Your childhood dream car

sodderboy said:

That volvo is totally suck-ass. 

Mike

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Hey, it's my dream.

I have a '95 Volvo 940 wagon, 4 cyl, plain, slow, boring soccer-mom car.
People try to pass me, not because I'm going slow....but  because it's an old wagon.
But I wouldn't dare alter this car. It's the last year they made those engines that keep on ticking.
But I dream it can kick ass.
Wanna race ?

=FB=

Most volvos are great cars...too bad the same can't be said about most American cars these days.

Sorry to pee on your dream.  I WAS talking about the 960.  The 940 is, uh, much cooler!  I guess someone has to love it.
You mention a reality.  I never had people pass me or tailgate as aggressively as when I was in that 960.  It was not my speed, but the car.  It really made people angry.
The only positive was racking a kayak on a roof lower than my pecks.  Hardly compensation for a $300 front aerodynaamic cowling replacement after going over a high curb.
Mike

Hmmmm... '95 Volvo 940, -eh?

Here's a 95 940 which my wife and I owned almost from new, and finally sold -To another lab member- (I won't say who!) only last month...

It has almost 200,000 miles on it, and it's still ticking along very nicely. -Of course it has a low-power engine, and it weighs a lot, so it won't set any records, but it has many happy memories: -We brought our newborn son home from the hospital in it, for example.

When the new owner drove it home, we took a photo of it as it pulled out of the driveway.




Here's the engine (not bad for 200,000 miles, I'd say!):



The 960 was a different beast, and rather more troublesome. They used a 6-cylinder all-alloy motor, with a super-thin 'nikasil' coating on the cylinder bores, -a system which Porsche pioneered in the 928 and 944 cars. -Since there are NO steel sleeves in the cylinders, the piston basically just scrapes against the nikasil. -If that wears down (it really is human-hair thickness!) then it's new engine time.

The Volvo 940 motor was a completely different thing. Old-school, Detroit-style cast-iron block. Bullet-proof. -Not a fuel-sipper, but will go on forever. -Non-interference 8-valve 'prehistoric' technology, but half-million-mile engine longevity is not uncommon. -Fully galvanised and not a single tiny hint of body-rust ANYWHERE. -The only place you'll even see surface rust is beneath the battery... but that happens on ANY steel car; -galvanised or not.

The 900-series volvos won't set anything alight performance-wise. The rear-wheel drive on a heavy car is 'interesting' on slippery surfaces. Fully laden up a steep hill, you'll probably wish you had something more mighty... But they are like the energizer bunny. -They keep going, and going, and going...  ...and going...

I think I'm heading north in the next month or so, to spend a few days with the car again... -My wife and I retained "visisting rights"!!! (yes, -we're very silly!)

Keith

sodderboy said:

the car made people angry.

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:

Keith some BMW e32 740s had the nikasil block replaced for a alumasil?  I read it was higher sulfur gas content that could cause the wear issues.

The car I like now is my 92 735il

Well, there were also porous block issues beyond the nikasil wear... And parts for Volvos are quite costly, but the 940 was a good old workhorse... -The last of the rear-wheel-drive lineage. -Nowadays everything is FWD with the exception of the all-wheel-drive vehicles.... -now THOSE are great in the snow... -but then those Scandinavians know a thing or three about driving in the snow & ice!

Keith

I'll buy this and travel back to my childhood while reading.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=270300926251

Ptownkid said:

sodderboy said:

the car made people angry.

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:

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Funny, kid, but it is absolutely true.  I do not get looks or the finger or "swerve-arounds" or "up-trunks" in a Subaru or Exploder.  There was something about a white 960 wagon that was like Uncle Buck's hat- it just made people angry and they expressed it.


and no "W '04" or "END GLOBAL WARMING- GROUND AL GORE"S JET" bumber stickers on any of my cars either.
Mike

> The Volvo 940 motor was a completely different thing. Old-school, Detroit-style cast-iron block.

Old school??

My girlfriend's P1800 had the B18 engine. This IS a 1932 Chevy Six, cut-down, made overseas, with very funny carbs. Even ran a Chevy-like generator.

They run and run. There's one at work 3 days a week (he may be a 3-day professor).

Yours (it will always be yours even if living with someone else today) seems to have a overhead cam! And spark-wires coming out of what should be the rocker-cover (but has a cam-stick inside). And where are the carbs?? Is that a plastic dipstick?? I won't mention the plumbers-nightmare, because all cars had that phase, and Volvo's is less nightmareish than most.

> super-thin 'nikasil' coating on the cylinder bores, -a system which Porsche pioneered

Can you spell V-e-g-a ? Exactly the same bad idea, and even the same process-name.

The in-warranty wear on most engines IS human-hair deep. You'd think a human-hair thick hard-coat would protect a soft-alloy block. But they use the technique invented by Inca gold-smiths to divert gold: mix the good stuff with a base metal like copper, burn the base metal off the surface, leaving the good stuff. Aluminum will hold a lot of hard Silicon. They etch the soft alloy off the bore and harden the Silicon. Works great on the test-stand. Fails in the real world.

The Vega had "a few" other problems too. But if you got a less-bad one while young, great little car.

Pontiac used this body with their "Iron Duke" Four. It is actually a Pontiac design, but clearly in the same "school" as the Chevy Six.

Three generations of Chevy Six: Stove-bolt, '37, and '63 which ran to 1979 in US cars and to 1993 in Brasil. My father had a '31/'32, met our '79, and exclaimed "They moved the distributor!" There's more; a '29 mechanic would wonder why a '79 needed SO many bearings; but it was a very stable engine over 65 years.

In the US, we yawned, but in Brasil they raced it: (click to see rust)


The Volvo B18 is in the same school. Your 940 is post-post-post-graduate, and post-grads are pretty useless. (We water-boarded a new PhD today. He's a sharp kid and we'll print a sheepskin, but he's quite unemployable. Should have put his 9 years into BMW A/C repair training.)

PRR said:

In the US, we yawned, but in Brasil they raced it: (click to see rust)

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Looks like the GM Holden 6 cylinder motors that came in red/blue and black variants from around 1963 to the mid eighties. Side cam with push rods and overhead valves.....

The Holden Grey is apparently a Buick. There's a US 1937 Buick up the street here, I bet if I took a picture you'd say "Holden Grey!" The dents in the rocker cover are distinctive.

I knew it was not a Stovebolt Chevy because I see the oil-pump. The first Chevy Six had no oil-pump, just dippers to splash the oil (not uncommon in that era, though more suited to side-valves than overhead rockers). Around 1937 the Chevy got a pump, but not that monster I see. Someone may have thought the Chevy Six was good-enuff for the US but not for long rough service down under. Also, when the Grey came south, Buick was betting on large V-8s to finish-off Ford's Mercury (nearly did), and may have been glad to unload a good but "undersized" engine to a more rational market.

I ramble. The timing of the Holden Red (1963-~~1980) sure seems like the 3g Chevy Six. It is remotely possible it is the 2g from 1937, a fine engine, but hard to believe that Australians would put-up with a fairly elderly design that long. It seems to have a killer reputation into the 1970s, which can't only be due to the crappy 170-200 Six that Ford was spewing in that period.

Then again, GMC had an excellent Six in this period, obviously from the same drafting-board as the Chevy (there were several Brands and each "designed their own engines", but in fact the same few guys moved from division to division as new engine designs were alloted.)


"If we could turn back time, to a place where women would be impressed with gold-painted air cleaners and Holden Red Engines..."

From memory the grey motors Holden used were 138 Cubic Inch. The red motors came in many sizes - 149/161/179/186 and 202 cubes. Blue and blacks were all 202 (or 3.3L) from memory..... nevertheless I haven't heard of 2g and 3g but I'm no expert either.

PRR said:

but hard to believe that Australians would put-up with a fairly elderly design that long. It seems to have a killer reputation into the 1970s, which can't only be due to the crappy 170-200 Six that Ford was spewing in that period.

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They did until the VL Holden Commodore launched in 1986 and used a Nissan RB30 engine. Next model (VN) used a 3.8L V6 motor that was largely (if not all) based on a buick design

IIRC (for Ford at least) the OHV technology reached the inline 6 before the V8 which was flathead until 53-54.

A childhood fried of mine with rather odd sense of style took to hot rodding a OHV 6, while v-8s were available and delivered more scoot for less work. His ultimate I6 creation was making a custom intake manifold to mount 3x1 barrels. Some would say why bother, and in his case it was clearly too much intake area for his (stock) cam and displacement.  But it did make a wonderful throaty sound when he opened it up.

He used to blow transmissions like people change their shorts. I was several years younger and used to stay up late at night fetching wrenches and helping him with the all too often rebuild and replace. I recall one night where he blew his rebuilt transmission on the test ride.  I guess those 3x1s did make some torque and the 53 station wagon he had it in didn't spin the tires much, just broke metal. 

As another example of his obscure taste, he later put an Edsel front end on a V-8 ranchero, but that was another why bother moment... 

I learned from watching my friend and made a point of using a later model station wagon rear end, and even found an obscure all synchro 3 speed  tranny which had gears similar in size (strength) to the t-10 4 speed for my ride.  Technically I never blew a transmission while I did break the boss on a cast iron side cover of one standard 3-speed (the 1 to 2 shift on those those old 3 speeds was bear due to mass of first-reverse slider). I even broke one Hurst shift lever and they were guarenteed for life. I did crack a synchro ring in my all sync 3-speed. That sucked since the parts were 6 weeks special order through ford parts. I ended up using some old Lincoln lasalle synchro rings that almost fit. Only problem was the synchro buttons would cock up due to centrifugal force any time I took it over 100 mph in 3rd gear (like every day).  It was a top cover tranny so eventually I just cut a hole in my floorboards so I could pop them back in without having to pull the heavy tranny. Driving home in 3rd gear was a drag.

It's funny today to look back at those days. As my daily driver now is a 4 cam DOHC, fuel injected v-8, with 5 speed tranny, and posi rear...  I couldn't even have dreamed of this car when I was a kid and now it's like yawn...

JR

PS: while my record for not blowing transmissions is still intact, I was not so lucky with just about everything else... Those old Y blocks were never designed to turn 7 grand.. the high RPM shifts were also a bear on clutch linkage since the pressure plate had centrifugal assist that made for heavy clutch pedal at speed. Name it I probably broke one..

As a child this was it, only we thought we would be flying around in the skies like the Jetson's in stuff that looked like this.




As an adult child this is it,

Hmmm.

Audi GT Quattro, Lancia Delta Integrale, Golf GTI MK1 and maybe the Renault 5 GT Turbo.

My dad got a Golf GTI MK2 when I was 15 or so which was nice, but he's now picked up a Golf VR6 Highline which is awesome to drive. Power all the way through the rev range unlike the GTI which you had to shift down for acceleration (ok, I know some of you have Porsches, but this thing is good fun).

Roddy do you mean a Renault 5 gt turbo or a Renault 5 Turbo 2 with the massive arches & the rear mounted engine.  A mate of mine had a Turbo 2 & that was a beast, massively quick for a 1.4 litre !!

rodabod said:

Audi GT Quattro,

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Awesome.

rodabod said:

Lancia Delta Integrale

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Awesome.

rodabod said:

Golf GTI MK1

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Awesome.

rodabod said:

Renault 5 GT Turbo.

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Widowmaker.

Keith

NewYorkDave said:

Raceway Park! Nitro-burning funny cars! Man, the memories from the '70s are flooding back. I never actually went to Englishtown, but I used to love the TV commercials with the crazy "chipmunk" voice.

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LOL! I'm from Manalapan, which is right up the street* from Raceway Park's Old Bridge location (it's actually not in Englishtown). My dad told me that when in high school (the 60s) he and his buddy took his Opel to RWP and blew it up on the dragstrip.

Of course as the area got more developed, more homes were built closer and closer to RWP, and of course the new yuppies who moved in there complained about the noise. I mean, how could they NOT know there was a racetrack there?

-a

* The "street," of course, is the "Highway Nine," mentioned in Bruce's "Born To Run."

kato said:

I guess I was drawn to good-looking pieces of crap, cuz I liked Triumphs and MGs, too.
Wait, I didn't read the thread title carefully - these are nightmare cars. 

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When I was a kid, a neighbor had an MG Midget and a friend of my father had a Triumph (TR-6, I think). I thought those cars were very cool, although I do recall the owners of both cars spending their weekends working on, and cursing at, the cars.

But life is too short to spend repairing cars. So in real life, I drive a '91 Saab 900.

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Indeed ... I drive a 2005 Honda S2000. All of the fun and practicality (hah!) of the English roadsters, double the horsepower and 2^55 the reliability and handling.

-a