congrats on the baby!
I cant wait until my Volvo gets the fuck out of my life!!! it’ll be sometime this week! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Thanks guys. She’s adorable…I told my wife I was in love with another woman.
As far as the car goes…things are happening. I’ll update again when I have the :snky: in hand.
Just racecar things…
Because I needed to do strut/shock mounts as well as spring seats anyway, (a drive through the demilitarized zone known as Lockport just about took out the RF) I bought these. They’re Bilstein HDs complete with IPD springs with roughly 15k on them and seeing as I had plans to do some suspension mods, it made sense. It may not be exactly what I wanted, but I could not pass up the deal. Just waiting on new shock mounts and hardware, then these will be on the car.
I’ve had to travel back and forth to Albany due to an up coming career change. I thought the brick could do it. I was sorely mistaken. On the way out to Cohoes, the low coolant light came on with eight miles left to my hotel. Turns out the cheap ass new cap I bought for the degas bottle, is just that - cheap. I topped it off and it’s been fine since, not so for the rest of the car.
Close to the end of my four hour ride back home from Cohoes, I’m blasting down 531 at 80. Sick of being on the road at this point. I-90 sucks in case anyone was wondering. I’m yelling at the frost heaves pretty much the whole way like, “Stop blowing holes in my ship!”
Anyway, I’m just about to the exit of the 531 and I look down and notice that my steering wheel is cocked just a bit more to the left than normal…I make a mad dash for the light, catch the first one, then didn’t slow down much for the second one as I’m making the left on to 31. It bobbled, the steering went waaay loose, the front tires howled in protest as the front end washed out and I managed to get it stopped on the side of the road. I got out and was greeted with this…
Called AAA and waited for a tow truck and a ride to show up. AAA only covered the first five miles. I was on the hook (pun intended) for the remainder to get it to where I work. I thought it was done for at this point. It turned out that it was a broken strut bolt and nothing else. I put on a couple of used strut bolts and nuts to get me by and ordered all new hardware (strut bolts/nuts, top nuts, shock mounts/hardware, and new bump stops). One of the techs I work with gave me a hand with installing the new suspension at his home shop. After about four hours, (and one broken shock bolt due to me being a bit over zealous with the impact) it was done. We had to lower it down on some wood blocks to get it off the lift. This is how it ended up…
This is what the lower strut bolt looked like that came out of the right side…
I’m pretty sure these aren’t supposed to stretch like that.
sorry to hear of your troubles…but I still love this car…
Wow, yeah that did stretch quite a bit!
Thanks Joe. I’m attempting to keep everything copasetic.
i had front suspension problems on my Volvo.
im glad that car is someone elses problem now 
I have nothing to offer accept that I am a glutton for punishment…
now get off my lawn :biggrin:
DAMN! At least you got it to the side safely.
Off-Topic - The funny part of this picture… you’re 4 driveways from my dad’s house! (The one with the huge Blue truck in the driveway). I know 531 and this stretch of road VERY well.
May I ask what brings you to my hometown area of ALB? Good to hear the car is back in order. That could have ended badly!
hahaha!
the front springs were broken when I got it. so a friend pulled some decent looking ones from the yard and replaced them. then they broke again! so I bought h&r springs for it because they were cheaper than OEM. it gave the car this terrible raked look - the front was dumped and the rear somehow sat higher than stock? then I think those broke too.
then I gave it to a fellow nyspeeder and made it his problem :tup:
Looking back on it now, about 60 miles from home I heard something bounce under the car…after something was ejected from the inside of the left front wheel. I can only assume that is the point the bolt broke. I had been doing 90mph following a Mustang in the fast lane after that for a time. Yeah…this could’ve ended a whole hell of a lot worse.
Oh, a whole gamut of testing and whatnot for NYSDOCCS. I’m currently going through the whole process to start my career as CO. I’m heading back out to Albany this weekend for my psych evaluation. I will not be driving the Brick this time. I still have a few things to sort out, but I’ve at least got it to the point where the whole front end won’t drop out…
This seems to have become quite the common sight around my house - a pile of parts sitting on the car …
Time for a tune-up and couple of other odds and ends. It got left outside on Sat. the 12th while I was in Albany for my psych test. When I got back, I moved it inside and it was fine. Went out to start it to leave for work on Mon and had a hell of a miss-fire. A dead hole on a five pot makes it feel like the car is going to shake itself to pieces. It was fine once it warmed up, but I knew a set of wires and a cap & rotor were over due.
I’m wondering how this pos even ran at all, much less as well as it did. The wires were as dry as a popcorn fart and I’m surprised they didn’t crumble in my hands when I took them off (there was a date code of 05 97 on a couple of them). A piece of vacuum hose for boost reference did though. I touched it and it basically vaporized. Needless to say, I got back a few horsepowers that had gone missing over the years.
Talk about Modules of Elasticity
From Wiki - Young’s modulus ( E ) describes tensile elasticity, or the tendency of an object to deform along an axis when opposing forces are applied along that axis; it is defined as the ratio of tensile stress to tensile strain. It is often referred to simply as the elastic modulus.
?
Got another update for you, @91MR2
Because I love hemorrhaging money, I decided to get the timing belt done and throw on some MSBS I had laying around the garage (degas bottle, cap, hoses, drive belt and tensioner)
And this is why I should’ve probably done this a year ago…
Even though it had been done at 63K, it’s been eight years, so it was out on time.
Funny that this just got bumped, I just saw a real clean white example of these tonight and it made me think of this thread.
Ha, good work man! I love this thread!
There’s a couple of B-Lo guys on Swedespeed, it very well could’ve been one of them…
:tup: