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Are those plugs in order? It seems like if two adjacent were dirty, and toher other pair clean, it could be one of the carbs. SUs are a finicky bitch to sync, even with the Unisyn tool. Anyone make a single SU setup for them?
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 04:26 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 03:45 |
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I still think something is haywire in the ignition or less likely uneven fuel delivery. 110 psi isn't terrible, and the compression is consistent across all cylinders. If there was a serious internal engine problem the compression would probably be much worse in the cylinders with the blackened plugs. Just because ignition wires are new doesn't mean they are good.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 04:29 |
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HOLD THE loving PHONE Shouldn't be posting from work, but this is newsworthy. I was lamenting my low compression to my boss, who is also a gearhead, and he was like "110 isn't bad? How high is the CR?" I said "It should be around 140 or something" and he replied with "oooOOOOHH you're from sea level!" and then laughed at me. From a quick google check, compression test results scale with atmospheric pressure. Nominal atmospheric is 12.3 PSI here. At sea level I'd be pushing around 130 per cylinder. Which is much less worse than I was thinking. But yeah, those plugs are in order, which is nutty. Anyway, this is like an emotional rollercoaster, but I'm on an upswing now. I'll emission test it Monday and see what's up. I'm tempted to rebuild the carbs first just because I have the parts and it should be easy, but on the other hand it runs and I would hate to drag this out by loving something up. If I can pass like it is, I should just do that, get it registered, and rebuild them later.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 15:09 |
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Yeah I'd just go for your free retest. If you pass, hooray! and you can take your time to rebuild the carbs.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 15:13 |
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Are the distributor internals all ok? Have you tried swapping the plugs around to see if the problem moves with them? The contacts for cylinders 2 & 3 are on opposite sides of the dizzy, I guess if the cap was ovalised you could be getting weak spark on two cylinders and not the other two, but I'm really clutching at straws here.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 20:44 |
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Can you not register it as antique or something? A lot of states let you register stuff older than 1970 in a special category and then you don't have to pass inspection...
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 21:48 |
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Sea level is always loving with your Volvo numbers (the dyno saga).
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 21:54 |
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Sockington posted:Sea level is always loving with your Volvo numbers (the dyno saga). Voting this as new AI subtext instead of "To me that's pretty unsavory Am I being overly sensitive?" because that makes no sense in an automotive kinda way.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 22:13 |
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wylker posted:Can you not register it as antique or something? A lot of states let you register stuff older than 1970 in a special category and then you don't have to pass inspection... It's only cause I live in a high pollution metro area. Here they force cars made between '59 and '81 to get smogged annually, and I don't appear to be in any exemption category, even if registered as collectible. It's a pretty loose criteria though. 2 different idle speeds, 5.5 ppm CO and 1000 ppm HC.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 22:22 |
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That thing is so loving nice. Good buy man. I've been on a kick to buy a (decidedly non-classic and ugly) 91 S-10 for similar reasons. That first "fun" car, from the teenage years, always seems to be the holy grail for us. That being said, chop the fucker up if it makes you happy. I can appreciate the original look and understand those that enjoy it, but I'm sure plenty in AI are like me and enjoy a well done custom. Personally I think that thing is begging for a full race treatment, cage, big sticky tires, discs, the works. Slap a faux number on the door and take it vintage racing.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 22:34 |
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VikingSkull posted:Slap a faux number on the door and take it vintage racing.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 23:22 |
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Even if it was rare enough I'd probably endorse it. I have a fuel altered as an avatar, lol. I'm not really a Pebble Beach kinda guy, but I can appreciate it.
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| # ? Jul 24, 2009 23:48 |
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I love the dual SU's. Not that I liked them much when I had them, but I still loved them. Anyway, my problems were worse, but those plugs look familiar. I can't even help.
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| # ? Jul 25, 2009 02:05 |
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Now that I'm excited about the car again, I did the wiper assembly tonight, it was cake. Here's the old one I removed. The previous owner disassembled it to this state while it was still in the car. Not sure why, exactly, he only had 2 screws left holding it in the car. Somehow I think he didn't know they were there. That or he didn't have the right screwdriver for getting in there.  And here's the new one. I guess some guy signed off on it at the scrap yard.  And a few minutes later, it's in.  These nuts weren't removed during the repaint. Pity, now there's a little ring around them where the new assembly is just slightly out of position from the old one. Yes, I tried to hold it on center when I tightened them, no go.  Okay, 3 wires, 3 tabs.  Let's check the trusty diagram. Okay, H goes to F... Wait. What the gently caress is H? Just kidding, there was a legend. H is red. D is green. B is of course, black.  Classy. I admit I polished the poo poo out of the trim ring with my shirt before I put it back together. The silver button is my starter button, I think I'll move it over by the key. Having it next to the choke is pretty dumb, as you sometimes need to work the choke while starting.  I then put the heater controls and ashtray and the factory radio back in. I spent a little too much time polishing my knobs on that too. I didn't wire it up though, I'll be doing a real stereo soon enough.  I love this look. And I'm so happy it's in this nice condition. I won't be hacking a hole in the dash for a new stereo, don't worry. Short term, I'll hang one underneath, long term I'm going to do a short throw stick so that I can build a center console into the car that keeps the curved sheetmetal look of the interior, but houses some gages and a stereo. I won't try to put speakers in the doors either, this car is a perfect candidate for some custom kick panels. There's plenty of room and I won't gently caress the car up.  And I almost forgot, the finishing touch!  And with that, my next project is to fix the driver's window. After that, brakes and suspension, and a deep cleaning. Oh, and I want to kill whoever put this carpet in. It looks nice, but they glued it down. The whole thing. It's all glued in, so I'll risk tearing it when I go to run any wires of any kind. I've already put a hole in it just from trying to loosen enough to stick that shifter boot in. I also inspected the interior a little more closely, and the previous owners did have parts of it patched as needed, the outside panels of the rear seatback aren't original, nor is the top. And the perimiters of the front seatbacks are newer material as well. It's all been very nicely done, you really can't tell unless you get right up on it and examine it. Edit: You gotta love a car whose entire wiring diagram fits legibly on an 8-1/2" x 5-1/2" page in the owner's manual. I think the transmission harness alone is more complicated than this on my late models. 
LloydDobler fucked around with this message at Jul 25, 2009 around 05:53 |
| # ? Jul 25, 2009 05:38 |
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Update time. Had a busy weekend, only worked on the car a little. On Saturday, I drove the car to lunch (gave my girl her first ride in it) and by the end of the drive it was running super rich again. I drove by the emissions place to see when they open, only to find out that they test on Saturday now, and I missed it by like 15 minutes. Sunday morning I went out and fixed the window, the lower window stop had become bent somehow, which allowed the window to go lower than it should, which allowed the little chain drive to come off the crank sprocket. I took it apart, re-greased everything, pounded some swages that had come loose over the years to make them tight again, and reassembled it. It all works great now. I woulda took pictures, but frankly there wasn't much to see, and it was a super greasy job. On to tonight. Because it was super rich and stinky again, I decided to stop waffling and just rebuild the carbs. I'm not going to fully document it, because there are about 100 different online tutorials for how to rebuild SU carbs, I'm just gonna show highlights, of what was wrong with my carbs specifically. IT BEGINS. I finally had a good enough reason to clear off this table/workbench in my garage. Note my trusty gas catching pan.  Shortly after it began, I jammed this tool about 1/8" under my thumbnail. It stings like a motherfucker. I then broke the rear carb's choke cable fitting.  Here's the float valve from the front carb. It's very shiny, but there's no groove I can feel with my thumbnail.  Now this is a pretty big problem. Not only does this cause the throttle plate to close poorly, it provides a huge vacuum leak. I'm sure this is a strong contributor to the problems. It also means I have to re-bush the housings.  Holy crap. This is not supposed to have any grooves or shoulders on it at all.  The rear carb's float valve. It DOES have a ridge in it. The rebuild should do me some good.  Here's a little before and after with some chemicals and elbow grease.  And some after/after. Don't worry, I'll figure out where all that poo poo goes. Eventually.  It looks so much simpler without carbs on it. Yes, I did check and make sure I had enough gaskets before tearing down.  Both carbs were about the same level of worn out. They had both been re-bushed before as well, but not the same size bushings as my kit, so I have to ream the re-bushed carb bodies and hope the bushings don't move as they get thinner. Wish me luck. I'm hoping I can do it at my work with just a reamer in a drill press with a good vise, but I'm prepared to take it to my machine shop buddy if necessary, to get it exactly right.
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| # ? Jul 28, 2009 06:14 |
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Heh looks like you found the problem! Also I have no idea why people think that carbs are easier than Electronic Fuel Injection.
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| # ? Jul 28, 2009 13:15 |
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LloydDobler posted:Shortly after it began, I jammed this tool about 1/8" under my thumbnail. It stings like a motherfucker. I then broke the rear carb's choke cable fitting. My face upon reading that:  Are you going to have them together in time to retest for free?
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| # ? Jul 28, 2009 14:00 |
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ab0z posted:Heh looks like you found the problem! ab0z posted:Also I have no idea why people think that carbs are easier than Electronic Fuel Injection. I think it's because even if it's running lovely, it'll still run. I mean, this car was sold as "runs great". Just because it always starts and runs doesn't mean it runs great. If a fuel injected car is running rich, there are several expensive parts that you might have to replace. Sure, replacing them solves the problem, but that costs more than turning a screw. It could also just be fear of the unknown. I vastly prefer fuel injection. IOwnCalculus posted:Are you going to have them together in time to retest for free? Possibly, my cutoff is thursday I think. Even if not, it's only $15. Not too bad.
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| # ? Jul 28, 2009 17:04 |
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LloydDobler posted:Possibly, my cutoff is thursday I think. Even if not, it's only $15. Not too bad. You say that now, but after so many goddamn retests in my 240, it gets pricey after a while 
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| # ? Jul 28, 2009 17:07 |
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IOwnCalculus posted:You say that now, but after so many goddamn retests in my 240, it gets pricey after a while Ouch. Yeah, carbs are simpler! I'll totally pass! Hehe. This update is entitled "Sewing. If it's on a car it's still manly, right?" I ordered a reamer today for the carbs, so those will wait till tomorrow. In the meantime, I have a couple split seams on my driver's seat cushion that need tending to. I stopped at a  And here is the se... Hey! WHO PUT THIS GOD drat PRINCESS poo poo HERE?!  As I was saying, here is the second problem area. I netflixed the very manly Fast and Furious, and watched it while I did my repair work, to enhance the manliness.  So I popped the 4 hog rings and pulled the stuffing out through this hole here:  The seat, all deflated.  Next, I turned it inside out, and since it's just the thread that disintegrated, I used the same seam, tied a big knot in the thread, and jammed it through. Now, I don't really know how to sew, so I just put it through one hole, put it back through another hole that's 2 down, then go back one and shove it through again, and just repeat that until I run out of either seam or thread.  Tada!  And on to the front corner seam. I actually did both front corners because even though the other side hadn't split yet, it was beginning to.  I've argued about using zip ties and been yelled at by people who insist on hog rings for proper upholstery repair, but they really do work drat good.  And fixed. It's not a full proper repair, I didn't put the reinforcing stitching back down the sides, but this will get me by until I can afford to redo the whole interior.  And the other joint. Again, not perfect, but better than it was.  And back in the car.  It's amazing how much the camera flash highlights the color mismatches. In normal light it's nowhere near that noticeable.  And that concludes the interior repair portion of our thread. I'll hit the carbs hard again tomorrow, with any luck I'll be running at stoichiometric air/fuel ratios tomorrow night. And F&F sucked hard.
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| # ? Jul 29, 2009 04:57 |
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Tidy work, sir! For an extremely masculine, testosterone-sweating manly man, you're pretty handy with a stitch!
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| # ? Jul 29, 2009 14:43 |
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Lloyd, you should have replace FaF with Christine. Good work as always. I'm going to update my Volvo thread soon with some alternator and fan Q's in a bit.
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| # ? Jul 29, 2009 15:33 |
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One of my earliest memories is my dad sitting on the couch, stitching a leather steering wheel cover onto the second-gen Camaro wheel that was getting put into the truck. I remember thinking it rather odd that he was sewing anything I'll need to do this to the Miata's seat covers eventually, they're pulling apart near the top of the seats. You make it look easy, maybe I'll give it a shot 
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| # ? Jul 29, 2009 15:33 |
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Generally speaking, it is easy. Go for it. If you're worried about ruining your own seats, grab one from a junkyard to figure out how it comes apart. Well, I got my reamer today, and reamed out the carb housings, and pressed the new bushings in. It went like clockwork, the bushings had a nice firm press into the housings, so no need for loctite. The bores are perfectly in line, and have a very nice fit on the throttle shafts.  New parts!  More new parts!  Oh god dammit. One of my jets in my brand new, unopened rebuild kit, is missing the rubber seal. It's a standard ID and OD so I believe a standard o-ring will probably suffice, but as always, another trip to the store with a delay. So there will be no starting tonight.  As complete as it can be for now...  And all put back together. I went ahead and dialed all the screws down according to the tuning instructions so as soon as I get that seal in and test it for leaks, it should start.  And holy poo poo, it's midnight! Time flies when you're scrubbing everything with a wire brush. I came right home and started on it, and didn't even eat dinner. Reassembly, start to finish took 5 loving hours! It definitely didn't feel like it. And it occurred to me today that this rebuild isn't only to get me by until I get a new motor. Once I'm done with them they will have hardly any miles on them, so they should be very sellable.
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| # ? Jul 30, 2009 06:31 |
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Nice work! I would get things done like this if my garage were attached to my place instead of 20 minutes across town.
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| # ? Jul 30, 2009 15:53 |
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This is me hitting refresh in anticipation of you getting the car on the road. 
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| # ? Jul 30, 2009 20:17 |
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This is me posting for ideas, because I'm god drat pissed off. I bought an o-ring which enabled me to put the carb together, so that's all good. I set the idle fast and the jets rich according to the instructions. The car started up and ran super rough. As it warmed up it smoothed out. I was just touching the throttles to bump the revs a little and see where I was. When I pulled the back carb it would rev nicely, when I pulled the front one it would sputter and backfire. I let it get all warmed up and it was idling super fast, so I backed that down, synced the flow, and then tried to adjust mixture. The instructions say that if you lift the carb piston and it speeds up (and holds speed), it's too rich, and if it sputters it's too lean. I can get the rear carb to set perfectly, the front one cannot be made rich enough to give me the same performance. Like I have the jet dialed down almost until the adjusting nut is falling off, and it still behaves lean all the time when I lift the piston. In addition to that, once it fully warmed up and I leaned out the rear carb, I could not adjust the idle down. Even with the screws backed all the way off of the throttles it was still idling at 1100 RPM. So here are my symptoms: Idle too fast Rear carb dials in Front carb always lean My gut is telling me to look for a large manifold leak that would feed only the front carb. I'm very confident that I re-assembled the carbs right, but I'm open to "oh duh" suggestions from anyone with experience on that. By the way, this is the exact same behavior that led me to rebuild the carbs in the first place, the inability to tune them, and the front was going lean before the rebuild as well. I just put my kid to bed so I'm gonna go out and inspect, but I thought I'd get this up before the night crew went to bed in case any of you had any bright ideas.
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 03:34 |
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Got a can of intake cleaner handy? Start the car, spray around the gasket areas of the intake manifold with it. The car will sputter and stumble if there is a gasket leak or crack.
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 03:59 |
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When in doubt blow the jets out. Old mechanic told me that, and a little bit of grainy crap will clog them. Retrace your steps?
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 04:14 |
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LloydDobler posted:Like I have the jet dialed down almost until the adjusting nut is falling off Stupid question, but when you say you have the jet "dialed down", is it penetrating deeper into the carb or being drawn out of the carb?
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 05:00 |
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Drawn out of the carb, which is down towards the ground. Okay, I definitely have some kind of fuel delivery problem on the front carb. I pulled the jet out and it was seeping fuel, and there's fuel in the throat of the carb, but it still behaves like it's running lean. I can't find any manifold leaks. But now, gas is intermittently gushing out the top of the float bowl, like the valve isn't shutting off or something. So either the float is not floating, or it's stuck, or it's too loose and hitting the side and intermittently loving with my fuel flow, I dunno. The last one seems most likely, because it is pretty floppy on its hinge, and my results are inconsistent, and the rest of the parts are brand spanking new. I'm too annoyed to figure it out tonight, so I'll take that crap apart tomorrow, and blow it out as gdogg suggested. The worst part is that I ran out of gloves but I really want to get to the bottom of this, so now my hands totally stink like gas. I hate that. Oh, and I have a clue as to the fast idle, I might have hosed up when I reamed for the bushings. I reamed the bore all the way through, but the bushings don't go in flush to the throttle plate, so there's a tiny path around the throttle plate at the shaft bore. You can see it in that pic above of the throttle plate. it might be nothing, but it might be the cause. If I get it mixed right but still idle too fast, I'll start there.
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 05:38 |
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Float valves were part of your rebuild kit, right?
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 09:03 |
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Blaster of Justice posted:Float valves were part of your rebuild kit, right? Yeah, but floats weren't. When I took it apart, the floats were mismatched, and the one in this carb appeared kind of worn out and flopping around, so I grabbed one out of the spare set the guy gave me, but it was a pretty bad fit on the pin as well. I might try to make the original one fit better (it had a metal hinge) and see if that makes any improvement. If not, I'm going to start doing other diagnostic crap like checking the cam lift and see if I have a flat lobe or something.
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| # ? Jul 31, 2009 16:16 |
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Welp, I hosed up. Got a little overzealous tightening down the fitting and basically the rubber seal had nowhere to go but into the space occupied by the fuel tube, and the fuel tube went into the space intended to be occupied by the fuel. Running lean you say? Jesus christ. I'm 38 years old, have enough patience to tolerate a 7 year old jumping on my junk at 7 AM on a saturday, and I still gently caress things up like this out of sheer zeal. I just didn't want it to leak. Anyway, I jammed an awl in the tube to round it back out, reassembled, reset everything to the "guaranteed to start" settings, it fired right up and ran very smooth. I spent about an hour tuning and it runs loving perfect. It does idle a teensy bit fast, but I can live with that. I love having the flowmeter, I was able to do a few extra steps and get them balanced perfectly both off the gas and on. I haven't set the choke yet, but I need to read up on exactly how, and I think I need to do it cold anyway. Celebrating with a drink, and if there's not a huge line I'll get it e-tested in the morning.
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| # ? Aug 1, 2009 04:42 |
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Yay!! Good luck with the e-test.
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| # ? Aug 1, 2009 05:42 |
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LloydDobler posted:Anyway, I jammed an awl in the tube to round it back out, reassembled, reset everything to the "guaranteed to start" settings, it fired right up and ran very smooth. I spent about an hour tuning and it runs loving perfect. It does idle a teensy bit fast, but I can live with that. I love having the flowmeter, I was able to do a few extra steps and get them balanced perfectly both off the gas and on. I haven't set the choke yet, but I need to read up on exactly how, and I think I need to do it cold anyway. wonderful news! Could all this tuning in and out of lean have hurt the plugs again?
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| # ? Aug 1, 2009 20:52 |
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kimbo305 posted:wonderful news! Could all this tuning in and out of lean have hurt the plugs again? Nah, I really didn't run it that long. I did fail the emission test again, but I know why. I should have driven it around and adjusted it more. Last night I never did anything but idle it, so it was warmed up but not hot. Once I took it out today, it thoroughly heat soaked and needed to be leaned out further. As soon as I got home I did the piston lift test, and sure enough - rich. I adjusted it leaner so it's really running right now. I'm not going to gently caress around with it anymore though, I'm going to a shop with an ehxaust gas analyzer and I'm going to set the drat thing up to guarantee me a pass (if my final tuning today doesn't already). If it's running lovely after that I'll just re-tune it so it runs right, rich or not. Then I gave my wagon some love tonight, don't want it to feel too left out and blow a head gasket or something for attention.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2009 03:36 |
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You have great threads, Lloyd. I love Volvos, even though my family had one from hell growing up. Don't ever let anyone tell you those 24x diesels are reliable, they are loving liars.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2009 17:50 |
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Wrar posted:You have great threads, Lloyd. I love Volvos, even though my family had one from hell growing up. Don't ever let anyone tell you those 24x diesels are reliable, they are loving liars. I'm intimately familiar: I did two diesel-to-gas conversions for my dad back in the 90's when he was starting his business. Take a straight body low mileage diesel with a blown motor and a gasser too wrecked to fix and just swap the drivetrain and fuel system. Those were super profitable. The weirdest thing was that I ran into one of them like 18 months later broken down at a gas station. I stopped to help, and the woman said I looked familiar. The car was a 240 wagon with an aftermarket power sunroof, which made it pretty much one-of-a-kind. So I was like "holy crap I'm the guy who put this engine in this car". The thing had been trouble-free and the only thing wrong with it that day was the park/neutral switch was failing and she couldn't start the car. Wiggling the shifter got her going.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2009 18:36 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 03:45 |
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Passed emissions today! Yay! I spent the last two days trying to find a shop with an exhaust gas analyzer to set me up. loving christ, one guy said he didn't know they made adjustable carburetors. I kind of went  over that one.I even called one Volvo shop that said yes, they have an exhaust analyzer, and no, they won't help me tune my car. Apparently everyone with an old beater Volvo expects them to do a miracle and get their car to pass emissions, so they've simply stopped working on anything older than a 240 series. I was really disappointed, as this is neither a beater nor needing a miracle. And I've been a good customer to them for the rare instances when I can't or don't want to do the work. I finally realized I was going to have to go out of marque for help, and started looking at British car shops, as the SU carbs are very british. The first Jag shop I called, the conversation went like this: "Hi I'm wondering if you guys are familiar with SU carbs" -"I only have 40 years or so experience tuning those" "Have you ever worked on 60's Volvos?" -"Did a full rebuild of a P1800 last week for one of my best customers. He's a Jag guy but also has this Volvo." "I just rebuilt my SUs and I failed emissions so I want to make sure they're right. Do you have an exhaust gas analyzer?" -"Sure, but you really don't need it. To pass emissions with SU carbs, just lean it out till it starts to miss, then richen it enough to make it smooth again. Then after the test, richen it up again so you don't burn your valves, and bring it in to me and I'll set it right with the exhaust analyzer." "Ah, see I was doing the piston lift test and thought I had it mixed right..." -"Nah, the piston test is worthless. Just do what I said." Dudeman knew his stuff. I would have just taken it to him this afternoon but he's semi retired and quits at 11:30 every day. So I set an appointment for tomorrow morning that I'd use if I failed again. I didn't. So I went ahead and paid for the 5 year registration on collector plates. I also found out that in Colorado it IS still the rule that on a car with collector plates, you only have to get it emission tested once for as long as you own the car. So unless they change the law, I'm done! They just don't list that on the website for some reason. I'm gonna take a break from working on this car for a few days. Maybe my next post will be about my awesome storage space.
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| # ? Aug 5, 2009 06:13 |
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