|
I'm willing to believe that only twelve of the 1971 142Es were brought into the States with the BW35 because I have one of them, and people who know these cars are always surprised to see mine with the "X-Automatic" badge on the trunk. Then they usually make comments to the effct of, "How could they put such a crappy transmission in such a great car!" The transmission in mine was in great condition and worked precisely as it should, but no matter how good and how rare, it still turned the car into a sluggish lump. The BW35 went to the dump on the premise that there was already enough misery in this world, and the M41 that I replaced it with makes me smile every time I drive the car. The swap was actually not particularly difficult, even for me who had never done anything like that before. In fact, it was rather a fun project. The trickiest part was dealing with the wires some Volvo genius designed to go through the pedal housing: probably the same fiend who designed the heater fan installation in the 200 series. I was lucky, of course, in that I could pull all the parts I needed from one donor car.
Bob S.
|
