I painted the steel parts from the bumper last night. Let them dry over night and then fit them the day after, though the over night temperature was probably not really above zero the paint did set hard enough to be handled with care.
I think that quite a number of years ago I reversed into something or clipped something hard enough to bust a small plastic clip that retains the forward coming part of the rear bumper. I found the motivation to set about fixing this the other night. First off I got the bumper off, which I didn’t know how to do, so that was a minor challenge. Bumper gone and plastic clips removed. I removed both so that I could make my new part match the other non broken one. 3 mm thick aluminium cut to fit inside of the broken bracket and shaped to match the bit that’s missing. The new bit made up and shaped etc vs the non broken one. Bracket in place on the car. Having got the bumper off I plan on painting the brackets etc that site behind the plastic part before refitting them.
I had accidentally not put the steering wheel on dead straight when the wheels are pointed directly ahead, it was about one spline out, so I turned it the other day one spline. Typically I couldn’t tell which way it needed to go so since I thought I could remember I just did it that way. It was the wrong way, so last night I turned it back 2 splines.
For almost 3 years the clock has not worked in the Volvo. This was the blog post I did about replacing the alternator: https://bhhh.co.uk/volvo-alternator/. That was a short post. Well, I bought another dash for £10 from a guy called Ash who breaks Volvo 340 cars for a pass time/living. He’s over on the outskirts of Lymington, here, he’s not actually at the plant yard, just really close by. The two dashes: Spot the three differences below in the slider image. The differences are; the time (obviously), the miles on the odometer and the gear shift indicator instrument in the top left corner. So I thought I’d swap over the clock into my dash, but they’re slightly different and are obviously electrically connected to the funny plastic circuit board thing on the back of the dash, and I didn’t much fancy tinkering with that. So I chose to swap the […]
I pulled the dash out of the Volvo, sure enough the cable was not in it, so put it back. A couple of days later I drove the car and it is working. That’s the power of not being able to change my thoughts and explore other possibilities. Although I guess I was able to in the end. Now about 4 years ago I 3D printed a new part which fixes the cable into the dash, the old one had broken, but I never fitted it because this did happen for 4 years. So now I came to try it.. Two issues with this part, although I copied the original and beefed it up a little, I failed to recognise that it has to assembled onto the cable when it’s made, and secondly when it printed it came out slightly on the small side, I had this same issue with […]
That’s misleading. I set out tonight to remove the speedo cable from the Volvo to see where it is broken. Later on this evening, having not removed it, I realised that I think the cable has just dropped out of the back of the speedo. So tomorrow evening perhaps I will pull the dash off and see if putting it back fixes it. That’ll be a win if that’s the case. Back to this post, I noticed that the hinge on the left hand garage door on the Volvo side was coming away from the frame, so I had a hack at the wood but really just made a mess. So I found another bit of timber the right size and cut off that length of door frame. Found two concrete screws that would do the job and drilled some holes and ran some 3 inch long screws through the […]
Fitted a battery isolator to the dodo today. This should help stop me having to bump or jump start the Volvo when I don’t drive it for a few weeks. Did a really bad job of soldering the wire to the terminal. But it seems to have worked.
I replaced the bottom ball joint on the Volvo at the weekend, should have bought a ball joint splitter, it was hard getting the taper to come apart. I wound up beating a could of sockets in on top of the nut and then undoing the nut against them and then beating the joint with a hammer. It came apart in the end.
After the voltage regulator failed I purchased second hand alternator for £30. I fitted this and it turns out that it works perfectly. This is the new one, not new, but new to me, second hand new. I also swapped out the Land Rover starter motor for a new one. It’s made a hell of a difference, I think in part because the old one was rusting from the inside out because of water ingress over 9 years.
The Volvo 340 is now a high miler. Done ticket over 50,000 miles on the 24th September. I baked some sweet chesnuts from the tree outside the front of the house, i slit them all, but still a few exploded in the oven and the photo of some bits on the ground is showing the remaining fixings from the removing the plastic under-tray from Hannah’s car. I removed it to change the oil, but sheared off or drill out the fixings as they were so badly rusted, I replaced the tray using zip ties, so it will remain to be seen if it’s still there when I change the oil next time. [peg-image src=”https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SiUwxyvxolM/W72itp0KFQI/AAAAAAABMiE/dmZvSVhV-aQlfW_iWtXtXKOqb1O1_wsrACCoYBhgL/s144-o/IMG_20181007_160734.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/100446983108465419613/6610618734779197009#6610618733252187394″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”IMG_20181007_160734.jpg” image_size=”2988×5312″ ] [peg-image src=”https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7vOfJWsHiLE/W72itmU8GLI/AAAAAAABMiE/G7bCbRGftls4L_t5QEZi0Ue60AM5O3A9QCCoYBhgL/s144-o/IMG_20181007_144738.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/100446983108465419613/6610618734779197009#6610618732315941042″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”IMG_20181007_144738.jpg” image_size=”5312×2988″ ] [peg-image src=”https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-LFCblnZGaJc/W72ithUF_lI/AAAAAAABMiE/Rc8NWvmdHEcf9XGzD42WXHbLCQAmXPKIQCCoYBhgL/s144-o/IMG_20180924_195332.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/100446983108465419613/6610618734779197009#6610618730970218066″ caption=”Volvo 340 50k 50000 50,000 miles” type=”image” alt=”IMG_20180924_195332.jpg” image_size=”5312×2988″ ]
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