As I’ve said every year, where are the flying cars? Oh wait, they would be horribly unsafe. Well, hover cars that run on garbage would be a step in the right direction anyway.

To answer some questions I’ve received:

1) Yes I’m still alive, the site is still going, and I plan to continue paying for the web hosting.

2) This year is going to be busy for me, and I don’t anticipate too many updates. Last year was a pretty solid year – new theme, new graphics, a few new greenbooks.

3) It’s been a depressing year for Volvo Inc. As you’ve probably heard, everything is being sold to the Chinese including Ford’s sale of Volvo to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. We went through this in the 1980s when half of the golf courses in California were sold to the Japanese, so we’ll get through it, but odds are things will get worse for Volvo. The Ford buyout was bad enough!

In our car-centric economy, life is pretty difficult without a car, so I’ll probably always own one. At this point, however, it looks like once the 240s wear out or gas prices go up significantly, my next car may not be a Volvo.

A big part of living earth-friendly is the REUSE part of the “Reduce – Reuse – Recycle” pyramid. I’ve been fixing up my 240s with junkyard parts, and keeping them running long past the life expectancy of most cars, but that won’t be affordable once parts sources start to dry up. Volvo is no longer on the cutting edge of safety either (thanks to Ford slashing the Research and Development budget), so I might as well buy a car from a company that still produces spares and continues to fund R&D.

I would have said Saab for my next car but oh yeah, they are gone too. I’m not a huge fan of the German makes. So what else? Maybe Toyota or Honda? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure, there are not too many car companies left to be proud of.

Now that my brake system appears to be in order, there is another point that I need to discuss:

Dear IPD,

Your prices are too high. I feel like a moron for having bought my front brake kit from you, and I am only consoled by the fact that I bought it at the garage sale where I received 10% off and free shipping, so hopefully the cost of shipping those heavy rotors and calipers ate into your outrageous margins.  Yes, I realize you do a lot for the community, what with hosting the garage sales, building concept cars, and sponsoring events, but let’s think about this carefully.

This kind of above-market pricing for widely-available products only makes people turn away from you and move to lower-cost vendors for commodity parts (like master cylinders & brake calipers, for example).  Why?  Because, like me, they feel cheated when they find out that they paid more than double for a commodity part.  (Caveat emptor you say?  Only one more reason not to trust you in the future.)   Sure, only IPD makes IPD sway bars, or carries XYZ imported part, but for how long?  We both know that your competition for these non-commodity specialized parts is increasing across all Volvo models.

The question is, how many customers can you afford to drive away with your high prices on these commodity parts?  Today’s 240 turbo driver is often tomorrow’s 850R / S60R / ??? driver (likewise with other less-sporty models), and they’re going to want parts (both specialized and commodity) for their new cars too.  Another point to ponder is that Volvo enthusiasts (i.e. ‘nuts’) are often generational and familial.  Look at my immediate family – last month we had 7 Volvos for four drivers!  As much as you work to encourage customer loyalty with one hand (community involvement, excellent service, custom parts), your other hand (pricing of commodity products) is driving customers away.

So today, if I were to buy, for example, lowering springs, adjustable torque rods, chassis braces, stainless brake lines, custom wheels, or other hard-to-find parts (but not impossible to find!), am I more likely to go to IPD or one of your competitors?  Before, it would have been an easy answer – IPD, of course.  Now, however?  I’m not so sure.

I like IPD, and it would be sad to see them fail after all their years of hard work and business growth, so I’ll wrap it up.   The lesson here is simple: save your high prices for your specialized products that are hard to find elsewhere or can’t be duplicated.  Their high pricing is justified by their limited supply, and the customer is typically left unoffended.  Keep your commodity product prices competitive to keep people from becoming disgruntled.  This is just basic Business 101.

Sincerely,

A once and future Volvo driver

Yahoo! announced recently that it is shutting down GeoCities permanently. After a $4.7 Billion stock deal to buy it in 1999, Yahoo! sure has egg on their face now. There are a few good Volvo pages on GeoCities, such as The 780 Information Site, that I am going to archive here on k-jet.org so that they are still around even after Yahoo! shuts down everything.  The 780 site is now hosted on two pages here: the 780 main page and the 780 gallery. I have also archived the Tips for Improving Your Volvo 240 page here.

Well, thanks to the help of the people on Turbobricks, the car is back on the road.  After all that, it turned out that it was the ignition timing that was the culprit.  (edit: nope, it wasn’t – see this post)

The plus side is that the newly rebuilt cylinder head is a major improvement.  The engine revs smoothly and has noticeably more power (most likely due to the increased compression ratio and possibly the change in ignition timing).

In other news, I’ve picked up some nice bits and pieces for the 242: a non-A/C power steering bracket, so I can get rid of the A/C system, a new seatbelt for the passengers side, a tachometer, an uncracked dash, etc. etc.  So I am slowly getting the car ‘back to stock’ as it were – basically, I’m just trying to make sure everything works.

Finally, I’ve compiled my timing instructions for setting the base timing on a K-Jet 240 (i.e. a car with breakerless, non-computerized ignition.)  These instructions apply to 1976-82 N/A 240s and 1981-85 240 Turbos:

Setting the Ignition Timing on a K-Jet 240

1) Get a timing light.  You can probably borrow one from a friend to save some money.

2) Hook it up, with red clamp on + battery post, black clamp on a ground screw on the car body (not the neg. battery post).  Put the inductive sensor clamp around the #1 cylinder spark plug wire (spark plug closest to the engine cooling fan).

3) Disconnect the vacuum lines from the distributor

4) Get a white-out pen or a glitter pen or a paint pen and mark the crank pulley (bottom pulley) at the little notch that’s in the pulley.

5) Start up the car, aim the timing light at the marks on the black plastic timing cover.  You should see your mark go whizzing by with the strobe light effect thing going on.  Refer to your timing light manual for more info, but basically, you’re going to move the reading on your timing light until the mark on the pulley is at “0″ on the timing cover.  Whatever number you get from the timing light display when the mark is at ’0′ is your ignition timing.

6) Check your timing.  Consult the ignition greenbook (TP30432-2, page 41) for the proper spec’s (see the greenbooks section).

If the base timing is off, you can adjust it by rotating the distributor.

1) Soak the bottom of the distributor in WD-40 or penetrating oil.  The area you want to hit is where the silver aluminum-ish body of the distributor meets the red/rusty iron block.  This is at the very bottom of the distributor, basically.

2) If your car has A/C, you’ll probably have to disconnect the power steering pump and move it out of the way.  The hoses are long enough that you can get it out of the way w/o disconnecting them.  You’ll also have to remove the intercooler piping and spark plug wires etc.  Basically, anything in the way of getting a pair of channel lock pliers (or similar large pliers) around the bottom of the distributor, just above where it meets the block.

3) Get a socket on a long extension (12 or 13mm I think) and loosen the bolt at the back of the distributor.  You can see that the distributor has a channel in it and can be turned back and forth, and that the bolt is what clamps it down.  The engineering behind this is very similar to the way the power steering pump belt adjustment or the alternator belt adjustment works – a bolt in a sliding channel.

4) Once that bolt is loose (no need to remove it completely), you can get out your channel locks and turn the distributor.  Clockwise increases the degrees of timing, counter clockwise decreases the degrees of timing.  These can be a pain to break loose, but if you started out with WD-40 or penetrating oil, it shouldn’t be too bad.

5) The next part is guess and check.  Move the dist.   Tighten down the bolt so it can’t move.  Make sure everything is out of the way to start the car – watch the belts – and fire it up.  Check the timing.  If it’s good, put it back together.  If it’s not, move the dist. again in the appropriate direction.  Don’t forget to check the timing at both RPM levels – this will tell you if your centrifugal advance is working or not.

K-jet.org has now been up for four years!

Feel so old. . .