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Hi Gang!
Tarona and I just this minute returned from spending an evening with the Dutch V44 club at their motel(s)in Barstow.
I figured that the best way to meeet as many of these folks as possible would be to go to the motel(s) where they had reservations. I figured they had to sleep sometime, right??
Anyway, Tarona and I left Ridgecrest about 3:30 PM for the 95 mile drive to Barstow. It took us 2 hours, including time stuck in traffic. Little 'Hot Stuff' didn't like the standing still thing, so he threatened to overheat any time we weren't moving, but all-in-all we had no problems with the drive down.
One good thing to note: the odometer read just at the 100-mile mark when we topped off the tank to come home. The car took 2.8 gallons - that's 35.7 mpg on highway-only driving!!! Not bad! New Denso Iridium plugs and new silicon wire-cored plug wires seemed to have helpd quite a lot!
We went to the Quality Inn first, and discovered about 50+ old Volvos scattered through the parking lot. The cars ranged from 444's through 445's, Duettes, P1800s's and 1800 ES's. There were also a lot of 121 sedans and a few 200-series cars in the mix. Plus one tired old rusty Ford Explorer with Dutch tags and a tour placque!
The moment we pulled in, the adventurers realized that our car certainly wasn't one of their group, and from a few people outdoors when we arrived, we were suddenly surrounded.
Everyone wanted to look under the hood (true Volvo fanatics - who cares what it looks like? Lemme see the engine!) and we got a lot of questions about the paint color, the engine mods, and especially the headlights and bumper overriders, which they didn't have.
We spent about an hour talking to folks, then went into the motel's Mexican restaurant to eat. When we started to leave, we drove around to the other side of the motel to take pictures of any car we might have missed our first time through the lot, only to be flagged down by a completely new set of adventurers with the same set of questions.
We spent another 45 minutes working our way through that crowd, then took our leave and moved down to the Econolodge, where we did a replay of the whole thing. Again, from a deserted parking lot to a crowd of people before I could even cut off the engine. More pictures (they took more of our car than we did of theirs!) and talk, route questions, etc.
When our new friends finally got through visiting and decided they were very hungry (having missed lunch for some reason I couldn't understand), we let them go and drove around to the other side of this parking lot where - you guessed it! We did it all again.
They had a lot of questions about our car (kind of like they had never seen a Volvo set up like ours!) They were extremely interested in the B20 swap with the automatic transmission. They sure took a lot of pictures of that! In addition, they seemed to have never seen a fuel-injected engine that had changed over to SU carbs. Virtually everyone who had fuel injection had lfew good things to say about that setup, so having seen that they could be converted to carbs fairly easily, they seemed intrigued by the idea and shot a LOT of pictures of the conversion.
They also talked a lot about liking the bumper overriders, and how they were impossible to get in Europe. I promised to look up what sources I could find and send e-mail to those who indicated they'd like to install them.
The modifications I had made to the engine cooling system so as to be able to cope with our desert heat brought out a lot of complaints about how HOT it was here in California. The general consensus was that they thought All of California was desert and hot! I got them feeling better by telling them that today, with a high of only 97 degrees is acually quite cool. Normally the daytime temps in August are about 120 degrees!
Also we let them know that as soon as they dropped out of the desert in the the LA basin tomorrow morning, the temperature would drop to the 80's.
They reported that they ALL had significant problems with overheating. Even those people who had air conditioning installed couldn't use it, and some actually had to turn on the car's heater to help dissipate engine heat.
One 544 owner had removed his car's grill and pulled the heater core out and mounted it in front of the radiator to help. It looked wierd, but apparently it worked fine. Anyway, he made it as far as Barstow!
I shot a lot of pictures, which I'll be processing and posting on my website tomorrow. As soon as I'm done with that I'll start a new thread here with the link you can follow.
I'll have had time to gather my scattered thought and write a coherent report by then!
All in all, a great bunch of very friendly people!
BTW: Regarding the green 444 - it didn't make it, They had to ship it home from wherever it was that it broke down. Apparently whater was wrong couldn't be fixed in a timely manner so as to continue the tour.
I wish it had broken down here...then I could have another toy to fix before I shipped it back to its owner! ;-)
Over all, they said that they had few real problems with the cars overall; mostly just things that you would expect to fail on a car 40 or 50 years old that is asked to run half way across the U.S. in hot weather and very long distances. One man said his 'dynamo' had failed today, so he would have to replace it before continuing on to Los Angeles to ship his car home.
Anyway, let me get out of here...or I'll never shut up. Gee, can I really be pumped up like this after just visiting with car people???
Until tomorrow...Steve - Baron of Greymatter
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