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I spent the better part of five or six years, and more than $6,000 trying to keep a malevolent old Volvo 142 on the road. I rebuilt the engine twice, replaced the gearbox, the seats, exhaust, carbs, steering, brakes, electrical system and stereo, had it Bondo’d and re-undercoated and painted. I kept pouring money and sweat into it, convinced that with the next round of repairs, I’d have a sound, durable car. It repaid my efforts by being an utterly unrepentant, irredeemable, worthless, cursed piece of shit. It broke down in weird towns where parts could not be bought. It quit at intersections, died in torrential downpours, failed always when I needed it most. At some point, I yanked out the speedometer head to replace it. This is the old one – a testament to the essential weirdness of 1970s Swedish engineering: The cylindrical drum would rotate slightly as speed increased, making more of the fluorescent orange wedge visible through a slit in the dashboard. The effect was of a pointed ribbon unspooling horizontally across the dash, covering the vertical white stripes of the speed indicators. I hated that fucking car. But god, it drove great in the snow.
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6 responses to “#210 :: Volvo Speedo Head”
my first car was a 142, robin egg blue with a rebuilt engine. $3000 and a replaced transmission later (approx. 1 year) i sold that pretty piece of crap for $175. go figure, that was a ‘bad year’ in volvo engineering.
You got off easy. Mine quit entirely. The guy I sold it to had to tow it away.
My favorite mechanical failure was the timing gears, which were made of – I kid you not – fiberglass. They threw a tooth in Ocala, Florida (pretty much nowhere, for me) and set the timing off so that the pistons whacked the valvestems out of true and killed any compression the car had – stranding me 300 miles from my destination.
Valve job: $600 (this was in the 80s).
Actually you fell into the hands of a major felon masquerading as a friendly mechanic. His depredations unfolded hideously, and over time. I think the ultimate outlay was more than you paid for the car.
Well, the car itself cost something like $1,200, but then there was all the expensive body work and reupholstery … gawd. I’m having bad flashbacks now.
Yernot the only one. He saw you coming. My memory is he sold you the car…
i neglected to mention the fact that the car was not running at the time of the sale – dude who bought it had to tow mine away, too. the way the engine was rebuilt, i couldn’t figure out half of what was going on in there, and got to the point where i could barely fix anything myself anymore. good riddance! p.s. volvo mechanica are sneaky mofos.