The great P80 Volvo Bloopers - Idiots - Fails thread - June 2023

[foggydogg]

Ha! First 2022 addition to the dirty laundry

Got the S70 AWD rear axle all sorted, could not get back brake caliper to bleed. Finally dropped rear torsion arm assembly And here was brake line

DOH!

Some people pay good money for Primitive Found Object Sculpture. I would suggest Non-Fungible Token, but I have no clue what that is.

[abscate]

If I can get this to the West Coast I can get some tech guru to buy it as ancient Scandinavian artifact for her/ his loft in “ Mountsin View”…there is no view and no mountains or water but you live “ in the Bay Area”

This means you live in traffic on the 101

[BlackBart]

My older brother for a long time lived near a place called Fairview. They'd all say, "It's not a great view, but a fair view."

[erikv11]

In Mountain View, CA you can look right up at Mt Hamilton (over 4,000'), the slightly lower Mt Umunhum ...

[manovlov]

i get back to the subject : i replace slave cylinder two time, while the issue came from the ball socket clutch fork...

file.png (94.63 KiB) Viewed 18440 times

[abscate]

Ooof, that’s a lot of labor, Manov.

[foggydogg]

Speaking of lotta labo(u)r and two-time, I bought a rebuilt rack from Advance Auto, they Testified to the Above that it was NOT a Cardone, so even though it was paint-stick marked like a Cardone, had one of those QR code square stickers on it like a Cardone, I put it on the used subframe cradle and hung it under the car.
Blew an end seal. Filled up the dust boot with juice. Left a trail behind the car all the way into the garage.
Pulled the used one from poor Old Blue - which meant having to drop the bent cradle that I had stuck under the car to keep it a roller - and laid under the '99 for several more days.
If this keeps up, I'm gonna run out of stuff to drive.

[scot850]

Well thankfully this time it was not my turn to add to the thread through something I did! However this did make me laugh.

So last summer tire season, my wife mentioned that the 'R' had a steering wheel vibration. I forgot about this until it was nearly time to refit (spring in Alberta is still thinking about it!). I called my local repair shop that has fitted and balanced my wheels for over 10 years and only ever one issue with their work which we resolved amicably.

Anyway dropped the rims off on Tuesday morning and asked the boss if they could check the balance and also see if there were any bends in the rims. When I bought the car it came with a similar set of Volvo 17" wheels from a P2 and 2 of them turned out to have pot hole bends in them.

I also spoke to the foreman and reinforced what was needed. They have been hugely busy and got the call today to go get them. I asked if there were any balance issues or bends? There was that awkward silence........... Oops we thought you wanted us to remove the tires from the rims? Not sure where that came from!?

So now they are going to re-fit the rims and re-balance the rims for tomorrow! At least we can laugh about it. The garage is run by a father and son both who I have known for 20+ years and honest good work comes out of there. But at least it was not me!

Neil.

[Nevada1906]

I'm the first generation in my family to be into cars seriously and none of my friends were really into hot-rodding, so I had to overcome the learning curve all by myself. My lack of knowledge was painfully apparent in some amusing ways. Well, amusing NOW:

1: The first engine I built was a POS Chevy 305 I got from the junkyard to replace the 2.8L V6 in my '85 Firebird that I blew three main bearings out of doing neutral drops. Didn't know you weren't supposed to use an Advance Auto bottle-brush hone to do the cylinders DRY.

2: On that same Firebird, I made a custom wiring harness by using solderless crimp connectors to Frankenstein every scrap of wire I could find into a massive, epileptic fire hazard. I had 5 or 6 different colors and gauges of wiring in each and every circuit in the engine bay, all lashed together with bread ties.

3: The '78 Impala I did a valve job on with 60-grit sandpaper, and was so worn out I had to set the idle so high the car would do 25 mph with no throttle inputs.

4: I swapped a 5-speed from a Mustang GT into my $900 1996 Crown Vic Police Interceptor, fabricated a custom pedal pack and since I didn't know how big a hole to cut in the transmission tunnel for the shifter, proceeded to cut out the entire top and halfway across the passenger floorpan. Better safe than sorry, right? I replaced the floor with a piece of sheet metal and about 300 Home Depot pop rivets. Oh, and the shifter itself? It came out of the floor directly below the heater controls, necessitating cutting it in half and welding in a 6-inch extension. The shift throws were a good 18." Oh, and the First and Third synchros on this $300 eBay box were stripped when I got it.

5: That profile quote I used to use about using the giant zip ties to hold the transmission in the car? Did it on this car. Worked great, too - for a while.

[ZionXIX]

Life's an adventure right? Would have loved to see those 18inch shifter throws

I was changing the transmission fluid in my xc90 one day. It was the first time on this vehicle as the old fluid was charcoal black and there was only 85,000 on the odometer. I chose the complete fluid exchange method with a buddy holding some vinyl tubing on the radiator exit while I filled new fluid in between running the engine. During the 3rd cycle I noticed no fluid coming out of the pump despite dumping 3 quarts down the funnel. Is was at that time I notice a lot of dripping fluid on the driveway. The funnel had popped out and I had dumped 3 liters of bright red transmission fluid onto the driveway and it spread across a large enough portion that all could see my mistake. I had stained concrete like a scarlett letter for months.