwarder, but it's easier to get the spacers just right. Shove the shafts through the brackets. One thing you can't see is the nut I put on the base of the shaft (no, stop that. Gods, you're childish) so the weight of the radio is supported by the threaded shaft rather than the by plastic control box on the back. Y'know, now that I look at it, I think I used eight nuts. Anyhow, sandwich the bracket with nuts, then place another nut and a spacer in front of it (use washers, you've got a million of them in there).

Front-ish View

My dash opening was a bit bigger than needed to fit the stereo through. The plan is to support the front weight of the radio by sandwiching the dash between the big damn plastic spacers and the faceplate. The back view kinda sorta shows how we accomplish this, but not really. How to explain... Flat vertical dash part goes between the black circle and the shiny rectangle. Got it? Good.

Back-ish View

 This might be enough to hold all of the weight of the radio. It's not that heavy and it's really quite secure. Of course, it might also succumb to all that weight cantilevered off the back and snap the faceplate, spacers, or dashboard. A flexible metal strap serves the dual purpose of grounding the radio to the chassis and supporting the rear weight of the radio. Use it. You can also see that it's kind of a tight fit around the windshield wipers, but it doesn't interfere.

Don't make fun of my rusty nether-regions. Also, my clock works. Jealous much? Yer jealous.

I spaced the front so the nuts have exactly as many threads as they need - more would make the knobs stick out more than I'd want. Use washers to distribute the force - after all, the faceplate is helping hold the radio in place.

Complimentary Screen Protector! All original plastic wrap!

Attach the knobs, take some pictures, drink some beer, glue the bottle cap to a magnet, and put it on your dash. Life is good. Maybe next time I'll tell you how to make it do something besides sit there looking pretty.

Give her some funked up music, she treats you nice.

Weatherstripping

Unfortunately for you guys, this post will be more informative than funny. Sorry 'bout that, I promise to do better next time.

I replaced a bunch of weather stripping in my '67 last weekend (or the weekend before, I don't recall) and figure some of you might find this info useful. Replaced the trunk seal, hood seal, and the seal around the bottom of the trunk with a door seal from McMaster-Carr (style #18 on the link below):
http://www.mcmaster.com/#epdm-rubber-seals/=qjh1si

I'm sure there are other suppliers. 25 feet did the trunk to trunk lid, trunk floor to trunk sidewall, and hood, and set me back some sixty bucks plus shipping. Reasonable shipping, not 99 cent gadget on eBay with sixteen dollars shipping, shipping.

Profile shot... And ugly trunk.

Now, hood and trunk seals are available from the usual sources, but I'm cheap and it was a way to get something for the trunk floor before I lost something in the cracks. If it were a stone for killing birds, it would kill all three! It fits the gap perfectly around the trunk floor, and looks to make a suitable seal around the boot lid. I'd test it with the hose, but it's cold out. Maybe later, check for updates or bug me.

Install profile

Trunk Floor in Progress

Installation is very straightforward. On the trunk floor, just push it on the lip and cut it when you run into an obstruction. Around the boot lid it's a bit more of a challenge. You need to plan getting it around the hinges as well as loosen the hinge bolts to really get it worked in. The angled lip around the opening also takes some wiggling to get the seal to seat itself, but it feels quite satisfying when seated.

Work in progress

Work done

The hood install is the same as the trunk, need to wiggle it around the lip. The clips that hold the water lines to the the windshield washer nozzles need to be removed for this to be installed. I'll figure out how to secure them sometime down the road, but they don't move around too much. My car apparently had some front end damage in its storied and unknown past, and there is a thicker plate under the opening on the passenger side starting a few inches from the top of the hood opening. In any case, I had enough material to cover the back wall of the hood opening, down about a foot on either side.

Lookin' gooooood

Sorry again for the boring, informative blog, but I'll make it up to you. Next time we'll talk about the stereo. Oh yeah, hold on to your butts.