Return trip to Sweden, summer 2012 and today

I have to admit that I had no particular reason for stopping blogging, but it's never too late to continue the story.

The return trip from Manchester via Hull-Rotterdam and Kiel-Göteborg went smoothly, the only minor concern was that the new engine kept on running slightly hot and I was cautious because I had no wish to ruin a brand new B20E. Speeds were therefore reasonable on the motorway through Holland and Germany, and I remember that we had lots of rain during the trip on the continent.

I made the journey together with my son Petter (15 in 2011), and as we were heading for my summerhouse in western Sweden we decided to take the ferry from Kiel to Gothenburg.

During the trip I also had ample time to make a list in my head of issues that needed further attention. Lots of small details following the work done in Manchester were discovered, such as the use of non stainless screw for the exterior chrome, serious leaks of rainwater into the car (still not entirely fixed as of May 2013), the tendency of the engine to overheat and so on. But overall the car was doing fine, and we arrived without any incidents at all to destination where the 1800ES stayed during the following winter.

I used the car quite intensively during the summer of 2012, doing several return trips to the Bergen region for work purposes. The main problem during this quite wet summer was the leaking cabin, and a full restoration of the heater package with a full set of new gaskets did not at all solve the issue. I now suspect that the new windshield gasket fitted in Manchester must have been poorly sealed, and this point still remains on my list.

 

My failing speedometer and ailing tacho were both dismantled spring 2012 and sent to a Swedish workshop named Instrument JIGE, and have both worked fine after a full repair. I also managed to get my clock to work, replacing the clockwork with a similar one taken from another old Volvo. It runs, although with at least 30 minutes lag per 24 hours but that does not matter at all. Both front seats were fitted with new foam and leather trim purchased at VP Autoparts. I am pretty pleased with the quality of the restored seats.

 

This season I will most likely drive the car less than last year, simply because I have other things planned for parts of the summer. I have just finished ruling out the overheating issues after lots of trials and errors. My first suspect was the hydraulic fan clutch, because the overheating was mainly occurring at standstill or while driving slowly in town areas. These clutches are difficult to find and quite expensive. I purchased a second hand clutch in 2012, and it seemed to improve the cooling although the engine still ran quite hot when at idle.

 

I therefore decided to do a modification of my cooling system, based on hours of reading various Volvo forums. I purchased a 12" Spal Electric fan, which fits nicely on the back of the cooler. After testing an in-hose temperature sensor (lower cooler hose), I finally replaced this with a probe which sits directly in the radiator cells. This probe reacts much quicker to a temperature increase than the hose sensor, and it seems that this has done the trick. The beauty of this modification is that it can very easily be replaced with the original setup, as I have kept all the old parts. Will post some pictures of this later.