Chris1Roll's return to 700 ownership

[Chris1Roll]

We made it to Rustival!!


(this old man with thinning greying hair persuaded my daughter to take a selfie with him lol (after asking her how to do it ))

Rustival was a new car show organised by youtubers 'Furious Driving' 'I drive a classic' and 'hubnut' (the last of which I hadn't come across before, but I've been watching furious driving for a few years) and hosted at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon.

When I saw it advertised again in early Feb, I thought it looked like it could be quite fun, but was uhmming and ahhing about it as the car had just started making that clacking noise.
Emily persuaded me in an ironic 'will you take me to mount splashmore?' kind of way -
'Dad, I want to go the the rustival, I want to got the the rustival...' In the end I said sod it, it'll be fine and booked the tickets. Great value at £17 for the two of us including entry to the British Motor Museum.

It was very well organised, our group were told to arrive 'from 10am' we got there at 10:08 having left at 7:30, and there was no queuing at all, some very experienced marshalls directed us and we were parked up in a matter of minutes. My brother also came all the way from Fishguard in West Wales, 4-1/2 hours, so he arrived about 1pm in his S80 (that used to be mine)

It was an anything goes show, pre war to modern. I'd say there was 15-20% modern (to me, anything from 2001 on) out of the around 1000 cars there, so easily 800 what I would call 'retro' or classics there. We started at the back, and worked our way along each row stopping at anything that caught our eye. For me, I was attracted by a lot of what me and my mates had as teenagers - Mk2 Cavalier, Peugeot 205 gti, Citroen BX's, Volvo 480 (all volvos of course!) and I also have a serious wish to own some pre-80's american metal - there was a gorgeous Plymouth Fury there driven by a very young couple (20's I guess, fair play!) that I took a load of pictures of.
It took us until about 2pm ish to get round everything in the car park before we even touched the museum. There really was something for everyone and plenty for us!

The car ran faultlessly, and it seems to have fixed itself! No sign of the clacking exhaust manifold so I'm minded to leave those studs well alone for a bit longer.
And my word, was it better on the motorway on the new tyres! I don't think the old ones were actually round...
Up the M5 to 11a, then across the cotswolds to get there, then after the show we visited my sister who lives about half an hour away (on some utterly awful condition roads, I ended up straddling the white lines when it was clear and slowing to a crawl when not in order to avoid the worst of the ruts and potholes) for a pub tea before leaving there about 9pm and getting home at 11:25, with pretty much bang on 250 miles done.
A long day but well worth it, and Emily says she really enjoyed it, which is great as I was worried she might have got bored being a car nerd with me.

Got talking to a nice guy from a club called 'Nordik Rides', asked us to go to a meet up in Derbeyshire at the end of April. Seriously considering it, I might well get persuaded

Obligatory Volvo Content. There were a few 740 estates, but aside from 'furious driving's' E reg, mine was the only 740 saloon there.
I think I've lost a few volvo pics between my phone and here, but enough to give you a taste.

Nordik Rides convoy:


480 with no rust on the rear arches:






I covet this blue 144!





I think this is only the second Volvo 66 I've seen in real life:



Had a lazy morning today and watched a few walkarounds from various people on youtube. One guy said he ddin't think there was much there to look at, but I guess he came to the wrong kind of show?
Thoroughly recommended from us, anywhow.

After a trip to see Mum this afternoon I gave the car a quick swoosh over to remove 250 miles of salt.

[Chris1Roll]

Musik

I had been using a bluetooth cassette adapter to connect to my phone, but it wasn't the best solution. The sound quality was only ever going to be OK at best, I kept forgetting to charge it, and the tape deck is a little bit flaky - I have to eject and re-insert the tape a few times until it travels in the correct direction, and every so often would lose one channel and I'd have to stick my fingers in the slot to wiggle the cassette about to bring it back.
On our road trip Emily and I didn't get a single 'Hey man' on the first verse of suffragette city. This could not stand!

Since I want to keep the original radio as long as possible (and the blaupunkt ones that look in keeping are rather expensive) I'd been musing about whether it was poosible to inject a signal into the amp or headunit somehow.

Turns out, of course, that someone on turbobricks had already done it:
https://turbobricks.com/index.php?th...-input.261070/

A post by bugjam1999 over on the 200 section spurred me into sorting it. A nice little project for a couple of evenings this week.

Since I don't really do much soldering, I elected to get an 8 Pin din extension cable and cut the female end off to solder the 3.5mm switching jack onto, then I could only mess up one end.
Once I saw how small the jack was, after peering at it over the top of my glasses for a while I then went back on Amazon and bought one of those helping hand things with a magnifying glass on it. (actually, I bought a cheap kit with a soldering iron in it too, as I used my last one to make a smoke tester when the XC was playing up..)

Figuring it all out:


Starting to solder:



Not too bad...


Getting the radio out this evening wasn't too bad, then I just had to remove the jumper plug for the equaliser port:


Before plugging the end of my cable in. If I had looked at the back of the radio before I started, I wouldn't have bought a cable with a 90degree plug, but thats what the one on the turbobricks thread used. There is clearance, but it made getting the radio back in a bit tricky as it caught on the slight lip at the back of the housing.


It was also important to me, to not permanently dmage the interior, so putting the port in an easily replaceable switch blank was the natural solution. My phone is mounted to the bottom right of the windscreen so a short 3.5mm cable can reach it easily.


Of course, for some ungodly reason phones don't come with headphone jacks any more, so I had to buy another adapter.

Result: I've done soldering that works!
When listening to the radio, on inserting the 3.5mm plug, the radio cuts out, and the phone audio takes over.
The headphone output from the phone at full volume seems to be on a par with the line level from the radio, as the volume doesn't change and can be controlled just the same using the volume knob on the headunit.
Crystal clear stereo audio.
Remove the plug, and the radio returns.

Total cost of materials was about £20 including the USB-C to headphone adapter and the extension cord.

[Laird Scooby]

Excellent work Chris!

In the past, i've used BT-FM transmitter modules where you link the phone BlueTooth to the module and the module then transmits on a frequency you chose. These were pretty successful until i bought a stereo with BT built in and then it kind of avalanched when i bought my CR-V last year and the OEM head unit was DOA.

Ended up buying a flat-screen touch-screen thing with a nice surround made for the car and GPS built in, also has BT connectivity Android Auto so displays the sat-nag from my phone on the 9" screen. It does other things from my phone as well but haven't worked those out yet!

Now bought a 7" version for my Jag to replace the OEM unit (that still works but has no screen/sat-nag built in) and i have built that into a dead used head unit using the casing to make the new touchscreen factory. It'll mean i won't have to put up with a single DIN head unit held in place with foam packing in a (slightly under) 2-DIN hole!

I appreciate none of this would look right in an older Volvo 7/9xx (might get away with it in the last 960/first V90) but it wouldn't look wildly out of place. As such it might give someone other ideas.

[Chris1Roll]

It's something to consider for my wifes V70XC when the stereo in that finally packs in.
It sounds utterly amazing, easily the best car stereo ever, but of late its getting a bit flaky. It's been displying the radio when listening to a CD, you turn to the radio and the TV comes up out of the dash, and earlier in the week it decided no display on the headunit at all was fine for a while

[Chris1Roll]

Managed to get the front brakes renovated between rain showers on Good Friday and the Saturday before Easter.
The front calipers were a little bit sticky so had intended to do this sooner rather than later. I hadn't rebuilt a caliper before, but how hard could it be?

I had been getting the parts together for a little while, and had had them all ready to go since early Jan, but the constant rain meant I didn't really get chance to get to it. As it was I dodged the showers as best I could - get a caliper off, it starts raining. Start stripping that one, it stops raining. Run out and get the other one off, it starts again, and so on. In the end I didn't lose too much time waiting around.

In my pile of parts was a set of Genuine Volvo pads, a set of Bosch 262mm non-hub discs, a caliper rebuild kit including pistons from bigg red.
A full set of 6 flexible hoses by Febi, and some Ceratec anti-squeal paste.

First off mix up some special sauce to give me the best chance of getting the unions undone without having to make up new hard lines.
I actually like making hard lines up, and making them look identical to the original, but didn't fancy doing it in the rain and getting everything full of moisture:


After much careful cleaning with a pick and small wire brush I squirted a load on and left it for half an hour.


Whether it was the special sauce, or the fact that being a proper Volvo the lines were made out of Cupro-Nickel rather than the plastic coated steel my brother is struggling with again on his S80, I'm not sure, but all 6 came undone with a minimum of fuss.


After wire brushing as much of the old brake dust etc off the calipers as I felt necessay, a combination of compressed air from a stirrup pump, and grabbing them with molegrips got the old pistons out (I wouldn't have done the molegrips part had I intended to re-use them:


It looks as if someone had attempted to lubricate them with some kind of silvery grease (graphite?) which had subsequently hardened, which would account for the slight reluctance for them to retract after application of the brakes.
Further, where it had ended up inside the caliper it had formed a sticky silvery goo that took ages to clean out, but after quite a while with a small brass brush, most of a can of brake cleaner and lots of blue towel I had the bores looking as clean as they were going to:



With all the other removable bits dismantled (getting the remains of the old piston boots out was the hardest as they are a very tight interference fit in the caliper) it was time to lay out the rebuild kit and put them back together again.

I used just clean brake fluid used to lubricate the seals. The new pistons from bigg red had a little chamfer on them to help with pushing them in, so they went on easily.
The best way I found to do the boots was to fit the boot to the piston, press the piston into the bore an inch or so, then press the boot into the recess in the caliper, which took quite a lot of thumb pressure and patience as it would pop out one side or the other.
Anyway, eventually they were all in place and I put all the other new rubber bits on with plenty of the silicone grease. I found a 22 (or was it 24) mm socket was perfect for pressing the silver retaining rings onto the lower slide pin boots, and the quarter drive extension good for pushing the upper boot through the caliper.


Caliper brackets all cleaned up:


(Note I'm not going for flashy pretty paint jobs here, standard and functional is the order of the day)

Seating face on the hub cleaned up, then new discs fitted, calipers refitted, new pads with new spring clips and anti-squeal, and finally all six new flexi hoses fitted:


I had assumed the rebuild kit came with bleed nipples. It did not, so I have got some that I will change at some point in the future.

Whilst I was waiting for my wife to come home from town so she could do the old up-down with me I replaced the anti-roll bar drop links with some Meyle items. I had bought the complete links as I had seen so manypeople just shear the top off when trying to undo them, but it seems I could have gotten way with just the bushes themselves as the ATF/Acetone mix worked a treat.
The old ones were a bit ropey:

Both located and tightened to 42mm between the washers:


Back to the brakes, my wife tells me we spent an hour and a quarter bleeding them.
First I found that the first in sequence kept producing air. What solved it in the end was abandoning that one, completing the rest of the sequence, the going round again. I can only surmise it was drawing air from the remainder of the triangle on that circuit, given the whole system was empty.
In the end, a litre and a half of Dot4+ went through the system fully flushing it.

They feel quite nice now after bedding them in.

[Laird Scooby]

Excellent work, results and write-up Sam!

Glad to hear the ATF/acetone mix did what it should, don't forget to shake it before each use as it has a tendency to separate.

[940volvoman]

It's good to see you back,Dave. I thought we had lost you to other forums.....

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by 940volvoman

It's good to see you back,Dave. I thought we had lost you to other forums.....

I still lurk occasionally Sean, spend more time on other forums as you suggest though.

[Chris1Roll]

Shiny!

Since I'll have had the car a year in a few days, I thought I would actually do what I had been threatening to do since I got it, and replace the faded, cracked, leaky rear lights.

There was a bit of nailbiting when it turned out that DHL had handed the package over to parcel farce once it was in the UK, having previously seen them kick stuff up the garden path, but all turned out OK.


Faded, cracked and leaky:


New, with extra chrome (it gets you home):

[Moomoo]

Sweet!😀👍