OUR CARS – TORRENS
GLENN TORRENS GIVES HIS VOLVO SOME MUCH NEEDED ATTENTION
VOLVO KOFFENSPLUTTER REMEDIES
REGULAR READERS will hopefully reca ll reading about t he blokes road trip that Morley and I undertook in my new-to-me Volvo 262C chop-top t wo-door a few issues ago: Newcastle to Melbourne across the Snow y Mountains. It was a terrif ic few days – but despite my best attempts at recommissioning and ser v icing t he car af ter eight years of no use, t he trek wasn’t as trouble-free as I’d hoped, wit h t he car failing to proceed t wo mornings in Melbourne.
Around a month before our road trip, t he Volvo had arrived at my house on a tilt-tray. Ramped to t he road, t he car was dif f icult to sta rt and had a fa rt y, erratic idle. I’d heard it r unning smoothly when I’d agreed to buy it – but t hat was si x months earlier so any fresh f uel t he prev ious owner Stuart had put in it to get it running back then would be stale by now… And mixed wit h f uel t hat had been in
“THE VOLVO RAN SMOOTHLY WHEN I’D AGREED TO BUY IT, BUT THE FUEL WOULD BE STALE BY NOW”
t he car for up to eight years ! Yuk!
First, I drained around 30 litres of old f uel – anyone who has worked around old cars or law nmowers etc k nows t hat old petrol has a distinctive and horrible smell – leav ing me with a problem… What to do with 30 litres of sta le petrol? My answer was to gradually feed it through my Toyota Hilu x over a few weeks !
After fresh fuel was added to the Volvo, the noisy fuel pump resulted in me dropping the fuel tank from the car to replace the in-tank fuel pump – one of the Volvo’s two electric pumps. Take a look at the pics to see
“FRESH COOLANT IS IMPORTANT FOR AN ALL-ALLOY ENGINE SUCH AS THE VOLVO’S”
why I reckon my decision was the correct one.
I changed the engine oil and filters – as you do with any classic car that has been dormant for a while – and fitted new spark plugs. This result? A frustrating but regular and constant misfire. I’d not properly re-installed one of the spark plug leads down the long, skinny spark plug wells on the inboard side of the Volvo’s driver’s side cylinder head.
With that fixed, I changed the coolant – not essential for getting the car going, but obviously an important maintenance requirement for an all-alloy engine such as the Volvo’s – and had four new tyres fitted before I got it registered on NSW H-plates.
I did f ive or si x hundred trouble–free k ilometres prior to leav ing for Melbourne where, as mentioned, t he car failed to sta rt t wice. Was it t he f uel pumps – or a relay somewhere? Who knows? The car has never let me down since !
Ahh… The joys of classic car ownership!