It may be 45 degrees and raining outside, but there are stirrings in the SCM garage. Last Saturday, SCM’s SEO guru Michael Cottam and his six-year-old son Benjamin joined me and five-year-old Bradley for a quick shakedown of our 1973 Volvo 1800ES and our 1972 BMW 2002tii.
The ES is on its way back to being a car after eight months in the shop for a complete engine rebuild, following the discovery of a cam that had gone flat. The final steps were getting the injection to behave itself; an erratic idle was identified by local Volvo expert Cameron Lovre as being due to a faulty brake booster. Even though the brake pedal felt fine, the booster had a leak in its seal, causing the idle to vary between 1,000 and 3,000 rpm.
Our list with the Volvo is now getting short with a few simple items — the squirters don’t squirt, and neither the heater diverter lever nor the heater temperature control seem to work (not a problem during the cold season, but we don’t want a constant stream of hot air in the summer) — and one troubling item: a crunch from the gearbox when you shift into reverse.
We installed a new clutch, pressure plate and throwout bearing sourced from Mike Dudek at iRoll motors. We’ve adjusted the clutch several times. Perhaps 10% of the time there is no crunch, 10% of the time a yucky crunch, and the rest of the time a small snick. It didn’t do this before, so I’m sure that Cameron will get it to stop doing it now – even if it means pulling the tranny.
The ES surprised me on Saturday. It pulled well (what a difference a fresh, balanced engine makes) and handled the twisty back roads with aplomb. It has front and rear IPD swaybars and new gas shocks. I also had our suspension experts of choice, The Line-Up Shop, level all four corners.
We still may be selling this car as a part of the “rationalization” of our collection, but the car is growing on me as we fix each little thing and make it into an SCM kind of ride.
This was the tii’s first real outing since we had the warm-up regulator rebuilt by Pacific Fuel Injection, and a final tune by Mike O’Hara’s BMW Service. What a difference! For the first time since we got the car (from long-time SCMer Ned Scudder), the car starts perfectly and idles properly.
Previous attempts to get the car to run right, with a faulty regulator, involved fussing with the injection settings to compensate for the bad valve. But now, it’s on the button and a delight. I was going to swap with Michael halfway though, giving him the Volvo in exchange for the tii, but he clenched the steering wheel and grinned through the window of the BMW with door locked and kept saying, “I can’t understand you.”
I got the message.
We haven’t had a chance to put many miles on the GTV since the mysterious stopping problems last September, but we’re 99% sure replacing the fuel pump solved the issue. We’ll find out soon enough and report back.
Who’s wants to volunteer to drive these cars with me on our next mini-road trip? After all, isn’t seat time what it’s all about?
