1968 Volvo project Pure Volvocity by 68EFIvert

4 minute(s) of a 271 minute read

I haven't been able to do much lately. I had an ACL reconstruction surgery two weeks ago and am still pretty sore. I did make it into the garage last night for the first time and put new webbing in the Recaro seats I picked up. But the good news is I finally have an engine lined up. http://www.pro-touring.com/showthrea...L92-LS3-Engine It is a little more powerful than I originally planned but it sure will be fun! By the time it gets here I should be well enough to put it in. I also paid for my radiator and headers from Iamtheonlyreal1 and hope they will show up by the time the engine gets here.

3-29-2013

A little update. I am healing well from my surgery and am able to spend a little time in the garage again. I have rebuilt the seat bottoms of my Recaro seats using a repair kit from http://www.2002parts.com/bmw/recaro-seat-parts.html. I also purchased some Recarro seat sliders a seat mounting brackets from Wedge Engineering. http://www.wedgeengineering.net/OurS...6/Default.aspx Both places are good to work with and provided great service and products. I ran into a problem with my steeriing wheel location though. When I mocked in the column I had the seats too low and now the steering wheel interferes with reading the gauges. I will have to drop the column down on the engine side a couple inches. Not a big deal but I just have to redo some of the work. Oh well. 

I have the engine on the way and am almost ready for fitting. I will borrow an empty transmission case for mocking up my firewall and transmission tunnel. My transmission won't be ready for a little while. I purchased a set of headers and radiator from Robert Jackson (iamtheonlyreal1). We are waiting on Sanderson headers to finish them up though. When they come in I should be ready to set the engine in place. After the engine gets set in place I will start to deal with the fuel system, heater/AC and wiring. I hope to have it ready for the body shop by fall.

3-30-2013

I actually went through three setups before going with a hydroboost. I was going to use a manual Wilwood pedal assembly but I ran into problems with the master cylinder mounting. I didn't want the master cylinders reverse mounted (under the dash) so I got there standard mount style. The problem with that was the master cylinders would have had to be mounted in the fender well. The pedal is not nearly as long as the stock setup.

My next option was a vacuum booster. I did not think I would have enough space for a dual 8" booster and wasn't willing to waste the money trying. My third option was a hydroboost from a Chevy Astro van. My thought process for using that was they were compact enough, readily available, available at the local parts store if there was problems and affordable ($111 shipped). For lines I will be using 6 AN braided lines which should look a bit better than standard rubber lines. The last reason for using a Astro hydroboost is that the pressure should work well with GM power steering pump.

The disadvantages of using this setup is the plumbing is more complex and there could be a loss of feeling. 

I really didn't give much thought to an electric assist setup. I know they are substantially more expensive and would assume they will likely have a loss of feeling as well. I suppose the main reason is not wanting to spend $1000 on a setup I could do the same thing for $300. The second is I am the least familiar with electric boost systems.

Yeah the cost is a lot more and hydroboost does work very well and AN lines do look very nice. I did some on a Firebird