| Where
to begin? At the beginning I suppose, I fell in love with the PV
when I saw one on a trip to Europe when I was 17 in 1974,
didn’t do anything about it even though I lived in Europe in
1981 until a "Volvo Sport Favorit" came up for sale in
Wellington in 1985. It had been a Swedish Embassy car, then a
one family car; I went to look at it and had to have it. I later
found out it was neither a Sport or a Favorit
( Volvo term for basic model ) but a Special, quite a
cute name though. The before photo’s show the car around
Wellington and on holiday in Mahia, they also show the types of
car that where on the road in 1985. I drove the PV for a couple
of years but due to a time consuming career not much maintenance
was done. The PV was then parked for about 7 years.
Early photos
around 1985
Then I moved to
the Bay of Plenty and bought an orchard and the Volvo bug bit
again, I bought an Amazon wagon as my business vehicle and
started to work on the PV, progress was hindered by the usual
things, break ups of relationships, hard times for the business
etc but times improve and I have upgraded it a little using a rebuilt
B20B with a K cam and a 50mm exhaust, front disc brakes, alternator
etc, given it a cheap red paint job and it has given me
lots of driving pleasure; in automotive terms I am very lucky I
own the car of my dreams!
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| Tauranga
Show |
Engine
bay painted |
B20B
engine rebuilt |
5
" wide wheels |
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For a while I
thought that I had the only PV in New Zealand then I discovered
the Volvo Enthusiasts Club and met the other owner! He loaned me
an excellent little book called VOLVO 1800 AND FAMILY by Andrew
Whyte which has a photo of a racing PV in the States, this was
the photo that really inspired me to build a hot PV544. |
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This was an incredibly
lucky break, here was a car with the potential to handle and
stop really well and it was already VINed for New Zealand so
there would be no complicated certification problems.
Homologation paper on the left (105kB file) |
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Club meeting
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The car needed a lot of
work so a local restoration firm was contacted and panel work
and new paint in blue was completed. I thought about what else
would be period and desirable modifications. The
short gearlever was available on the 1800 on the same gearbox so
that was period. |
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The transmission tunnel was altered to take the short gear
lever and the pedals were top mounted, the heater was removed
and replaced by a brake booster (I may come to regret this)
all the chrome was removed and the petrol tank replaced by a
50’s Vauxhall unit, well it’s a V name and completely
period. One touch I particularly like is the chrome mirrors from
the 74 140, they really look the part, have Volvo stamped on
them and there is a possibility they will work as well! The 244
also provided the handbrake which needed to be moved back due to
the longer transmission tunnel. This has put the handbrake where
the average human arm can use it rather than the standard
gorilla position.
Hint for better
living. Are your
neighbours complaining about the state of your lawn?
Litter it with old cars, then take them to the tip, it can add
thousands to your property value and make your partner very
happy.
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2002
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This brings us up
to date, (Jan 2002) the PV has been sitting in the garage as a
shell for 2 years and I have now decided it won’t be a race
car at all, I have a 142 which will fill that role, more
practical and hopefully cheaper, the PV is going to be a really
nice road car. To that end the engine and other parts are coming
out of the other PV at the end of the summer, well I might as
well enjoy driving it, and I am assembling some other parts. |
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My
project 142 came with an M41 and I am going to install
that in the PV, this will entail more metal work as the tunnel
is too narrow for the overdrive unit, the photo shows the three
types of gearlever, in the foreground is the unit out of the a
75 240 (in the meantime I have acquired a 245 and another 142
for parts), it has the nicest movement and I would like to fit
it, however the overdrive cutout switch allows the overdrive to
work on all the forward gears, this is not how Volvo intended
it, however with some tricky wiring it may work as the cutout
also works in neutral.
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M41
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As I don’t know the condition of the
M41 it is currently with a specialist to assess its condition.
At the moment the 142 is also going to donate its front seats,
with trepidation I chopped up the PV seats which were in
reasonable condition with the intention of mounting the 142
seats on the PV rails. |
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31 March
2002
I have just purchased a near new grill and some sport badges
from Soren in Denmark, the beauty of the internet is that he was
able to throw in some hinges for the glovebox I was lacking,
Soren was able to do this because he’s a nice guy and these
sort of parts are of course the last to go in a rotting PV, so
worthless in a place with many old PV’s but valuable to me in
a place where there are no wrecked PV’s at all, I wonder what
Adam Smith would say about that. Much appreciated Soren. Link to
Soren's web site: http://www.sorensvolvodele.subnet.dk/
May
2002- small things.
I
have bought an Alfa Romeo Giulia Coupe to race now rather than
dreaming of racing a Volvo later, this has slightly slowed work on
the PV, but only slightly as progress was pretty slow anyway. The
M41 is back from the specialist, it turned out the mainshaft and
the layshaft were worn, not enough to be unusable but enough to be
noisy. The mainshaft has been repaired and we used the case, gears
and layshaft from a 75 M40 which was in better condition, this has
pros and cons as it is a stronger box but first gear is lower 3.41
rather than the 3.14 found on most M40’s. The overdrive was also
worn out but easily repaired.
So
far so good, today with help from the webmaster I fitted the
gearbox attached to an engine block to see if I had cut the
correct size holes in the transmission tunnel, as you can see it
was pretty close, I was being careful on the drivers’ side as
there isn’t much space for the pedals as is. The back of the
gearbox is sitting a little low, I think this is because the
engine mounts are 10mm too thick and the gearbox mount (which I
had rebuilt some time ago using nolathane) has the hole in the
middle rather than offset 5-8mm towards the bottom. It won’t be
a biggie unless it interferes with the driveshaft.
I
have a choice with the drive shaft, I can shorten the standard
unit or use the shaft out of the 142 which should be the right
length and should be stronger, it will however involve fitting the
different style of centre bearing, luckily I cut this particular
piece of metal out of a junk car some time ago! As you can see in
the photos Volvo’s policy of not changing things means the
centre bearing on both driveshafts is in the same place.
The
swaybar in this picture is out of a Holden Sunbird, its 23mm thick
and seems to fit very well indeed.
May
update,
oops the drive shaft from the 142 is too long, only by a few
centimetres but still – I should have known this, the PV, Amazon
and 140 all have the same wheel base at 2.6m but the PV has the
engine set further back by approximately 10cm, I think this is one
reason why its more rewarding to drive. Next mystery, why is the
142 drive shaft only 2-3cm too long, won’t spend any of my fast
receding brain cells on that on, in any event something needs to
be cut up. I’ve been racing the Alfa and loving it,
realistically I’ll race the PV as well and that means 140-160hp
so the bigger U joints in the drive train are called for. The 240
drive shaft, which I think is the same as some 140 models, namely
the 142E is usefully bigger in both U joints and pipe diameter, it
uses a bigger flange on the gearbox with 14mm nuts and bolts
instead of the fiddly 11mm/12mm units on earlier models so that is
the one I’ll use.
The
centre bearing on the 140 is completely different to the PV,
offering a lot more cushioning and less vibration transfer to the
body.
Where
the PV is really superior to the later models is having a cage to
protect the drive shaft and stop it flying out if something lets
go. About half is completely enclosed, probably something to do
with the fact that 90% of Swedish roads
were metal when the PV was being developed. To fit the overdrive
box and the 240 drive shaft I’ve had to cut away about half of
that enclosure, the bracket supporting the 140 centre bearing is
pathetic while the 240 one is a decent bit of engineering, I’ll
be using that one. Back seat leg room will suffer but who cares
– I won’t be sitting there.
June
2002, There’s always something to learn, even though the gearbox
parts are interchangeable the mainshafts are not quite the same,
the 75 M40 it appears has a bigger lay and main shaft,
therefore the output flanges are not interchangeable, I’ve
already cut up the floor and as you can see the 240 parts are a
lot bigger so it’s a matter of getting an engineer to cut and
weld the two bits of flange I need together.
From Left to Right
1984 M46, 1975 M40, 1969 M41
September,
not much progress but the gods smile on me. I took my two flanges
to an engineer who informed me that mating the two was not an
option. After looking
at various alternatives we found a driveshaft from an unknown
source with the same flange as the 69 Volvo and a beefier UV
joint. This would
leave me with the fiddly 11/12mm bolts and nuts and possibly a
weak point, I had settled on this approach but sometimes
procrastination does pay. A while ago I was given a broken M46 out
of a 1984 240 and deciding to keep the overdrive as a spare I was
in the process of throwing the rest away when I picked up the
output flange and tried it on the M41, perfect! It
would appear that the difference in spline is between overdrive
and non overdrive gearboxes rather than year model.
I can now use the whole driveshaft out of the 240, with a
piece cut out of it naturally.
Hans-Peter
Rombouts, New Zealand
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