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After years of driving 240s, I bought my first vintage Volvo today.
It's a pretty nice 1966 122s!
I have a couple of questions off the bat. I'm sure I will have plenty more as I get familiar with this car.
First, is it possible to add seat belts to the rear seat?
The fuel gauge bounces all over the place. Any ideas what it might be?
Thanks as always!
--
Formerly 'HearToTemptYou'
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Congrats on the 122! For rear seatbelts in my wagon I'm using retractor belts from a super beetle. They are lap belts only, I may attempt to fabricate mounts for rear shoulder belts later. I have no idea where my front retractors came from, just that they fit well. I have seen the Beetle front retractors used in a 140 and they don't get in the way of back seat passengers too much.
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Lee 75 244 (80k original miles) 79 242 65 220 project
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Your gas gauge problem sounds like one of two possibilities. First, as others have mentioned, is a bad connection to the sending unit. The other is that the sending unit is on the way out. The usual failure mode for these, after many hundreds of thousands of miles of sloshing up and down, the metal finger mounted on the end of the float arm has worn through the spiral of resistance wire that is connected to the gauge. Either will cause the gauge to "act like a VU meter" with no particular pattern to the spikes. Sometimes, if the sender is failing, it will work more or less normally for the first half of the tank, and then act up when it starts to get low.
Note also that as others have mentioned, it is normal for the gauge to move around a good bit when it is working properly. There is no damping in the gauge needle, so it responds rapidly to any change in fuel level (as in sloshing from side to side when cornering or braking) Car manufactrers deemed this constant motion distracting, and on newer cars used various measures to eliminate it so that the needle remains more or less steady.
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Nice car! Looks like the other guys have pretty well answered the questions.
Enjoy it in good health!
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George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!
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If you just want to add lap belts, there are nuts welded to the floor beneath the bottom of the rear seat. I salvaged two sets of the center rear seat belts out of a 140 or 240 series.
Check the wire going to the top of the fuel sender for adequate connection to the stud on the fuel tank sender, and for corrosion.
Water gets under the mat in the trunk and pools in the recess that the sender is fastened to, result is corrosion.
Also check that the metal top of the sender shows continuity to ground, grounding is through the fuel tank to the body; bad ground equals dancing needle.
Lastly check the black wire on the back of the fuel gauge to see if it's tight. I wouldn't suspect the red wires, since a loose nut on the red wires would mean your wipers and blower would be cutting out too.
If all your connections check out perfect then it's time for a new sender.
Congratulations on your purchase!
Bill
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Hi Dylan,
Welcome ! As a fairly new owner of a '66 122s, I've probably gone through some of your learning curve already !
Lap belts are worse than useless in terms of safety. First thing I did was to fit rear belts. I had to add both the lower fittings for my 3 point belts, the only one that is there from the factory is the top one, its hidden behind the headliner adjacent to the rear window. If you gently press in the general area, you will find 2 threaded fixings each side. Not sure why there is 2 of them, but bear in mind that Volvo were pioneers in the fitting of seatbelts, probably had a few attempts at deciding what was best....
I retapped one hole and secured the reel directly. Other 2 fixings were drilled in the appropriate locations, backed by 40mm spreader plates and secured with grade 8 bolts. One of these days when I have some time I'll relocate the reels in the boot and thread the belt up through the rear parcel shelf, (using the slots already there). I also put in intertia reel belts in the front, sacrificing usability for originality since it does get used everyday.
Done a few other simple upgrades like, start button, renewed seat webbing, headliight upgrade etc.
Brickboard and my local Volvo forum are endless sources of help and assistance !!!
Hope this helps !
Cheers
Gerry
(scotland)
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It's possible to mount the belts to a '66 - there are mounting points on the rear parcel shelf (providing it hasn't been hacked for speakers). The lower attaching point has to be added.
The fuel gauge bounces around like a lunatic. Let me qualify that statement. It will not go from 1/4 to full in it's wanderings (unless it's on the way out), but it will move around in a corner or when you hit a bump in the road.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that uses this particular "feature" to check to see if I've really got fuel. Never seen the bottom of the tank, but do slosh it around to check if there is fuel.
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Well, maybe I should have been a little more exact. My fuel gauge does jump from empty to full like it's insane.
It looks like VU meters on an audio mixing board, if that means anything to you.
Were rear belts offered as a dealer option? I'm surprised they don't at least have lap belts back there.
The car is (surprisingly) original. Even the AM radio and speaker is original (and it works!). The back shelf looks untouched.
--
Formerly 'HearToTemptYou'
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My '66 has original lap belts for the rear. I think by '66 lap belts were required in the US. As others have posted, there are the mounting points for rear shoulder belts, so I suspect maybe they were required in Europe. I used to have a link to a European site that had pretty good instructions on how to put rear shoulder belts in, but can't seem to find it right now.... I'll keep looking.
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My 66' came with no lap belts, just mounting points under the rear seat for them. Actually, my 64' wagon had the mounting points too. There are four nuts welded to the floor, in addition to the mounting points in the rear roof pillars.
From the arrangement of the holes I suspect the car was designed to have a pair of shoulder-only belts, and a single lap belt in the center.
I was under the impression that the two holes under the carpet on the rear package shelf were for an optional defroster/defogger.
Bill
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So do you have the rear belts as shoulder only? I think there is a 'slot' in the rear deck that a belt could go through and the reel could be in the trunk, but I don't think there is a mounting point there. I wonder if the front style belts would work the same way you've mounted yours, but provide the added security of the lap portion..
I'll second the endorsement of the Skandix front belts- a huge improvement over the 'lobster claw' (my significant other referred to them as 'staple guns') originals in terms of ease of use!
My only complaint with the Skandix units is that there is no cover for the reel. If the car lasts another 40 years it will no doubt become really crudded up.
What is the material you used to line the floor, etc?
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"So do you have the rear belts as shoulder only?"
No. They are three-point belts. They fit nicely on the kids back there. Usually retractable seatbelts have their reels start lower and the shoulder point is more of a pulley. Only difference on these is that the reel is attached to this point and is calibrated to work at any angle and still lock on sudden movement.
"What is the material you used to line the floor, etc?"
The butyl deadener insulation is from B-Quiet in Canada. I put that all over the floor and inside the doors to quiet the cabin. I liked the Ultimate better than the Extreme because it is thicker.
http://www.b-quiet.com/ultimate.html
I am also planning to put B-Quiet's Hliner acoustic foam under the hood and on the cabin roof when I put in my new Swedish headliner and windlace.
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Ah gotcha- I didn't look closely enough at the pictures you posted.
And thanks for the B-Quiet link.
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"My fuel gauge does jump from empty to full like it's insane."
Dylan,
As I start to answer your post, for the life of me I can't remember if a short is FULL or EMPTY. Regardless, the wire or sender is going OPEN and then GROUND. It's probably the wire or ring terminal right at the top of the sending unit.
--
Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- (I've taken to using Mr. because my name tends to mislead folks on the WWW. I am a 51 year old fat man ;-) -- KD5QBL
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