Hello everyone!

This is my first post here and I ended up here since nobody at finnish volvo forum couldn't help me. I hope my english is readable.

My girlfriend insisted on having a Volvo Amazon with automatic transmission. I've never owned a Volvo (so far I've owned a '62 Chrysler, a couple of 80's Chevys and a few russian Ladas), but since it's a beautiful car and since everyone says how reliable those old Volvos are, we started looking for one.

Because we live next to Sweden, I thought finding one with automatic here in Finland wouldn't be so tough, but after one year of searching with no success, we desided to widen our search to Sweden. Quite quickly we found a suitable one and since my girlfriend's parents have lived most of their lives in Sweden, the communication was easy. What we found was a 1966 Volvo 121 2-door, color code 89. The car has "only" been driven 135000 kilometers (84000 miles). Girlfriend's parents went to Sweden to get it and drove it back to Finland. The car worked fine the whole trip, over 750 kilometer (460 miles)

The car is in excellent original condition (see pictures here -> http://www.kotiposti.net/jessel/Amazon/Amazon.html), excluding few things. It has been repainted with color that probably isn't quite the tone it should be, the front fenders are made of plastic/fiber, the hubcaps are missing and the transmission has been replaced with a newer one. In my opinion the tranny doesn't work quite like it should (compared to my experiences with american automatic transmissions). Also when I clean the dipstick, the rag gets little dark/black stuff on it although the oil looks quite good. I'm still planning on changing the oils just to be sure.

Few questions I hope you can help me with:

1. Is there a way to indentify the transmission and it's year? I've searched the net for a long time and I came up with nothing. Still people claim there are lots of different BW35 transmissions.
2. Are the bands adjustable and if so, how? We bought a Haynes repair manual but it doesn't cover the automatic transmission too well.
3. Is there a replaceable oil filter inside the tranny?
4. What else should we know about the tranny? I know it uses type F oil, but anything else?

Big thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Jesse Laakso, Finland