Volvo P1800ES...kinda

In reply to MichaelYount :

Very much a concern. For all the desire to have PS, the steering feel once moving is sublime.

Pete

I would have expected that.  It took the OEM's a good decade to get the programming nailed down to where the system has decent feel/responsiveness.  When people start moving boosters/cpu's around, about all that can be done is some level of boost adjustment via a 'knob'.....but that doesn't do a thing for feel.  Good luck with it.

New rear diff ratio time. The 3.73 was a bit rowdy on the hwy at 75 mph/2800 rpm. While my gut tells me a 3.08 would have been the ideal choice for a relaxed cruiser, I am going to try a 3.31 cause it was sitting on the shelf.  Pulling the pumpkin has to be one of the easier jobs on the car; it was on the ground in less than half an hour. Only need to pull the one axle. 

So, even though I have a brand new Holley Street Avenger on the bench, the Fitech might yet get a reprieve.

In an effort to make the car quieter. I replaced the cats with real-car mufflers. Not only did it make the car much quieter, but it also made it run better. Too early to tell because it is winter and the gap between the shop and the road is impassable until spring, but it might be that one of the cats was clogged based on the color being much darker on the one side than the other. 

So with the gear swap and the noise abatement, that is two of the big items off the winter "To-Do" list.

Pete

You mean you didn't tear around the neighborhood with open exhaust at least once before hanging mufflers and such on it? 

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

The previous exhaust pretty much gave you that experience. There is a 30' stretch of grass beteen my shop and the pavement that is pretty much impassable in the winter. So, between that and the salt on the roads, I managed to restrain myself.

Pete

The Molvo is up in the air getting more love in anticipation of next driving season. The goal is to get closer to the cruiser vision that I started witn

The new grill is in place. I love this mesh, but it is made to be bombproof and that makes it hard to work with.

In the back, I found a piece of carpet that I will cut to fit and have the edges bound. The rubber mat was nice, but it did have an aroma that I did not like. The side panels will get hit with Rit black dye to see if they come back to black,

Still need to finish weld the mufflers in place then drop the whole thing and give it a coat of paint, These mufflers now reside under the car and supplement the minimalist items that are in place at the rear.

Pete

Looks good!

Love that mesh on the grill.  Might have to borrow that...

Those exhaust tips seem like they stick out kindof a lot.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

They do and I am not a huge fan, but if under the car the noise level is much worse inside. And I cant see them while driving!

I might try some downturns in the future. No lack of things that I want to make "better"

And the beat goes on...

Dynamat night last night. Rear deck, inner roof and under  front carpet. Now that the inner roof panel is done, I can move on with a headliner. I did do a "Before" Db test but it was kinda late to do an "After" so will have to get back with that. Panels certainly do sound muted when I rap on them.  Rear deck will get a felt layer under the carpet.

Its weird how this plays out in my mind. I knew this had to be done, and the $$$ has always been available, but the freaking Dynomat is so expensive that I put it off way beyond when it should have happened. Hence more work for me!

In other news, this made it out of the house where I have been hiding it as a way to give the Fitech ONE more chance. Holley 670 Street Avenger.

I want to think that now that I can read  datalogs for the Fitech, (and start to make sense of what they say), it can maybe be tamed. I do really like having the engine parameter readouts from the handheld so will hate to lose those. However, a voice in my head is telling me that I will never be happy taking a long trip with the fitech. Its fickle nature would weight on me every single mile of the trip and if it did fail, it would be automatic game over for a roadside repair. The other voice says you have $2k into the damn thing and you should learn to love it before tossing it in  the trashcan.

The cargo area is finished up. Did a layer of waffled memory foam over the Dynamat and then I had a piece of carpet edge bound to finish off the space. 

I used a fabric dye to restore the faded side panels and it worked quite well. 

covid got yur tongue?

759NRNG said:

covid got yur tongue?

Kinda.

Shoved the Molvo out of the shop and into the front garage. Rule is "No Non Mobile cars" in the front garage, so I have left the Fitech on until I can do it in the shop. That said, the Volvo 740 engine swap is ongoing in the shop, so it might be a few weeks before that happens.

But while we are here...How berkeleyed up is the Fitech world? Well, last time I took the Molvo for a drive, it sucked. It did not want to stay lit at any kind of intersection and pretty much cut out when the tach needle hit 1000 rpm. It would restart and idle just fine, just would not return to idle.

So, took the car out for a drive around the hood yesterday cause it was warm and I needed to shuffle the fleet. Still cut out at intersections. So, for no good reason, I kicked the idle target AFR from 14.0 to 13.9. Problem solved. For how long? Who knows. I have a suspicion that the Fitech is  sensitive to ambient temperature and might require a custom tune to suit the weather each time you drive it. Great attribute for an EFI system.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Fitech doesn't have an Intake Air Temp sensor? If so is it working correctly? By design, a properly working EFI system should never be sensitive to ambient air temperature or pressure.

In reply to Ian F :

It does monitor intake air temp. What I had been finding is that the times when I drove the car and did not hate it, the ambient temp was warm. If ambient temps were near freezing, the car ran horrible on the same tune. One of the Fitech complaints is that the car never runs the same twice. Fitech has moments of brilliance that make me want it to work, then it barely gets me back home the next time you drive it and the car gets parked. To say that Mrs Nohome is not impressed would be a huge understatement. The conversion to manual gearbox was a nuisance but she was aapting, the last car that left Mrs Nohome on the side of the road got scrapped and replaced with a new car.

Pete

Exactly my experience with megasquirt. 

Carb should be finished today. 

So with time on my hands I was ruminating about, not the build of the car, but the development phase where you have to go back and make things right that either were a wrong design choice, or faulty parts or just bad luck. This all made for one impressive and expensive scrap pile.

This was me at the start of the project.

You know what they say  "One step forward and half a step back" Reality is that a lof of the steps back were full steps or more. Presenting the scrap pile that most people like to pretend did not happen.

BBS wheels.One of the fist things I bought for the car so I cold sort the ride height and stance. Never could get them under the wheel wells. Mini rims were a good save. Wish I had never sold these as they were beautiful rims.

We'll skip the first year where I thought I was going to graft Miata suspension modules into the Volvo tub. That was a giant step back....Once I figured out there would not be much Volvo left under the car, I figured to stuff an entire Miata under the Volvo shell. Key proof of concept Miata #1 and actual tub used #2. All in, 4 Miatae donated to the finished project.

In order to move the fuel tank and have a flat cargo floor, I bought a Tanks Inc tank. The only way I could see to fuel it was from the bottom. That was a lot of fun. This brought all kind of problems with venting during filling, so I tossed it on the scrap pile and bought an almost identical tank with the spout and vent in the top

ff

I think there were 4 sets of headers bought in the hopes that one would fit. Ended up using the first set after some hammer work. Not these.

The AOD was professionally rebuilt and failed $pectacularly. The replacement T5 was brilliant for two laps of the block before it blowed up the current one works, but should probably be rebuilt by more than the spare parts we had laying about at the time.

Engine bay was painted in anticipation of a first drive bet I had with Mrs NOHOME. The paint never cured, but instead of stripping and repainting at the time I put the engine in anyway to try and win the bet. Did not win bet

Another lapse of judgement on my part. Bought the extreme coil overs not realizing they would be too short. Paid dearly for that education. Ended up using a set of Bilsteins that I bought from a board member early on in the project ( speak up if it was you) with Monster Miata springs up front and front springs on the rear.

Spent a lot of time getting the exhaust figured out.  Have since reworked it to try and fix fitech and lower noise level. By the time I got it reworked for noise abatement the only part left was the downpipes and two feel along the gearbox.  Cats , X pipe and Flowmasters to the scrapheap

3.73 rear gear was not cutting it on the higwhay as far as the relaxed cruiser I wanted. Enter 3.31

The Fitech needs no intro. A good idea that falls on its sword during execution. I am sure it is all my fault as says Fitech, but it is going in the bin. I have secured the services of a trained carb tech to install the Holley 670

This rad is famous in my shop as the "Whore Rad" It has been in about 4 projects so far and worked great. But the inlet and outlet are reversed, and that made it impossible to get hoses for the Molvo. The 4 cars have gone, but the rad is still in the shop, not going on the scrap pile.

This is the wiper motor and actuator for the remote wipers. A great idea and after some heroicc wiring, the wipers worked fine until the transition point failed. The execution of the device is just too cheap and will require that I build my own drive unit using a Miata wiper motor.

This is $200 worth of the best high build primer that you can buy. So I was told.  I stirred it for over half an hour and it was thick enough to hold the stir stick in this position for as long as I left it there. I saw no way this was going to exit any spray gun that I owned, and it got sent to the toxic waste dump. Back to featherfill.

Still more work to do like the AC and some interior work but the car is coming along and becoming more the result I wanted. If I knew then what I know now!

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Carry on. It will be a fantastic beast when it's done. 

I reread all your paint Pages the other day. I'm in for a lot of trouble

I was seriously struggling yesterday, trying to curve a small patch panel in several planes to the point I was starting to do fast, sloppy work. Just one of those berkeley it moments.

Even though I have followed this build from the beginning, it is still a gut check to look at a brief recap of how many times you scrapped a so so plan to build it right. I remember when you scrapped the first Miata chassis, I was dumbfounded. Anyway, lots of hard decisions you've been through to get to this level.

As this guy I admire says "Perfection is the enemy of progress"

In reply to java230 :

Not sure why you would say you are in trouble. You seem to be doing quite well on the IH .If you berkeley up, just roll over and berkeley down.

In reply to joe with an L:  No such thing as CANT when you HAFTA. If you look at it from an educational point of view, and all I learned, this was a pretty cheap education. The only sour note is the Fitech; I really wanted that to work as advertised and I probably should have tossed it withing the first few months.

In reply to NOHOME :

Just way more work than I feel like right now I think. Hence I want to epoxy and take a break. I'm thinking this is gonna be half a Molvo level of finish. Driver that isn't perfect sounds good. 

In reply to java230 :

It is a safe place to stop. No downside and the option is to continue up a very long path that has no place to $stop and rest until you are done.

If you fall in love with the truck, you can either just keep driving it in epoxy or you can take the time to scuff,block  and paint; the epoxy will wait.

In reply to NOHOME :

Thanks. That's the plan, epoxy and drive a bit. 

Found this forgotten image of the early days. Gonna park it here so I dont lose it again