At the Cellular Level.

Irrelevant Intro Begins Here. To skip this part, please scroll down to the next bit of red text, found 5 paragraphs below.

I've started my blog entries off with so many different versions of "It's been a long time since the last time" that I'm having trouble coming up with a new phrase that doesn't sound like a broken record. A broken record. Record. And if that's not enough, now I've gone a step further and started this "here's a bunch of writing you'll probably want to skip." The absurdity that I'm doing exactly this same thing yet again is not lost on me. I appreciate your concern.

I need to convey the same old tired sentiment that I always say, but it has to sound innovative and sexy. Because that's the high standard to which we've become accustomed. Alas, the only expertise from which I can draw inspiration seems to be that offered by those mythological beasts we collectively know as "candidates." And though I'm desperate, I can't allow myself to be conflated into that social clique.

If I were, I might still be able to live with myself. But my reputation would suffer because you, dear reader, would instantly think less of me. On a personal level, that's okay. But now that I have the shop open and I'm playing adult games and stuff, I have to act like other people's personal opinions actually carry some weight in my corner of this vast universe. And if I'm wrong about all of that, then I'm wrong about my own opinion that lovers of Old Things Volvo are people of a high enough caliber that they aren't dulled to the point of apathy by this every-four-year-election-circus. We notice things. We think critically. This is not an endorsement of any candidate nor an invitation for political debate. Comments are moderated.

See what I did there? Paid you a subliminal compliment in order to foster a positive assessment and silently bolster my standing.

Now that we're all thinking about how much we don't like at least one of the someones who is working to become the leader of the free world and our moods have most certainly risen to something between Giddy With Excitement and Pure Bliss (no need to thank me), let's get back to the car thing.


The shop is legit: we got the stickers to prove it.

Irrelevant Intro Ends Here.

One of the things about this car that I've never wanted anyone to know (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Hi Beloved Wife!) is that it's been limping along on a crummy old original fuel tank for a few years. This isn't so bad, exactly, except that the pickup tube (you Volvo folks already know where this is headed) rusted and became perforated. The pickup tube is a metal straw that enters the tank near the top, and pokes down toward the bottom. Just like your soda straw does when you're sipping on a cola.

Anyway when these tubes get holes in them, they can't draw fuel from the bottom of the tank, and you end up basically running out of gas even though you might have several gallons sloshing around in there. With this one, I could fill the tank to its astonishing 9 gallon capacity, and after using about 3 gallons, the car would coast to the side of the road. For a long distance endurance kind of car, a range of 50 miles per tank is unsuitable. Eventually, 3 gallons became less than 2, and I was managing about 30 miles between fillups. I was not popular with gas station attendants (we don't pump our own here in Oregon) who, after being asked to "fill 'er up!" barely got things started when it was already over with.

There's an analogy in there somewhere, but I just can't find it.



See the shiny spots? That's where raw gas ends up.

I will not disclose the method by which a faulty fuel pickup tube was circumvented. Either you shouldn't know, or you already do.

There were also some pinholes in the top of the tank that allowed small amounts of raw gasoline to exit the top of the tank and stink up the whole car. We thought about what we need from our replacement tank.

It had to be bigger than the original, needed a provision for a fuel gauge sending unit, had to have a rollover valve, and had (this part is obvious) to fit into the trunk along with a lot of other things. Though a proper FIA certified fuel cell (that's bonafide race car stuff) is a really smart thing, it's also a thousand dollar plus kind of thing. For the events we're looking into, the cell need not be FIA certified.

So there was a lot of thinking about capacity and dimensions and how other stuff would stow in the trunk. Do we want a tall skinny fuel cell? A low flat one? How important is the filler placement? Sump or no sump? We finally settled on a 17 gallon piece that would tuck nicely* into the floor, included a fuel gauge sending unit, and had its filler located pretty close to the original fuel filler hole in the left rear fender. I don't know if we'll use the original fuel filler hole, but that seems more likely if the tank filler isn't on the opposite corner of the trunk.

*tuck nicely: 1. stow neatly within a small enclosed space in an aesthetically pleasing and functional manner. 2. the garish - but appropriately concealed - result of angle grinders, hacksaws, welders and various other devices of irreversible alteration applied to an otherwise perfect foundation with the robust intention of accommodating the absurd.



One of these is the old tank. The other is the new one.

The new tank is pretty flat, so it won't take up a lot of trunk space. If this were a track car, the cell would drop down into a recess ('the cell sits in the well') and we'd have a lower center of gravity (good thing) as well as more available trunk space (irrelevant on the track). But for this car, we really don't want a box of gasoline acting like low hanging fruit out underneath the car's stern. And this way, we can drop the original tank right back into place if we want; or we can quickly put a proper race cell in place should the opportunity arise.



Fuel tank hole gets bigger. Hard to tell with all the crap on the floor under there.

Another round of Irreversible Changes That Get Me Hate Mail, and the 59 year old Swedish sheetmetal trunk floor is adjusted to accommodate the new feedbag.

Adding a flange to the newly cut side.



Doesn't have to be pretty. Luckily.

One super-important aspect was the fuel sending unit. There are a few different kinds, none of which is advertised as having the proper resistance range to match the 444's original fuel gauge. This is no surprise. So we ordered the "GM" sending unit, then bought a gauge that would communicate with that. Then we spent a LOT of time figuring out how to fit an aftermarket VDO fuel gauge into the original instrument panel. Because that's how we want it.


The idea was to use sheet steel (right) and then...

... drill a hole for the gauge.

The issues with this: only one 2 inch gauge will fit on either side of the speedometer. And fitting one gauge per side requires irreversible mods to the instrument housing. The trick is to recess the gauge such that it's behind the lovely chrome fascia, but not all the way in the back of the housing where you can't see it. Thus, the plate shown above.

Because I practice full disclosure: if you've read my prior blog entries already, you know that I'm not always ever very any good about getting X to completion before starting in on Y. One result of this is that I sometimes do things that turn out to be completely worthless less valuable than I might choose. Another result is that I have a big stash of cool stuff to use when I make other cool stuff someday. All that fiddling with the new gauge and making up a panel fits into both of these categories. Because here's the thing I never could have predicted: not only is the mounting plate for the GM sending unit the exact same diameter as the Volvo piece, it also has 5 mounting holes like the Volvo piece. And though the holes aren't equally spaced from one another on the GM part, the unequal spacing is identical to the unequal spacing on the Volvo part.

In short, the two sending unit mounting provisions are identical. The Volvo sending unit fits perfectly. This wonderful news has delightfully rendered many hours of fettling irrelevant. Woot.



GM, top. Original Volvo, bottom.

The other happy coincidence is that because we chose a fuel cell that's about the same height as the original tank, the only thing we had to do to make the sending unit float span from the very bottom of the tank to the very top was bend the arm a little. In the Volvo tank, the sending unit mount is recessed (this keeps it tucked nicely* below any cargo that would be stowed in the trunk). Because it's recessed, the float actually reaches higher than the mounting plate when indicating 'full.' This new tank isn't like that, so the float reach doesn't need to go as high - by about a half inch. It does need to reach lower than before, though. By about a half an inch. Maybe this coincidence isn't any big deal, but I'm pretty stoked. Wouldn't have been possible with any other fuel cell that I was considering. A quick test with the ohmmeter tells us that we're good to go.

*See prior reference. Or ibid. I don't know.

Empty.

Full.

I'm really pleased that we'll be able to use the original fuel gauge. And because we can do that, I've decided to not install a new VDO temp gauge and to run with the original. We aren't using the original oil pressure gauge nor the ammeter. It might seem like a minor thing, but despite evidence to the contrary, we want this car to stay old. We're changing it for a specific purpose and many of these changes call for modern elements. But these bits of modernization are side effects resulting from a primary goal that relates to vintage authenticity.

That's the Volvo sending unit on the right.

 Because the tank isn't secured the same way as the original, we added a ground wire to the sending unit cover. That's a simple thing.



There are a few things to keep in mind if you install a cell, even if it's a Not-Actual-Race variety like this one. Ensure that it's adequately supported from below, for example. And there's a vent, which you'll want to connect to a fuel-compatible line and then route well above the filler level before fitting it somewhere outside the trunk (and also outside the passenger compartment) so that it can draw clean air into the tank as the fuel level drops. Our vent tube leads up, then loops around and comes back down with the open end hiding behind the license plate and fitted with a small filter to keep the big chunks of dirt out.





And that's it for now. There's less trunk space than before, but there's enough. For comparison, here's a 544 that's run La Carrera 8 or 10 times and hasn't run out of gas:

That's 22 gallons of awesome, plus the spare/jack/tool kit, fire extinguisher and first aid kit. Photo courtesy of Michael Sharp.

We've done a few other things along the way that are kind of cool (and maybe a little silly) but they're minor and not worthy of their own blog post. So we'll just add them here.

First: based on advice from LCP veterans, the car now has windshield squirters:



That's the bottle. Keen eyed readers will notice that the coil and Crane box have been moved.

... and some exterior hinges that allow the trunk to open all the way:

The hinge pins are held in place with hitch pin clips so that we can remove the trunk lid altogether in about 20 seconds without tools. The original latch stays locked so you won't steal it.

And that's about it. We're looking forward to taking the car up to the Swedish Car Day event at the XXX Drive In up in Issaqua (that's sort of near Seattle) on Feb 14th. Hope to see you there!

'til next time -

Shortest Post, Biggest News!

A few months ago, we opened a shop. A Volvo fixin' shop. And last week, we got a website!

www.swedishrelics.com

Check it out!

'til next time --

Cameron

Terra Trip Fermanente

It's funny how everything [like a certain blog I know] ebbs and flows.

Actually, it's really not funny, and not everything does that. But that's the best opener I could come up with just now.

In our previous action lacked episode (and least half of the ones before that), we did the thing we're best at at which we are best: We undid something that wasn't done completely or correctly the first time, and we put stuff back together better than before. It's not lost on me that if I were to go about altering another 444, that the next one would be a lot more polished than this one. Fortunately, that's completely irrelevant, because this isn't a show car and it's not destined for an easy old age that includes being put out to pasture (or whatever the automotive equivalent of that might be).

Instead, we're going to slather weld beads all over the underside and inside of this one that look like they were performed underwater by someone wearing a blindfold who is also being attacked by an underfed school of barracuda. As soon as that's done, we're going to spend a few months trying to break stuff. Sort of. Mostly. Besides, this car was already out to pasture and all but abandoned before I retrieved it out from under a maple tree where it had been sitting - in a flood plain - without tires for some number of years. I wouldn't do this kind of thing to a car that warranted a proper restoration.

You'll recall the Terra Trip Rally computer that went into the car a few months ago. It's the device that keeps track of ground speed, date, time of day, elapsed time, ETA, and has something like 4 internal stopwatches, each of which can be started and stopped independently and can count up or down. If we can figure out how to use this thing, it's going to be really helpful.

Initially, it was attached to the dash with the included suction cups. That's fine, except that those suction cups aren't as suction-ey as I might like, and the thing came undone a few times just while driving around. Pushing any of its buttons guaranteed that it would come loose, and the last thing we need at 80mph while we're looking for some landmark and watching out for livestock is to have expensive things shaped like bricks pulling loose from their wires flying around inside the car. So I decided it was time to ditch the afterthought-looking suction cups and permanently affix it to the dash. Securely mounted = harder to steal. Win.

The codriver is the one who has to see it, so it made sense to mount it onto the glove box door. I have a LOT of extra glove box doors, so I don't feel bad about drilling holes in this one. And I have a LOT of extra glove box door chrome trim pieces, so I don't feel terribly bad about cutting one in half. A little bad, for sure. But not horribly bad. Marginally horribly.

First, the TerraTrip gets unplugged:

This plastic thing that holds the teeny little wire terminals is, I'm told, a "Molex" connector.

Try to not laugh: here's an example of what to not do with wiring: run it through a small hole that makes it impossible to remove once the terminal block is in place. Because if you do that, you have to remove teeny wire terminals from the Big Plastic Chunky Thing That Was Invented By Demons.

After learning that "Molex" means "pain in your ass," we won the battle with wire snippers.

Next, the super pretty chromed brass fascia comes off the glove box door.

I didn't really use a screwdriver. But it's fun to use photos that make the process look scarily hamfisted.

I'd considered just going without the fascia. Until it was removed and I remembered how boring a flat piece of flat black metal really is.


Unsexily nekkid.

We took the yuckiest piece of replacement chrome out of the 'glove box parts' box, scrubbed it with Four-Ought steel wool, and sliced:

Rant: Knowing that these little wiring terminals aren't proprietary and are just some product that the TerraTrip people buy from a store somewhere, I headed over to the local Radio Shack to pick up replacements. And I learned that though Radio Shack has all the nicely labeled drawers with words like "electrical connectors" and "terminals" and "diodes" and a whole bunch of other things, the bins inside those drawers are empty. EMP. TEE. They sell speaker wire and cell phones, and you can pay your utility bills there.

 

Not only that, but the good people who work there aren't smart about what used to be inside the bins. Nor can they call the other nearby Radio Shack to see if the bins in the other nearby location might be stocked. Remember when Radio Shack was staffed by geezers who made their own HAM radios and X Ray machines and knew everything about stuff? Extinct, yo.

 

Fortunately, everything Radio Shack gave up on is now located at Surplus Gizmos. This might be the coolest find in the last decade (Parkrose Hardware and Wink's being the others). They've got robot parts, chemicals, computer parts, etc. Check 'em out, if you're an uber geek:

 

http://www.surplusgizmos.com/

 

Most importantly, they have the terminals I needed. They don't keep them in little bags or anything - they're on a big spool that's a yard in diameter. The spool probably holds a quarter million of these things. 2 1/2 cents each means I spent a dollar for a lifetime supply.

 

Also bought the "Molex Release Tool" but it wasn't the right one.

Because I had the wrong tool to remove the terminals, I grabbed a bunch of other pointy things. Tweezers, dental picks, a child-safe pumpkin carving knife...

The fun part that gets me hate mail: drilling holes in old cars:

Brackets mounted:

... TerraTrip mounted and fascia back in place:

And the glove box still works like a glove box. Race cars don't usually need those, but I like having it, and we'll certainly make use of it. Wires come up from below the dash and are secured to the glove box door so that they won't strain when we open and close the thing, and it easily tips up or down to suit the codriver's preference/height/slouch factor.

The only other thing that's happened with the car this week is that we're now revisiting the exhaust, which has to be larger than the current 2.25" ID setup. And the front swaybar is back where it belongs.

Next, we remove the interior. All of it. I've been putting that off, as it will definitively mark the actual point after which there is no turning back. That'll be the end of this being a marginally suitable street car. Enthused as I am for the project as a whole, this step is a tough one.

'til then -

Suspension Of Disbelief.

Hey Friends --
 
[Largely irrelevant and long winded intro begins here. If you don't care about that, skip ahead to the next red section and start there.]

Welcome back to our sporadic and disorganized blog. Or maybe it's you who should welcome me back to interaction with the outside world. This is about where I'd start off with some bogus rationale a sensible explanation about being away for a while and not attending to the ol' blog and stuff -- but given that I've used that tired refrain a few too many times already, I'll have to come up with some other excuse for leaving you hanging. In anticipation. With bated breath. Because my narcissistic self and its inflated ego just knows you've nothing better to do that while away your time here with me.

... or maybe you just need a laugh, and my continual false starts provide exactly the comic relief your life is missing. Or maybe this fails to be either informative OR entertaining and I'm just chasing my tail and pretending this is interesting for people other than myself. Either way here we are. Thanks for that.

Since our last update, I've continued to drive the car all the time. Naturally, I neglected to make a note of the odometer when I got the thing back on the road, so I don't know how many miles we've logged. Whoops.

Last May, I was invited to display the car at the annual ipd Garage Sale and Show, and to my complete amazement, we came home with the 'Best in Show' award. About the same time, Part 1 of a series about the car that's to be published in the VSA (Volvo Sports America) quarterly magazine showed up in the mailbox. [For some reason unbeknownst to me, Part 2 didn't make it into the following issue. Maybe this Volvo isn't sporty enough.]

The other thing that's kept me away from here is that, for several months, I've been looking for a shop to lease so that I can take on more customer cars and have a place to continue to maintain our own old Volvos. I finally found a place, and am happy to announce that Swedish Relics is now a legitimate, insured, taxed and licensed 1800 square foot enterprise here in the Portland area. We even have the domain name - swedishrelics.com - although there's nothing on the website. I don't know how to do that website stuff.

We also have a telephone number, so if you need anything for your old European car, please do call. 503-703-4366. Thanks.

Things got super messy and crowded after this.

... anyway, it took almost a month to get through all the paperwork, get a business license and a Federal Tax ID thing and insurance and utilities and stuff, and then I had to put up cabinets, build a workbench, set up the stereo (duh!), move all my tools and parts into the place, which meant unloading a very full garage at home as well as a very crammed 10x20 storage unit plus two cars before I could do anything. About the time that the dust settled, we left town to visit my wife's family and we were gone for three weeks.

 

As soon as we returned, I got back to work. One good thing is that there are people in Portland who have old European cars in need of attention, so we've had a Jensen-Healey come through, a couple Volvo 1800s, an ES and a '58 Fiat Multipla.

 

The 444, though, is why I'm typing and you're reading and now I've gone completely off topic. Let's get back to it.

 

[Largely irrelevant and long winded intro ends here.]

 

One of the things (there are a few, but I'll only admit to them as they're addressed) that we did in a bit of a rush when putting the car together initially has to do with the front sway bar. We can't use the ipd PV series front bar, because the moment arms (those are the ends where the holes are) aren't the right distance apart to align with the endlink mounts (that's what those holes are for) in the lower A-arms on the 140 front suspension. So, as mentioned in an earlier post, we'd mounted up an ipd 140 series front swaybar. That's all well and good, but the bends in the new bar are closer together than in the old bar, which means that we can't use the original factory mounting holes for the saddle brackets that secure the center section of the swaybar to the chassis of the car. This is that scope creep thing that Phil told me about.

 

Did that make sense? Here's the short version: we had to change the sway bar mount locations.

 

The simple way to do this was to drill through the box section of the chassis and use really long bolts to hold the sway bar in place. But with the new steering box, these bolts had to come in at something other than a nice right angle, which looked sloppy while also making removal and replacement of the bar itself a complicated process involving someone with a wrench leaning over the engine compartment and holding the bolt head while someone else with a wrench was under the car loosening the nut. We need this to be serviceable by one person, we need it to be simple, and we need it to be solid. We also need to not have bolt heads on the top of the frame member next to the radiator, because there will be some structural reinforcement anchored there later on.

 

Here goes:

 

A piece of flat steel, cut to length. Drilling pilot holes.

 

Enlarging holes...





Comparing new 'base plate' to saddle bracket.

The idea here is to have threaded studs (well, bolts) welded to the chassis such that we can slide the saddle brackets into place and then secure them with nuts. This is simpler to perform than threading bolts into captive nuts that are welded inside the frame (which is what the original design included) because we won't have to probe around in the dark. As much. Plus welding nuts into the inside of a steel box is magic well beyond our scope.



 

 

Flat steel gets bolts.

 

Bolt heads welded to steel, and we've added a 3rd hole in the middle.

 

Crap on the floor. We do this exercise a lot.

This next photo (I hope) makes the idea more clear: the two threaded holes toward the side of the chassis member (toward the right in the pic) are the original swaybar saddle bracket mounting holes. The larger holes below and to the left of those are for the new swaybar. The welded bolt heads fit up into these holes, which allows the steel plate to sit flush against the chassis. That hole on the left of the pic was already there and doesn't play a role.


You're looking up from below here. As am I.

Test fit.

Second plate for the other side.

Lousy blurry photo. Lousy blurry welding.

 

I really enjoy welding, though I'm no expert. I can weld things together such that they're really strong, but they're never pretty. And every time I weld, I learn something new. With this project, I learned that lying on your back under a shower of welding sparks probably looks sexy and macho at first but those elements are likely offset by the horizontal thrash dance performed when the shower of sparks melts your polar fleece shirt into your delicate skin all over your torso. A thousand points of light have become a thousand little scorch marks. Which is probably pretty macho but I could really do without it.

And there we are. Now the swaybar is held in place with hardware larger and more robust than original and it's easily removed and installed by one person working alone.

[Largely irrelevant and long winded extensive deliberation related to the future of this build begins here. If you're not interested in my overthinking, ignore the following and just tune in next time.]

One of the absurdly frustrating recurrent themes with this whole endeavor has been "overthinking everything and worrying a lot about every last detail." A good example of this was the process of selecting front springs. It took a couple weeks of asking questions, screwing around Googling, using math [shudder] and finally making a best guess on what to put in the car. And as far as I can tell, that worked out well. Many other aspects of the project are dictated by the rules, which makes those decisions much simpler. Wheel size. Which transmission to use. Cage design. Stuff like that.

The thing that we (Jim Perry and I) are now struggling with is the engine. There are as many variables in an engine as there are in the whole rest of the car, and an engine for LCP isn't really suitable for typical racing, so we aren't really looking at something that can later be used in his race car. For example: we'll run on pump gas, so we can't run a high compression ratio nor a crazy cam profile. Of course, the engine has to be as reliable as we can make it and it has to be fast enough that we're competitive. And then there's cost. We're now thinking about how much custom rods and forged pistons cost and trying to balance that with how reliable we think an engine with stock rods and cast pistons would be.

A big consideration here is, of course, cost. We're not wealthy, so we're not able to simply toss several thousand dollars into something that's only useful for two weeks in the next year. And though it sounds fun to consider LCP as an annual event, that's not part of the plan either.

We know people who have spared no expense and didn't finish the race, and we know people who have run engines that are built with standard 'off the shelf' parts and run the event several times without a failure and without a rebuild. We've been told it's the most demanding race on Earth, and we've been told that it isn't really a race but more of a high speed tour.

The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that we need something that can run at redline for extended periods of time. I guess what we're trying to sort out is whether we can justify the cost of a full blown race engine that's tuned for this event and won't be of much use after that, or if it makes more sense to build something less exotic and to bring a spare or two. Three simple engines cost less than one super duper engine. And we have three simple engines on hand. Tough call.

Engaging Gauges and Instrumental Instrumentation.

Just when you were breathing a sigh of relief about how I'd probably wandered off into the ethers and would no longer be pestering you with this LCP 444 'Pretending To Build a Race Car' blog thing, here we are again. Your gluttony for punishment nicely meshes with my narcissism. Symbiosis.

I haven't written anything for longer than usual, because I've been 1) really busy with other things that have to do with making an income; and 2) driving the 444 every time I can think of a reason to drive anyplace. Yep: it's a running, driving, noisy, smelly heap of awesome good fun. And though it handles much better than I'd expected, there are limits to the tires' adhesion. I found that sweet spot earlier today.

One real benefit to using pretty average tires among the so called 'performance radial' selection (the 444 currently rocks a set of Falken Ziex 205 60 15s) is that there's a fair bit of area between "total traction" and "no traction." So you can take a corner with some panache, and you can feel the adhesion decrease, and you can adjust the car's attitude. With more throttle, you can push the car further away from "total traction" and drift the corner; with less, you can bring the rear end back in line. When you upgrade to really sticky performance tires, that range becomes much narrower. So instead of easing on and off the throttle to swing the rear end of the car further out or bring it back in line, it becomes really easy to suddenly transition from being in control of the car to not being in control at all.

I'm perfectly happy to have the tires be my limiting factor. For now.

And now that the 444 is getting use, I can start finding out what needs further attention. For example: the bracket I'd welded together to mount the torque rods atop the differential wasn't robust enough, and it started to bend, which allowed the rear axle to rotate such that the pinion (that's the forward pointy thing that connects to the driveline) nosed  upward a bit. This isn't such a big deal (as long as you notice before whatever bad thing that might happen actually does happen), so that whole bracket thing came out of the car and has now been substantially reinforced. After the most severe and percussive testing my tired old B18 can muster, it's no longer bending. I think this one will work for now, and I'm thinking on ways to make a stronger version.

Note: if you take a car all apart and then put it back together, it's probably a good idea to crawl all over the thing and around and under it every time you come home after a drive. Even if you just go down the street and back. You're looking for things that are leaking, things that are loose, things that are missing, and things that are damaged. This is really important. This is, precisely, why we aren't planning on racing the car until next year.

And use Loctite. The blue stuff. Lots of it.

To my delight, the torque rod bracket had started to bend before Chris welded the panhard bracket onto the axle (see previous issue). The bracket bent, the axle rotated about ten degrees, and while I wasn't thinking about that detail, I had Chris work his magic. Being a sensible 'measure twice cut once' kind of guy, he'd asked several times along the way if everything was the way I wanted it, and I kept saying 'yes' (while thinking 'quit talking and weld the damned thing already'). And now that the pinion angle has been corrected, the panhard bracket is - you guessed it - about 10 degrees off. The panhard bracket will never again depart the axle, so the panhard rod itself is now slated for modification. Thankfully, it's just a matter of cutting and welding the thing, and this is the perfect time to make it into an adjustable panhard. I don't think I'll ever need to adjust it, but adjustable panhard rods are exotic and add street cred.

Pretty soon, it'll be time to set caster and camber. I kept all the shims when I took the crossmember out of the donor car - and I kept them separate left to right but not front to back - so I'm not certain that they all went back where they'd come from. Actually, it'd be silly to presume that any of them are where they used to be. And after lowering the front suspension more than 3 inches it's probably kind of a non issue. Really, camber and caster should be dialed in before you go driving around a bunch, but I did check them and they're within acceptable parameters. 'Acceptable' is a pretty broad term in my garage right now. Left side camber is 2.5 degrees, right side is 2 degrees. I don't remember what the caster numbers are. They didn't bother me enough to stay in my thoughts.

The 444 had been sequestered inside the garage since last August. I finally had a chance to park it outside, stand back and have a look at it.



Neil, owner of Sidedraught City, offered to loan his fender roller.

Now that the car is good enough to drive around, I'll be displaying it in the 52nd annual ipd Garage Sale and Show this coming Saturday - May 16th. If you're a Volvo dork enthusiast like I am (and you're anywhere reasonably close to Portland, Oregon), this event is not to be missed.

I stopped by my friend Marc's house (he provided the steering box for the car) to have a look at one of his Volvos that wasn't behaving. While I was there, I mentioned having passed up a couple sets of 142GT gauges and that I'd wished I'd bought them... the first set was priced at around $200, and that seemed steep enough that I kept looking. The next set was even less affordable (unless $650 sounds like a bargain to you). I didn't need the whole set, but I really want to have a 130mph speedometer and an 8000rpm tach; and if you're going to have those, there really isn't anything cooler than period VDO instruments that have the word VOLVO printed on their faces.

[I'm not asserting that the car will attain 130mph. But I want the speedometer to accommodate more than what the car will likely produce. We certainly will need an 8000rpm tach, though.]

Marc dug around in the back of his shop and produced a box that had these tasty treats:

I took them home and got out my own box, which contained a bunch of things like this:

The speedometer worked, but the odometer didn't (nor did the tripmeter). So apart it came. The bezel that holds the lens is crimped onto the housing, so there's really no choice but to remove the delicate chromed bezel if you want to dump out the pieces that are inside, which is - of course - exactly what I wanted to do. A really small dental pick thing is preferable to hammer and chisel things.


About 100 laps with this, and the crimp opens enough to slide off the housing.

... once the bezel is off, two screws on the opposite end of the housing release the guts from the case. And after you remove a few more screws, everything comes all apart all over the place. It's nerve wrackingly cool. All you really have to do is pay close attention, not lose any of the teeny little bits, think about how things work, and figure out what isn't working. Then figure out how to make the broken thing be not broken while keeping in mind that you have no access to replacement parts. I love this stuff.

Altering the mileage reading on a motor vehicle is a felony. FELONY.

After getting the odometers to work again, lubing the moving parts and cleaning the lens, everything went back together. Here's a lovely picture of the speedometer after a slow and careful reassembly. In the lower right corner of the photo is the needle which I forgot about and that should be placed inside the gauge before the lens and bezel are, as shown, in place.

It came apart and went together again after this.

 Next: figure out how to mount the 'new' speedometer in place of the old. Tinsnips allow us to enlarge the hole in the middle of the 444 instrument panel. I experimented on the one that someone had already completely ruined painted black:

... then we fit the new gauge to the old panel:

This is a test. I really dislike that black panel.

Having the new speedometer smaller than the original has a genuine benefit: my brain works in mph, which is what the gauge displays. But the LCP is run in kilometers. The circular area surrounding the new gauge will nicely accommodate a second set of numbers, which will allow the driver to check his or her speed in the archaic American mph style OR the Metric System, which everyone else in the whole world has been using for decades. Except Europe, where it's been in place for over a century... not including France, where it's been in use for more like two centuries.

... but the odometer won't read in kilometers. That's part of why we have the Terratrip I mentioned in an earlier episode. Last time, I talked about mounting the probes behind the brake rotors up front. Since then , I've wondered if they were close enough to the studs, or aligned properly, or even still in there at all. Today I found out.

I'd tried fitting the Terratrip to the dash, then thought about losing the glove box (that'd give me a nice big flat panel for lots of neat things!) and putting it there, but finally decided that I like the glove box too much and that I should just get the mounting bracket:

Way better than what I can do with angle aluminum.

They fit together like they were made for each other. Because they are. Wiring the thing up is really simple. Much simpler than installing a stereo.

There are 18 available slots. We're using 5 of them.

The bracket can be mounted with hardware if you like; or you can use the included suction cups to stick it onto the windshield. For those of us lucky smart enough to have cars with metal dashboards, it's even more versatile. This is helpful, as I can point it toward the driver for now, and the codriver later on. I don't think the suction cups will be suitable for a permanent install but for testing and calibration, they're pretty sweet.

Once it's wired, you press the power button, select "Calibration" from the menu, then follow the instructions displayed on the screen. All you really have to do is drive a precisely measured distance, then push "enter," and then tell the thing how far - in miles or kilometers, whichever you're using - you just drove. Pretty slick.

To calibrate the thing, I drove around in our newer boring car (with its digital instruments, which ought to be pretty accurate) until I'd gone a precisely indicated 2 miles. Then I drove the same route with the Terratrip. It calibrates based on inputs from both wheel sensors (I'd wondered about this) and in regular use, the human can tell it which sensor to use. I'm not sure why the human cares, unless one of the sensors should fail.

Racing (which this car hasn't even done yet) is an effective way of turning money into noise, and so far this project has been funded entirely by selling off my spare parts and wrenching on other people's old Volvos in my spare time. As far as the parts go, I've been hoarding stuff for a long time because "it'll be worth money someday." And someday has arrived. I've still got a lot of rusty crap highly collectible spare parts to sell, but probably not enough to cover all of the costs.

Getting sponsorships is not often easy. You're basically asking for money in exchange for promoting someone's business; and they have to believe that your effort(s) will be worthy, that you have a chance of winning, and that the exposure you can provide will actually be of value to them. Not everyone thinks that their logo on a car speeding through Mexico fits the bill. To gain a sponsor is to gain a vote of confidence. It's flattering and inspiring all at once. It also kind of means that you really better do it and you'd better make a good show of it.

That said: I'd like to take a moment to thank ipd and Sidedraught City for sponsoring this effort. Each of these companies is well known and well respected and I'm very grateful to receive their generous support.

Check 'em out and tell them I sent you. Racing gear and accessories; and the very best car care products:

http://www.sidedraughtcity.com/

The Volvo experts:

http://www.ipdusa.com/

Next big ticket item: gonna strip the interior and get a cage in the thing.

'til then. Rubber side down.

Cheers --