I'd just like to say thankyou to all the brickboarders who posted with advice and encouragement while my Brick was stranded a long way from home. I finally made it home in the early hours of this morning, the only casualty along the way being the loss of one tire and two wheel studs.

I packed up a good lot of coolant and oil, put my newly rebuilt head into a crate and caught the 3:25 AM bus down to Singleton yesterday. I was blinking in the sunlight at 7:20 AM on a sunday morning. I rang up the lovely people minding my brick and had breakfast with them, started the job just before 9:00.

I didn't do the job alone - although I'd come prepared to - at 11 I was joined by Tod, a qualifed mechanic and the son of the family who'd taken me in. It was Tod who immediately felt the cylinder walls and spotted the damage done to the block when I overheated it. I have some scoring on no 2. Cylinder and there's more free play in the sides of the pistons than there aught to be. We laid a straight edge along the block couldn't find any warpage in it.

Tod is a methodical worker, originally qualifed as a heavy diesel mechanic, and while his kids were enjoying a day at Grandma's, he was happy to spend close to 12 hours all up getting the motor perfect. It was dark by the time we were ready to try starting her up.

Started first go, I love my brick. We let the motor run to warm up while we checked other things. There's was a bit of exhaust in the blow by on start up, so I guess those piston rings aren't quite what they were before I blew it up. Shame, it was a very nice block when I started the project.

I haven't hooked up a compression gauge to see how bad it is, but I might be in the market for a short block somewhere down the track, seems a shame to screw such a nicely rebuilt head down on to a crappy old block, but for the time being it goes well enough.

We had dinner while it cooled down, then re-torqued. I got on the road at about 10, with 315 kms of mountain road to go and no in-tank pump.

The car went very nicely, until I got about 30kms from home. I began to notice some vibration through the car. It could have been a million things wrong, but tires seemed the likely culprit. As the vibration got worse, I pulled over, just in time as my curbside rear blew out completely.

It was now 2 AM, and I had everything but a torch, I fumbled around in the dark to jack it up, and with condiderable force, removed the old rim. Trouble was, I took most of the thread off two of the old studs in the process, leaving me only able to attach three lug nuts.

By 3 I was willing to admit defeat, and hitched a ride into the next town to use the phone. The road service bloke prounounced my studs dead, but said I could gently drive on three. He then had to take my spare away to fix it, It was so old it had an inner tube.

Finally got home at 4, after travelling all night, and I'm in the market for two new tires and some wheel studs. My girlfriend thinks my car's ugly and the boys are calling it The Hearse but it's my car and I saved it from the crusher.

--
Drive it like you hate it

Hey, I did the same thing with an old motorcycle less than 4 years
ago so congrats! In June of 2000, I bought an old Yamaha XS-650 for
$150. Two months later, I had my motorcycle license and everything
on the bike was working well except for a minor oil leak. I was
going up to Boston for the weekend, and I decided that the weather
was too nice to sit on a train for 5 hrs. Everything was going
well until I crossed the Rhode Island state line. As a truck was
passing me, the engine began to make a ringing sound, but
I thought that it was coming from the truck. The bike lost power
shortly afterwards. I knew that I was low on fuel, so I switched
to the reserve tank - that didn't help. As I pulled off of the 95,
I noticed that there were oil droplets spitting out of one of the
exhaust pipes.


I (and the bike) hitched a ride with a road crew, who gave me some
oil - the bike was 2 qts. low and was so hot that smoke was pouring
out of the filler hole. After starting the bike, I managed to drive
another mile of two to a gas station in the town of Nooseneck Hill,
where I left the bike (it was running on one cylinder) and took
the train home.


In October, I drove back to Rhode Island with a junkyard engine in
the back of my car, and replaced the holed piston and changed the
oil. The bike ran fairly well, although I didn't have a set of
good rings, so it smoked quite a bit. Later that month, I took
the train back and rode the bike to Boston and then back home.


At home, I had to disassemble the engine a second time to replace
the bad rings and leaky seals. Fortunately, I had learned how to
remove the piston barrels without removing the engine from the frame
by that time, so it was a rather easy job.


How old is your car? I'm surprised that it had a tire with a tube -
they stopped using tubes in the US (except on motorcycles) a very
long time ago. Aus. is probably different, though.


-b.

Quite an adventure with the bike, four weeks without the car has been bad enough. Hopefully it gets through this year ok, after that it's getting a short block put in, because I already know my compression won't be perfect.

I have no idea why my spare tire has an inner tube, it's a '77 model, and I assumed the spare was a michelan X, same as the others. It has tyre shop prices chalked on it, so my best guess would be that someone bought it as a cheap spare in the 70's, when tubed tyres were still widely available.

Anyway, I'm happy to have it back, the only real issues are that I can't drive it much till I get some new wheel studs (local Volvo shop gets them for me on Wednesday), and that I often have to hit the starter solinoid with a breaker bar to get it to crank.

Do you still have the bike?
--
Drive it like you hate it

No, I sold the bike (thank God). It was quite possibly the least
reliable vehicle that I've ever owned, and I don't remember a single
trip over 2 hr. that didn't result in my having to fix something.
That being said, I'm currently in the market for a bike. I'll
probably end up getting either an older Bimmer flat-twin, a Yamaha
Virago 500 (small shaft drive), or a Kaw Ninja 500. If I end up
moving to a larger city where a car is just an annoyance to park, I
might even get rid of the Volvo.

-b.

If you do go for a bike I would put my money on the Bimmer Flat Twin (they look cool) or the EX500. My first (& only) bike is a 88 Kaw EX500 and I must admit is a beauty. I but it from the second owner with only 5K miles on it. The first two owners used it rarely on weekends. It is in great shape still and I just hit 9500 miles on it. It is a Southern CA bike so no rust anywhere. Best of luck on your bike search.

Sincerely,
--
Julio Meza

1979 264GL B27F 124K --> BW55->M46, CLS, IPD Sway, 81+ Dash, Gauges

1979 262C B27F 159K --> Restore Project w/Possible V8

1984 245DL 210K -->Wifemobile