Things have been rather quiet on the Volvo (and other car) fronts lately but on wednesday this week i accepted my mates offer of help and trundled off to his place armed with the front pipes, front box, gearbox mount and propshaft centre bearing. I also took along one of my "Poly-Zaust" back boxes i rescued from my custom-built system i had on the Sterling for a while. Oh yeah, took a few other bits too but more of those later!
Anyway, some (not so) pretty pictures for you all to look at!
Some of you may remember me cursing ATS for catching the exhaust system on their ramp while trying to back it off after doing the tracking and not having the ramp completely on the ground. This is the result :
No wonder i couldn't find the blow!
Here's the new one, almost ready to go on :
Spot the difference :
Amputated the heatshield brackets and use heat wrap instead. Two reasons, one it's an absolute pig to feed into place with the heatshields and brackets on and two, the heatshields weren't coming off the original!
While the downpipes were off, i started it up, just to know what it sounded like - lurvely!
Anyway, front pipes fitted, front box was next :
Just bolts in, nothing exciting to tell about that really!
Fired it up to check for leaks and found one - where the over axle pipe joins the middle box!
To get the O/A pipe off to clean it up and re-seal it, the back box had to come off. While it was off, i discovered it rattled and lots of rusty soot (or should that be sooty rust?) was falling out. As such it would be rude not to fit the Poly-Zaust back box!
Re-purposed one of the service sleeve-joints to connect it and the Volvos own back box mounting strap to mount it. Reckon it does the job nicely :
https://youtu.be/WIXdqf1GHaU
After that, the propshaft centre bearing - caught in the nick of time as it kept going solid and spinning in its rubber mount!
Noticed the gearbox extension housing shaft seal and bush was FUBAR so those bits have been ordered for more sub-UAV play!
In other news.............. had a good poke around under the bonnet and found a suitable place to hide the LPG reducer and ECU, the tank is currently sitting in the spare wheel well held in place by the OE spare wheel strap (not legal for use but stops it going anywhere!) and waiting on a few other bits and pieces for the LPG conversion.
While generally groveling about underneath, found a couple of small places that need the "electric glue gun" treatment before the next MoT - nothing scary or untoward and all fairly common places for the animal in question.
On the fuel consumption, i did brim the tank about a month ago. Ran out yesterday with a slightly scary 232 miles on the trip meter. That means on 13 gallons it's done about 18mpg.
Pretty grim until you consider that 99% of my running is short runs at the moment, cold starts and not really getting above 30mph. That makes the LPG conversion even more urgent!
Joking aside it should be a bit better now the exhaust no longer resembles a colander, the car is certainly livelier and quieter! Also when i give it some beans, particularly uphill in a narrow street, that V6 growl comes nicely through that back box!
