Old cars definitely have got soul.....

So I arrived as scheduled to Manchester yesterday morning, and after checking in at my hotel I went straight to Classicarco to see the car for the first time after painting.

As the pictures show, the Volvo looks just as it should. Very nice, and the gold metallic looks just so much better than the brownish gunk that covered it before. However, I was already informed that Classicarco had experienced a lot of problems setting up the Bosch D-Jetronic injection after installing the new fuel pump I had brought from Holland. During the process which was still ongoing when I arrived, it showed out that the injection system already had been tampered with in the past, possibly due to a weakening pump, so when installing the new pump the pressure went wrong and a failed pressure regulator was not able to adjust for the change.

In addition, sediments in the tank had for some reason chosen the moment to release into the fuel system and managed to clog up the new filter installed, and the result was simply chaos. At one moment everything worked just fine, then suddenly the engine would show clear symptoms of either overfuelling or starvation.

When things worked just fine after a few hours of adjustments, discussions and testing, I went together with Gary for a test drive. Most of the trip went just as it should, but some hesitation symptoms, rare at first, the more frequent were not reassuring. I also noticed that the engine was getting hotter than it had used to be before .

Back at the workshop after the test drive, the engine got suddenly hot with the gauge going into the red zone, and we shut it off. "Serious underfuelling, thus overheating" was the theory.

We checked further, and we found. Clogged filter and serious amounts of shit in the fuel lines leading towards the filter. The tank was emptied, the pump and filter went off and we opened the tank for visual inspection. It showed to be in very good condition, although some visible sediments were there, and the tank was flushed until it looked clean inside.

Because the new pump was different from the original pump (NLA since several years), Gary had made a new panel in front of the tank housing both the filter and the pump. A new filter was purchased, but now the pump itself was suddenly behaving strangely. After hours of testing, the fault was found to be in the no-return valve which came with the pump. The valve had a tendancy to get stuck, and after releasing it with a screwdriver or compressed air it would go stuck again after a while. We decided to drill out the valve as it has no real function on this setup. Finally we could reassemble the fuel injection system, start up and test.

And everything seemed just perfect...... until we again noticed that the engine got really hot, and quickly this time. After checking and discussing, the termostat was taken out and found to be faulty. A new one was purchased, checked and installed - no improvement. Next theory was that the water pump had gone bad. We took it off, but found no signs whatsoever why it should malfunction. After a lot more checking, we reassembled the water pump again, checking thoroughly for all kind of possible airtraps in the cooling system, only to find out that the engine was still overheating, only faster this time.

The conclusion after all this was that only a blown head gasket could possibly cause this kind of rapid overheating, and we decided to take off the cylinderhead and inspect further.

While taking off the head, we noticed two things, 1) The bolts seemed to need little torque to come loose 2) The (very thin) gasket had clear signs of leakage around cylinders 3 and 4.

At the moment, new gaskets and various stuff have been ordered, and should arrive latest on Monday. It may still be possible to get the car ready for departure next Wednesday, but in case new issues should arrive the car will have to stay in Manchester until Easter, which could be the next possible occasion to pick it up.

Strange thing, I am not disappointed at all, because I had expected and planned for all kind of problems. However, I am a bit surprised that the engine which has been working flawlessly since I bought the car in 2006 suddenly beomes the hellraiser. However, a B20E with its pretty high compression ratio and somewhat sophisticated fuel injection system could always cause some concerns of this kind after having been tampered with.

I feel a bit sad for the guys at Classicarco though, because they are not at all pleased with this happening. They have done a great job on the car so far, and when working with a 38 year old lady with quite some soul left even after chirurgical removal of several kgs of rust + a complete new and shiny makeup, one should not be surprised that such things might happen....