captain_70s
Forum Addict
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 6,531
- Location
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Car(s)
- Three Triumphs and a Volvo estate
Oops, I did it again.
As nice as the Acclaim is it does feature some very Japanese design quirks which I'm not a fan off. Particularly a crashy ride on rough road surfaces (which is all road surfaces in the UK) and a buzzy engine at motorway speeds (3,500rpm in top at 70mph). It is also fairly useless for transporting anything large. The Dolomite also suffers from poor gearing (3,500rpm at about 60mph) and is equally rubbish at moving stuff.
I'd been talking about sourcing an estate of some description that was more suited to doing long trips at low rpms and I happen to know a few people locally who highly rated the Volvo 700/900 series cars... Then one of them messaged me, an example had just turned up in a metal recycling place down the road and the owners thought it was too decent to break for parts... £300.
Well, I agreed to buy it even before I'd seen it in person just based on a few pictures... The mate who had initially messaged me give me a lift over (in his own 740) to see the car that afternoon after work, I insured and taxed it on my phone and drove it home. Job jobbed.
So. It's a 1989 Volvo 740GL estate with the 2.0 4-pot and a 3 speed autobox with overdrive which has done about 178,000 miles. The previous owner had the car since around 1993 or so and was a police officer prior to retiring. He'd kept the car well serviced and in decent fettle but recently decided he'd gotten too old to keep on top of the repairs himself so decided to give it up. His final bit of work was to strip the entire lower dash, centre console and carpets out in search of a water leak... The boot was full of boxes of spare parts. The service book is fully stamped. He's kept the receipts for everything he's bought for it since about 2003.
Naturally having bought a car that's only been doing about 500 miles a year for the last decade I decided the best course of action would be to put the interior back together and do a 400 odd mile roadtrip up to see my parents...
Another mate and I rebuilt the interior first. Although all the sounddeadening etc went in the bin because it was rotten and if the car was still leaking water I didn't want it acting as a giant sponge against the floorpan.
I then cleaned the outside and polished off all the staining for it being sat for long periods of time without much use and it started to look not bad...
It had an issue where it was idling at 1500rpm in Park but then idling so low in Drive it'd stall out. This was traced to a microswitch that tells the ECU the throttle is being used, essentially telling the fuel injection whether the car is idling or not. This wasn't being engaged so the car never thought it was at idle. Adjusting this and idle speed saw that issue sorted.
Then, the day before I was due to go away on holiday it did this:
I was sure it'd just shat it's gearbox but it turned out it was a PAS pipe on the high pressure side of the system that had corroded away. It must have popped right at the end of my street as it was coming out at a crazy rate. I pulled the belt off the pump and have been running without it... The pump never ran dry so it should be fine once a new pipe is fitted.
Then I went on holiday.
It was pretty much faultless. Only issue being a slight misfire and the fact it only managed about 20mpg... Once home it then decided that sometimes it just wouldn't engage it's starter motor. The solenoid clicks and that's it, repeated use gets it to work but it's a bit of a gamble. I've tried cleaning the electrical contacts and whacking the motor with an plumbers wrench to no avail so that'll need further investigation.
The fuel gauge also doesn't function (seemingly a very common fault) and the odometer is also broken (also very common due to the infamous "cog of cheese" that drives it).
It also needs some welding to the rear of the sills on both sides and the tyres are all a decade old, but other than that it's pretty damn sweet! I'll give it a light service and check-up over this coming week and then do the welding and tyres before the MOT is due in November. Worst case scenario it'll break for double what I paid for it...
As nice as the Acclaim is it does feature some very Japanese design quirks which I'm not a fan off. Particularly a crashy ride on rough road surfaces (which is all road surfaces in the UK) and a buzzy engine at motorway speeds (3,500rpm in top at 70mph). It is also fairly useless for transporting anything large. The Dolomite also suffers from poor gearing (3,500rpm at about 60mph) and is equally rubbish at moving stuff.
I'd been talking about sourcing an estate of some description that was more suited to doing long trips at low rpms and I happen to know a few people locally who highly rated the Volvo 700/900 series cars... Then one of them messaged me, an example had just turned up in a metal recycling place down the road and the owners thought it was too decent to break for parts... £300.
Well, I agreed to buy it even before I'd seen it in person just based on a few pictures... The mate who had initially messaged me give me a lift over (in his own 740) to see the car that afternoon after work, I insured and taxed it on my phone and drove it home. Job jobbed.
So. It's a 1989 Volvo 740GL estate with the 2.0 4-pot and a 3 speed autobox with overdrive which has done about 178,000 miles. The previous owner had the car since around 1993 or so and was a police officer prior to retiring. He'd kept the car well serviced and in decent fettle but recently decided he'd gotten too old to keep on top of the repairs himself so decided to give it up. His final bit of work was to strip the entire lower dash, centre console and carpets out in search of a water leak... The boot was full of boxes of spare parts. The service book is fully stamped. He's kept the receipts for everything he's bought for it since about 2003.
Naturally having bought a car that's only been doing about 500 miles a year for the last decade I decided the best course of action would be to put the interior back together and do a 400 odd mile roadtrip up to see my parents...
Another mate and I rebuilt the interior first. Although all the sounddeadening etc went in the bin because it was rotten and if the car was still leaking water I didn't want it acting as a giant sponge against the floorpan.
I then cleaned the outside and polished off all the staining for it being sat for long periods of time without much use and it started to look not bad...
It had an issue where it was idling at 1500rpm in Park but then idling so low in Drive it'd stall out. This was traced to a microswitch that tells the ECU the throttle is being used, essentially telling the fuel injection whether the car is idling or not. This wasn't being engaged so the car never thought it was at idle. Adjusting this and idle speed saw that issue sorted.
Then, the day before I was due to go away on holiday it did this:
I was sure it'd just shat it's gearbox but it turned out it was a PAS pipe on the high pressure side of the system that had corroded away. It must have popped right at the end of my street as it was coming out at a crazy rate. I pulled the belt off the pump and have been running without it... The pump never ran dry so it should be fine once a new pipe is fitted.
Then I went on holiday.
It was pretty much faultless. Only issue being a slight misfire and the fact it only managed about 20mpg... Once home it then decided that sometimes it just wouldn't engage it's starter motor. The solenoid clicks and that's it, repeated use gets it to work but it's a bit of a gamble. I've tried cleaning the electrical contacts and whacking the motor with an plumbers wrench to no avail so that'll need further investigation.
The fuel gauge also doesn't function (seemingly a very common fault) and the odometer is also broken (also very common due to the infamous "cog of cheese" that drives it).
It also needs some welding to the rear of the sills on both sides and the tyres are all a decade old, but other than that it's pretty damn sweet! I'll give it a light service and check-up over this coming week and then do the welding and tyres before the MOT is due in November. Worst case scenario it'll break for double what I paid for it...