On 6 October 2002, I impulsively decided that, having done my time in a K (ish)-car, I was rehabilitated and ready to return to productive society. The ’92 LeBaron I’d bought off my mother for $1,200 had given me utterly reliable, dependable, inexpensive service and really owed me nothing, but the driver side of its split bench seat had deteriorated from passable to distinctly uncomfortable for the hours-long drives Bill and I were in the habit of. In retrospect, I’d’ve done better to refurbish or replace the seat and carry on driving, but I decided it was time for a replacement car.
This decision was nudged along by my having spotted that day a really nice ’85 Volvo 245 Turbo…on EBay (minor chord here). Intercooled, 4-speed plus overdrive, limited-slip differential, air conditioning, power everything, leather, a buncha gauges, and 120 kilomiles. It was just outside Wilmington, North Carolina. On 7 October, the seller told me Shocks have been replaced. Bushings not sure, will check on that. There isn’t any popping or creaking or other unusual noise. Michelins like new, stock size. Car starts instantly and runs perfectly. A/C is blowing 40 degrees at the vents. There is no rust on this car anywhere. It is as “turn key” as you’ll find. Owners were one doctor, his good friend, then me. I have sevice records that are recent and they give one the understanding of the excellent care this car has had. Thanks for the interest and I will try to veiw all the bushings to tomorrow as I’m going to take undercarraige pics for someone else.
On 8 October: Bushings all in great shape, no cracks, no sag, no missing chunks.
The Ebay auction ended without meeting reserve at $5,250, and I emailed the seller—back then Ebay just handed out email addresses. We agreed on $5,500, and he’d be perfectly happy to store the car for awhile while I made arrangements. Money sent, bling; title received, blong. So I’d bought another 1985 Volvo 245 Turbo on Ebay! Bodily it was the diametric opposite of Den Rostiga Björnvagn: not a speck of rust anywhere, and structurally A-1. But a car, particularly such as a turbocharged and intercooled Volvo with a bunch of options, has a great many working parts assembled to that structure. Many of them on this car were rather closer to Z-26 than to A-1, and the car wound up causing me great aggravation and expense in the five months I owned it.
I was living in Toronto on the most grudging, yankprone kind of visa—permanent residence was still years ahead, let alone citizenship—and registering the car in Ontario would have made problems if the Canadian Government had decided to kick me out, so my car was registered in Michigan. I made arrangements with the service writer at an independent garage in Traverse City; he’d sell the LeBaron for me.
On 8 November I got a call from one of the service writer’s customers. This guy had a fireproof credit card on file at the garage; when his ’80 Rolls Royce (V8, multiple SU carburettors) needed service, he dropped it off, whatever parts and service were charged on the card, and he picked it up when it was done. The money behind that credit card came from this guy’s expertise in big, fancy chassis dynamometers, which he sold to automakers. He told me Chrysler do a lousy job of building a great design, Ford do a great job of building a lousy design, and GM do a mediocre job of building a mediocre design, and with exceptions here and there, I think that’s apt. His newphew was driving a ’91 LeSabre that was clapped out plus a year, and badly in need of replacement. We exchanged e-mails, and he asked when he could see the LeBaron.
On Monday 11 November I swapped the nice CD player out the LeBaron into my truck, and the truck’s generic FM/AM into the LeBaron. I reinstalled the mile-primary speedometer after advancing the odometer to match the KM total, and cleaned out all my junk.
On Tuesday 12 November I drove the LeBaron from Toronto to Traverse City—about 750 km / 470 miles, gave the friendly service writer the title and a matched set of “sign here” bills of sale, told him I was asking $2,000 for the car and would probably accept $1,700.
On Wednesday 13 November I flew back to Toronto. There was unpleasantness with Customs and Immigration; that went with the territory of that grudging visa I was on.
On Friday 15 November I flew to North Carolina. While waiting at the baggage reclaim in Wilmington, I checked my voicemail. Rolls Royce guy had left a message: Nephew and I test drove your LeBaron…it’s perfect, just what we want! Will you take $2100 for it?
Hrr? I’d never had a counteroffer higher than what I was asking. I called Service Writer, who said Yeah, I told him you wanted $2k for it, and he said ‘Naw, this car’s too nice for $2K, I’ll give him $2,100.
Sold, then! It seemed to me I was developing something of a track record of selling cars in nicer shape than I bought them. The guy who bought the LeBaron said exactly the same thing as the guy who bought my Spirit R/T : I can’t believe this car is 10 years old!
I picked up the Volvo, and learned (and, from the experience with the 1990 Jetta, wished I hadn’t) that the seller was a salesman at a VW dealer by profession. He’d had his detail guys go over the car, which I guess was a nice gesture unless it wasn’t, and they’d used some kind of godawful-smelling dye or other chemical on some interior part. The car reeked of volatile solvents.
North Carolina was great. Awesome seafood, nice people—Y’all come back now, y’heeyah?—and I was able to pick up a bag of grits per Bill’s request, only I don’t think he had the 5-pounder in mind. I spent the night in a rental cottage on the beach. The next morning I affixed my Michigan plate, installed the Marchal quartz headlamps I’d brought along with me (because of course I had) and guessed at their aim, and set out for Toronto through rain, fog and snow.
The car did fine, pretty much. I was irked to discover the rear frog lamps didn’t work—there I was, in weather conditions warranting their use, in a car equipped with them, and I couldn’t! That wouldn’t do; it didn’t take much poking and prodding to figure out the fuse had gone missing. I installed one and the rear frog lamps went blazing at the touch of the switch.
Outside of that, the car seemed to need some tweaks, tunes and fixes, but nothing terribly major, I thought, at least nothing major enough to stop me spending first effort (and, er, money) on an upgrade instead of a repair: I replaced the quad-rectangular headlamp setup with the quad-round headlamp setup used on earlier 240s. Size for size, round parabolic lamps work better than ones with corners and walls and floors and ceilings. I put Carello H4 lamps outboard, the ones with the bulb shield that makes the lamps look black when viewed head-on, and equipped them with my French-spec yellow bulbs. Like most small H4 lamps, they were objectively weak on low beam, but comfortable to drive with on account of the relatively strong foreground light—how good a headlamp’s performance feels is often far out of line with how good it actually is.
The inboard mounts got a set of seldom-seen Cibié high beams with sealed-in H2 bulbs electrically isolated from the metal headlamp reflector. These had been made to permit European headlamps to be installed in Japanese cars with ground-switched headlamp systems; the conventional H1 high beams put the bulb ground in common with the headlamp reflector, so the always-hot headlamp circuit and metal-to-metal-to-ground mounting meant no turning off the high beams, ever. Hence the little-known isolated-ground Cibies. When one can’t walk from desk to bookshelf without tripping over headlamps, one runs weird lights!
But repairs quickly became necessary. Some of the issues were with the HVAC: with the control set for fresh air, there was a constant vacuum hiss, and the recirc door would not move to the fresh-air setting or anywhere else. The hiss went away when recirculated air was selected, but the recirc door still wouldn’t move. I found no vacuum leak between the engine and the funny-lookin’ vacuum reservoir, nor any leak in the reservoir itself. Both other buttons on the control panel worked briskly, so no leak between reservoir and button box; the leak at the button box, betwen the button box and the recirc door actuator, or in the actuator. I couldn’t get access to carry on my diagnosis, nor did I have the primary main important tool for that job, a factory service manual.
I was accustomed to buying the FSM for any car I bought. This was never a problem with any of the Chrysler products, nor with the Crapiece, nor with my ’71 Volvo 164. But sometime after building the ’71, Volvo decided FSMs are proprietary. It’s not that I couldn’t buy one, it’s that the price was $2,600 (I am not making this up; that was the actual quote). I intensely disfavour aftermarket books; they leave stuff out and get stuff wrong. I imagine the Bentley manuals are at least somewhat better than the useless waste-of-dead-trees Chilton/Haynes items, but then they could scarcely be worse.
What was more, the temperature slider didn’t exert much control over the amount of heat; the range was from very warm to hot. My previous 245 hadn’t a working heater, so I had no comparison basis, but I thought it would be lovely to have a full choice of cool-warm-hot. And to be able to open all four windows (and maybe even…close them again?). And to be able to use the handbrake, and get useful information—or any at all, really—from the oil pressure gauge, and stop hearing numerous rattles and other spurious noises from under the car. And since I was already that far into this flight of fancy, I decided it would be cool if the engine would idle at a normal speed…and idle down to that speed promptly when foot removed from accelerator…and otherwise like that.
And in the process of removing the previous owner’s white-blue-yellow gauge face overlays, I found the speedo cable just sort of lying there, more or less in place, but not actually secured to the speedometer head, just the remains of a short coil spring that seemed not to attach anywhere. I reckoned this was probably contributing to the palsied behaviour of the speedometer needle. The Volvo listserv nerds explained the PO had removed the cable carelessly and not bothered repairing it. Whee!
28 November: I got an inspection report and estimate from the highly regarded independent Volvo garage I’d taken the car to:
NOTE: Car is very rust-free
NOTE: All undercar rubber is in some state of deterioration. Not safety critical at this time, but cracking is visually observable.
Engine mount, LH–soggy. Replace. Part $30, Labour $90 to replace 2 mounts
Engine mount, RH–OK for now, quoted under labour anyway
Trans mount–soggy–Replace. Part $31.29, Labour $45
Suspension: Strut mounts, cracking. Parts $208, Labour $294, DOES NOT INCLUDE ALIGNMENT
Bushings, Control Arm, cracking. LR and RR part $31/ea Labour $157.50
Add’l bushing, strut mount: $24
Trailing Arm Bushing–replace–both sides: Labour $226.80
Torque Rod Bushings–replace Labour $112.50
Parts: Trailing Arm Bushing $64.20
Parts: Torque Rod Bushings $120.00
Tailgate harness, replace, labour: $180
Parts: $100
Disassemble/repair 3 door window regulators, labour: $225.00
Misc parts for above: $50.00
Repair wire to oil sender: Labour: $150
Possible Sender, if needed part cost: $124
Heater Control Valve, part: $100
Labour: $90
Parking brake sticks “on”, labour: $159.60
Parts if needed: Cable $100
Labour if cable needed: $75
Brake booster bleeds down after 3-4 minutes after shutdown: Booster itself
has small leak. Used booster $100 or reman $275
—Above is work not yet authorised. Below is work already completed—
Engine vacuum hoses misrouted, distributor vacuum advance/retard disconnected. Reconnected/rerouted and set base idle. If engine continues to hang at high speed between gears, CIS motor probably at fault. Recommend against used. New part is expensive.
Exhaust mounted improperly, numerous points of contact w/body. Corrected as much as possible, reduced noise.
Fuel pump mount assembled incorrectly, making contact w/body. Corrected, reduced noise.
So I owed them $290 or so. Not so awful, but the whole shemozzle was $1,419.49 in parts and $2,215.50 in labour and $545.74 in tax, for a grand total of $4,180.73. Eep! Clearly I’d managed to hose myself with the aid of the VW salesman. I had much of the work done, and tried to walk off the sharp, shooting pains in my wallet region. Also I decided new rule: no more Ebay cars.
Not very many days later—because that’s the time scale this whole experience went on— I noticed a popping exhaust leak noise from under the hood under hard acceleration. I took it back to the independent Volvo garage. They kept the car two days, told me they’d found and replaced two snapped-off manifold studs which had required drilling and Heli-Coiling, charged me a considerable but fair amount of money, and wished me well. I went out to the parking lot, started the car, and thought I still heard a little “pft-pfft-pfft” exhaust leak, though I couldn’t be sure over the din of the engine. The service advisor listened and said that if it should turn out to be a leak, I should bring the car back. Good enough for me.
Shortly after that, I drove the car from Toronto to the suburbs of Washington, DC; I was working (at large) for a vehicle lighting-related small business there, and an on-site visit was required. About 100 miles outside of Toronto, the popping noise came back. On arrival, I called the Toronto shop. Oh, yeah, we were wondering if you were gonna call, they said. We got a bad run of Elring [OE brand -DS] gaskets for that application. We’ve had to redo two other B21FT exhaust manifold gasket jobs because of those gaskets. Bring it back when you get back and we’ll take care of it for ya”.
Very good, but over the next week, the leak got louder and louder, went full-time, and the popping was joined at high RPM by a hair-raising teakettle shriek of escaping gas. The boost dropped to zero, and the interior of the car began to fill with exhaust. This was unsafe, and not conducive to selling the car, which I was trying to do. Not only because I wanted out from under it, but because what I wanted from it, it couldn’t offer; Bill didn’t fit in the car.
He’s 6-foot-4 (193 cm) and 280 pounds (127 kg)—tall, okeh, though not enormous—but anything longer than a 15-minute trip was miserable for him. It wasn’t just a matter of the seat not going far enough back, though there was that; everything was in the wrong place. The coin tray hit his left knee. The console cramped his left foot. The armrest hit his right knee. The door pocket got in the way of his right foot. There was nowhere to put his left elbow, so he had to hold his left hand with his right. And on and on and on. Every time he moved even a couple inches, he smacked into something. Said he felt much more confined than he did in the LeBaron, actually physically claustrophobic: “I cram myself in and then that’s it, no further movement is possible”. Strange, since the Swedes aren’t known for being short or small, but there it was.
I called the Toronto shop, thanked them for agreeing to replace the defective gasket on my return, but said that I couldn’t safely make it back to Toronto with the car. The owner of the place immediately said “Have it fixed down there; we’ll refund our work when you get back.” Slightly taken aback at the lack of resistance, I asked whether he wanted me to follow any special procedures, take any pictures, get any statement from the US garage, save old parts, anything like that. He said “No. Are you lying to me?” I said “No.” He said “Well, then I trust you.” So far, so good.
But I still had to get the car fixed. There was a small shop in the same industrial park as my employer. Place was named for its owner, who was a master diagnostician, a fine judge of technician competence, and a concert pianist—no foolin’. The appointment was made for Thursday, but when I pulled up to the shop (car sounding like a mufflerless lawn mower) and went in, the owner was ashen-faced and barely able to speak. His office manager had got in a horrible crash that morning while taking a longtime customer to work. Jaws of life, car sawed in half, office manager okeh, customer fractured pelvis. He asked me to come back the next day; I was happy to oblige.
So that was Friday, then. I dropped off the car at 8 and walked across the car park to work. At 10:45, my phone rang. It was Bob, over at the shop. “Mr. Stern, we need to show you something”.
Back across the car park, what they showed me dropped my jaw. Everything had been removed from the right side of the block, to reveal two old broken studs and no new ones. There were crude punch marks in the stub of one of the broken studs, as though someone had made a half-attempt to remove it. There was nothing wrong with the gaskets; they simply hadn’t been clamped, for there was nothing to clamp them. I had been charged for essentially no work at all.
The tech informed me, and I agreed, that drilling broken studs in an installed head is fraught with risk, especially in an aluminum head. If the drill went astray or seized and snapped, the head would have to be removed and either repaired at a machine shop or replaced with a remanufactured item. Whiskers drooping and thoroughly peeved at the Toronto shop, I returned to work. So did the pianist and his crew.
5:00 came and went. No call.
5:15 came and went. No call.
5:25 came and went. No call. The shop closed at 5:30 sharp.
At 5:28, my phone rang. “Come pick it up.” As I walked into the shop, the tech got in the car, started it and backed it out. It ran more quietly than I’d ever heard it. They only charged me 5 hours, and they gave me all the old gaskets and studs in a plastic bag to show to the Toronto
shop.
The car ran vastly better than ever: much quieter and smoother, and much stronger with all the exhaust reaching the turbocharger. I ran various mind-movies of how to approach the Toronto shop, but I really didn’t get it: what motivated them to do this kind of nonjob? It couldn’t have been greed, or they’d have simply called for a much juicier head swapout. Perhaps bad communication between an unscrupulous tech and the service writer, who bought the bad-new-gasket story from the tech without checking? I don’t recall the details of the resolution. I think the Toronto shop paid up without much of any backtalk, which makes me think they had a tech gone bad.
I’d put up ads for the car, and auctions, asking something like $7,000. Pristinely clean 245 Turbos are worth more in salt country than down south, everybody said who saw the car, and so I thought I’d see what interest there might be. Got a fairly steady stream of enquirors, but no solid bites. One evening while perusing Hemmings in my hotel room, I saw an ad for a ’79 Chevrolet Caprice Classic, very loaded—350/4bbl engine, F41 suspension, Posi-Traction, gauge package, Comfortron HVAC, sunroof, 2-tone black over silver, red interior, top-spec seats, fancy wheels, etc—with super low miles, for $3,250. I called to learn I’d missed it by less than a day. Sigh. Just as well, I supposed at the time; I’d’ve had to figure out how to juggle the logistics of a car-for-sale in DC and a bought one in…Ohio, it might’ve been, or Indiana, and all that.
While I had the run of the company car park, I took all the photos you see here of the car. I had thought them lost and gone forever, but the Internet Archive had about 75 per cent of them from all the way back in 2003 when I put them up on a personal web page.
I drove the 245 back up to Toronto. It ran reasonably well on that trip. But after the professional mixture/idle/timing adjustment I got done, a new and very disturbing problem showed up on cold start, the car immediately began running roughly and spewing black smoke. It would clear up after a minute or two, when it seemed to lean out to the correct mixture. I knew little about the ’85 K-Jetronic system’s cold-engine enrichment setup, but something was obviously pushing things way, far too rich. I thought perhaps the cold-start injector might be inappropriately active, so I disconnected it before the next cold startup. No change at all, the car still started right up and immediately ran rich/rough.
The apposite nerds on the Volvo listserv suggested a heavy concentration of fuel injector cleaner. I couldn’t find anything decent in Toronto—no Techron, no 44K, none of that, just machts-nichts moneywastes in colourful bottles at Canadian Tire. So I poured in three quarts of lacquer thinner, which contains a savoury brew of acetone, xylene, and methyl ethyl ketone. This did nothing.
There’s a mixture adjustment on the K-Jetronic fuel distributor. It takes a 3 mm hex key and a very light touch, for it is highly sensitive. Everything everywhere about this system warns never to turn the adjustment very much. I turned it as much as ⅓ turn in each direction from its origin without acceptable results. I did a quick ‘n’ dirty check on the constant idle system as noted by the shop: I pulled its fuse, started the engine, then reinstalled the fuse with the engine running—whereupon the CIS immediately began trying to control the engine idle, so that checked out.
One night after pulling into an underground parking space and smelling/hearing/feeling the car idling rough and running rich again. I lost my patience and my temper. I stopped the engine, seized my long-stem T-handle hex key, flung open the hood, and cranked the mixture adjusting screw a full turn-and-a-half leanwards. As expected, the car refused to start at this setting. It would fire, but immediately stall.
I turned the adjustor half a turn richward and tried again; the car started immediately. No smoke, and substantially less roughness. Tasting victory, I did a SWAG adjustment on the idle stop screw, verified O2 sensor operation, and shut down for the night. The car wasn’t warm enough to do final adjustments.
No time to faff around under the hood before I needed to use the car for a crosstown trip the next morning, so I hopped in and turned the key. It started up without a trace of the over-rich condition and ran much better than it had in the three months I’d owned it. The idle was still off a little; a trace of surge remained and it stalled once after I disengaged the clutch to stop for a traffic light.
Back from across town with the engine nice and warm, I flipped open the hood and gave the mixture adjustor an almost imperceptible nudge richward. The last trace of surge immediately disappeared. Good enough for me! That experience provided the seed crystal for a new “Psalm 240” I wrote:
The 240 is my transport; I shall not walk.
You maketh me to lie down in green coolant;
you leadeth me to boil out the radiator.
You runneth on coal (or so it seemeth when the warmup regulator faileth).
You leadeth me in the paths of the rightmost lane for safety’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of car payments, I will fear no S80, for thou art with me; thy Chrysler distributor and thy York compressor, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a trial before me in the presence of thy dead blower motor.
Thou anointest my garage floor with oil; thy starter runneth on.
Surely Hondas and Subarus shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in the garage with my 240 forever.
Now, A 245 has two wiring harnesses routed through the left and right tailgate hinges. These supply power to the backglass defogger, licence plate lights, and rear wiper. The wires break after many years of flexing each time the tailgate is opened or closed. On 22 December I went to install a set of replacement tailgate harnesses—Scan-Tech items I’d bought from one of the two independent Volvo places I knew of in Toronto. I took apart the headliner and tailgate trim panel, and compared existing original harnesses to replacements.
Incorrect terminals would have been easy enough to fix with crimp-on replacements, but the new harnesses’ wires were very much thinner than the originals, and one of the harnesses had a cheesy oops, this wire isn’t thick enough to feed the defog grid without catching on fire, so we’ll cram an extra wire into the one terminal construction. Yuck, no; this was not a job I wanted to do twice. I would have to buy genuine harnesses or make my own, and this confirmed my perception that Scan-Tech parts (a prominent aftermarket brand for Volvos) are uniformly inferior. I already knew to reject their headlamp-shaped trinkets which, like most all aftermarket headlamps, are nowhere near OE levels of quality, durability, or performance. But a simple 2-wire harness made completely wrong…C’mon.
On my birthday in late January 2003, I advertised the car again. Among the defects I listed were Passenger front door storage pocket has a 2″ × 2″ chunk kicked out of it (happened when we were trying to see if Bill would fit in the car…) and Bun warmers (seat heaters) don’t work; switch light comes on, but no heat results and Oil pressure gauge does not work (pressure was tested at the engine and is quite healthy). On the other side of the ledger was the car’s utter lack of rust as well as one month ago: new brake pads and rotors all around; new suspension bushings, new driveshaft centre bearing and hanger, new Pirelli Winter Ice Direzzionale tires, new OE tailgate harnesses and otherwise like that.
I pulled the recherché Carello and Cibié headlamps and installed carefully-chosen sealed beams; yes, it really is true that certain of the old plain tungsten sealed beams put out more and better-focused light than some halogen sealed beams.
On March 18, 2003, almost exactly five months and many dollars after I bought it, the buyer and I converged at Buffalo airport. I signed over the title, and received I think $5,250. He drove the car home to Florida—I should’ve left it in North Carolina—and I caught one or another kind of transport back across the border to Toronto.
Next week I’ll tell about that truck I mentioned swapping the LeBaron’s CD player into.
E-Bay vehicles are almost always crap or sold by shameless liars .
I thought you hated seal beams ? .
-Nate
I hate bad headlamps of whatever description.
I like good headlamps of whatever description.
Now I don’t feel quite as bad for not hating sealed beams as bad as I probably should… I don’t have access to a goniophotometer or other laboratory equipment, but have had a few old skool sealed beams that weren’t too shabby, in my subjective opinion. And nope, I’m not delusional and thinking that these are better than any modern light source, but they do have some redeeming qualities. Being that I’ve always held an interest in this era in automotive lighting, I wish I could find more objective info on what’s good and what’s bad in the different form factors.
Now, are there any sealed beam lamps you would actually feel comfortable driving behind?
One issue with sealed beams is that as soon as the bulb burns out you’ll have to replace the entire headlamp*, and if you like the one you had (or want to match the one on the other side) you’ll have to buy one of the same brand and type, if they’re still available. Soon after buying my first car which had quad rectangular sealed beams, I swapped out the weak non-halogen low beams for Hella euro-spec H4 lights, but found US-spec halogen sealed beams (GE or Sylvania, don’t remember) to work well very well, especially when aimed downward slightly.
* The exception I remember were the briefly available Cibie BOBI lamps which were US-legal sealed beams that nonetheless had replaceable bulbs, with a glass capsule built into the headlamp that surrounded the bulb so the rest of the reflector was still enclosed even when changing the bulb making it technically a sealed beam. These may have used different bulbs rather than H4, don’t remember, and recall they were only available in 7″ round or 200mm rectangular single sizes, not the low beams used in quad setups. These were available in the early 1980s and I encouraged my brother to buy a set of the rectangular ones. They were a slight improvement over the factory sealed beams but not as good as my Hella euro/ECE lamps. Whether that was because of having to meet US regs or because single combined low/high beam lamps are harder to get good beam spreads from than separate low and high beam lamps, I don’t know. I do recall the single rectangular lamps had a reputation as the worst of the four sealed beam sizes then available.
I generally see that as one of the benefits of sealed beams; you get a shiny new reflector and lens whenever you replace one, and at a reasonable cost. I do have a couple of brands and types that I do favor, and just purchase them NOS/NORS on eBay. In fact, I do purchase all of mine that way, as it has been a number of years since anything worth buying has been on the shelves at regular auto parts stores… I believe all products from all brands are now made by the same supplier in China, and I generally see disappointment as soon as I take a new production unit out of the box. If it somehow passes muster by physically looking at it, the disappointment sets in as soon as you light it up.
I thought the definition of sealed beam was a hermetically sealed lamp (or bonded together on more modern halogens) with a non-replaceable bulb?
I remember the BOBI, only seemed to be available around here for a couple of years, never tried them myself as I already had Z-Beams at the time.
Probably without meaning to, you have very nicely illustrated one of the big, vexatious problems of vehicle headlighting: the light drivers want isn’t the same as the light they need. The difficulty is, what we feel like we’re seeing isn’t what we’re actually seeing. The human visual system is a lousy judge of how well it’s doing. “I know what I can see!” seems (and feels) reasonable, but it doesn’t square up with reality because we humans are just not well equipped to accurately evaluate how well or poorly we can see—or how well a headlamp works. Our subjective impressions tend to be very far out of line with objective, real measurements of how well we can(‘t) see.
The primary factor that drives subjective ratings of headlamps is foreground light, that is light on the road surface close to the vehicle, which is almost exclusively what those Hella H4s provided, and also what you were increasing by lowering the aim of your sealed beams—at the steep cost of significantly reduced seeing distance. Foreground light is almost irrelevant; it barely even makes it onto the bottom of the list of factors that determine a headlamp’s actual safety performance. A moderate amount of foreground light is necessary so we can use our peripheral vision to keep track of the lane lines and potholes, and keep our focus up the road where it should be, but too much foreground light works against us: it draws our gaze downward even if we consciously try to keep looking far ahead, and the bright pool of light causes our pupils to constrict, which destroys our distance vision. All of this while creating the feeling that we’ve got “good” lights. It’s not because we’re lying to ourselves or fooling ourselves or anything like that, it’s because our visual systems just don’t work the way it feels like they work.
And it’s a safety double-whammy with headlamps that produce just about nothing but foreground light: a wash of light close to the vehicle, but no concentrated hot spot to throw light down the road where you need it, so you get severely deficient seeing distance…yet it really feels like you’ve got “good” lights!
This is one of the things I mean when I kvetch about my expertise being something of a curse: when driving at night, the battle between comfortable lighting and safe lighting is extra-loud for me. If I didn’t know what I know, I could just go “I like these headlamps; they’re great” and zoom blissfully along.
A 5¾” (small round) or 165 × 100mm (small rectangular) sealed beam puts about the same amount of light on the road as a same-size H4 lamp, but it feels like the H4 is “way brighter” because most of its light is in the foreground (with minimal distance reach), versus the sealed beam’s heavy priority on down-the-road punch (with minimal foreground and spread light).
Which is the better headlamp depends on quality of engineering and manufacture—a good H4 lamp is better than a bad sealed beam, and vice versa, and there are no longer any even marginally-good sealed beams in production, but there have also been very few good H4 lamps in the smaller sizes. And lamp aim is a bigger determinant of how safely we can see at night than which headlamps we’re running.
In the end, low beams—any of them, all of them—are severely inadequate to the task we ask of them. They are inherently incapable of providing anywhere near adequate seeing distance at the speeds we routinely drive.
The Cibié BOBI lamps were as you describe—large round and large rectangular only. They went through several iterations in their brief market life, which was ended when the US sealed beam industry screamed bloody murder about them; NHTSA dutifully stepped into line and declared that “sealed beam” means an indivisible lens-reflector-lightsource. Early BOBIs used a modified H4: no blacktop (not needed with the BOBI’s architecture/construction) and with a ridge in the bulb seat and a matching notch out of the bulb base. Later BOBIs used an ordinary H4.
Well, hey, look on the bright (zing!) side: you know what a goniophotometer is, and what you might do with it if you had access!
Yes, there have existed sealed beams, mostly from Japan, with remarkably good performance when considered in proper context; that is, we don’t expect them to compete head-to-head with technology forty-five years newer. The sealed beam headlamp, writ large, merits its own article(s) here, and I’ll likely get round (and rectangular) to it after my COAL series ends.
Feel free to shoot me an email, if you like (I’m not hard to find on the web) if you’d like to kick around a discussion on what’s good and bad in particular lamp formats.
Yes, and thank ya for the offer, which I will gladly take you up on!
I (of course) think a deeper dive on sealed beams would be very appropriate here. I know it may not be everyone’s cuppa, but the fact remains that a large percentage of the vehicles featured on this site are or were equipped with this flavor of lighting tech, plus there were more tweaks and changes between 1940 and when they fell out of favor, than many people realize.
Fair enough .
Me too .
-Nate
Another great Daniel Stern story! My childless aunt and uncle from MD met us at the beach in NC every year when I was growing up. They always seemed so cool, hip and monied. They arrived one year in a new 1985 Volvo Turbo wagon, silver with black leather. I was completely blown away by that car. We had arrived (eventually) in our 1979 240D, which seemed quite agrarian in comparison.
eBay cars may be a pronounced hazard (though I have been quite lucky with my $2500 1988 Jag cabriolet I wrote up), but the Volvo was 17 years old when you got it. None of the problems/failures/repairs sound extraordinary for a 17 year old turbocharged European car that has probably been driven enthusiastically.
I think I would have skipped a lot of the repairs that were not safety-related, but good for you for passing it on in better shape than you found it. That’s part of the fun too, if you can afford to do so.
A very big “if”, that last one! Sounds like your uncle and aunt’s car was very much like mine, only new (and under warranty).
Interesting a friend of mine bought a Volvo V40 or some such model it was nothing but trouble from the day she got it home and within 12 months the suspension was flogged out ok her road is a goat track steep corrugated gravel, she loves the way my Citroen makes it feel like paved highway but it was too much for her Volvo add in some electronic glitches and she went to a used import Toyota fielder still going strong after 5 years.
Friend of mine bought a V40 wagon for $40k new in ’99. Kept it fully serviced by dealer till ’98 when it had under 200K kms, and traded it in for $1000.
It had cost just short of $40K in service and repairs over that time. True story.
If the V40 was purchased in ’99 and sold in ’98, I can see how it would have developed some wear & tear…
Yes, now you mention it, it was either a rare Back To the Future Edition or I meant to type ’08. I’ll ask them tomorrow.
Our bought-new ‘99 S70 was a huge POS. We took a bath when we finally got rid of it in ‘03. But I loved that little monster.
Oh my, but these stories put a spring into my step on a Saturday morning – as in “Wow, look at all the problems I DON’T have with my cars today!”
You have described one of the worst experiences a car guy can have. Your red Super Mopar was at least right when you got it and was right when it was right (notwithstanding the time and money it took to keep it that way). Here is the car that you want to be right, that you think can be made to be right, if only you fix this. And this. Then this. And through it all, it never quite gets to right. I think this may be the actual worst car ownership experience a guy can have. At least you cut your losses.
Also, I have come to really dislike HVAC systems with vacuum controls. There is beauty in a simple cable. And even electric controls that can fail without screwing up the way your car runs. “Let’s use engine vacuum” is a phrase I wish had never been used in the engineering departments of vehicle manufacturers.
“Let’s use engine vacuum!” was reasonable and appropriate when there wasn’t much alternative because motors and actuators were giant, unwieldy things and there wasn’t much electricity to go around. I agree with you, there was no good excuse for continuing to use engine vacuum to operate accessories anywhere near as late as 1985.
(…and this…and this…and…hey, wait, didn’t I already fix this? Sigh, fine. And this, and this…and this…)
Was the “turbo lag” as bad on these cars as I remember it to be?
No. This car’s turbocharging was well modulated. It wasn’t anywhere near as binary as that on my Spirit R/T; there was no sudden-freight-train-from-behind effect at 2,700 rpm (or whatever).
That said, the driving experience was not enjoyable. A fair chunk of that was it being a handshift car in a congested city; the M46 is a lovely, very shiftable transmission, but pumping the clutch and twiddling the gear baton got tiresome, literally, in stop-and-go traffic. And even with high-class winter tires, it was not well suited to ice-slick roads. Despite the famous RWD Volvo tight turning radius—they can almost spin about their vertical axis, and every car should be like this—it was frustratingly difficult to negotiate the narrow, icy laneway and tight garage.
Man, this was cringe inducing! Makes me want to go out to the garage and hug my Toyotas. They may lack “soul” and “character” but they fulfill a car’s basic function: they start and run and take me where I want to go (that goes double for my 20 year old ES300). I love to read these kinds of stories, but I don’t want to live them.
Ahh, 240 door pockets. I borrowed my mom’s ‘86 for a few days around our wedding to haul visiting family, as both my wife and I had compact pickups at the time. Both driver side and passenger side door pockets succumbed to feet or shins within that short period of time, and neither I nor my father-in-law are very large. And the car was only 3 years old. I found a good selection of used door pockets at a local Volvo specialist, Volpar, and replaced them but as I recall they started cracking again within a few years. But other than instrument panel electrical woes, and the electric overdrive (and a couple of clutches) my mom’s wagon was pretty reliable for 24 years and 275K miles. It was not a turbo.
Those door pockets,,,a really bad design, hard plastic right where your feet or shins go when you get out of the car, or the door starts to close on you before you’re fully inside. I used to search the junkyards for replacements, didn’t matter what color they were, I’d just spray paint them blue to match my interior.
Oh, don’t ever trust the line about a car being previously owned by high-faluting professionals with high incomes – they’re always the most stingy tightarses in the economic firmament. How do you think they got their flash house and car in the first place, by being generous? Not bloody likely!
They screw over tradespeople, they don’t pay gardeners or babysitters properly, they fight with neighbours over two dollars of fencing, you name it, they don’t pay or do it as late as possible – and they keep car servicing to the absolute minimum till the warranty ends and thereafter do NONE whatsoever. And that’s further not helped by the selfish and mechanically unsympathetic way they drive their Euro brandmobiles, which is in a manner entirely in keeping with their attitude to anyone not themselves.
It may be that I speak from some embittering experience, with receipts concomittant.
Anyway, glad to hear you escaped the doctor’s turbo hearse with about half your money back. It can be worse!
Oh, you’re absolutely right—the rich and the wealthy didn’t get that way by spending money! I learnt that at the cater-waiter job and had it reinforced at the wrecking yard job, but I guess I took leave of learnt lessons when I bought this car.
I have been there Daniel, a number of times. The
Desire to have a complicated old vehicle fully
Functional outweighs sanity, and thousands of
Dollars later, you are still left with an old quasi
Functional car. Those days are done for me.
The siren song has led me onto the rocks too
Many times.
Too right!
Oh, so much familiar here. As the owner of a 1976 245 (so, non-turbo, but still K-jet) I can relate to just about all of the issues you identified with your 1985. Let’s just say that there’s a way to address each and every one of these things, but pity the person who has to do that on a car that they’re actually depending upon to serve as daily transportation.
In other words, I can understand your need to move on within 5 months.
Today, most folks would pay good money for that car with its non-rusted body and then slowly deal with the problems. As you know, there are solutions to all of that miscellaneous stuff (I am right now installing a new heater control valve in mine), so long as the body into which you are installing the solutions is not too rusty.
What amazes me is that these cars garner such big bucks. Seems that there’s a never-ending supply of buyers who have nostalgia for bricks, and I can only hope that they have the patience to deal with the never-ending issues on an antique car. That said, if one is willing and able to tinker, 240-series Volvos are simple to work on for the do it yourselfer. It’s just that the tinkering is constant.
Oh, and I could do those engine and transmission mounts for a 6 pack and maybe 45 minutes tops. Could save you at least $125 on that. 😉
Excellent story!
Another trip down the rabbit hole of automotive pain a la Daniel Stern! Your escapades make the few problems I’ve run into because of automotive lust/bad choices/etc., seem almost inconsequential. I can hardly wait for the next episode! 🙂
Ah Mr Stern, another fine work. Your Volvos sound like they’d be best of friends with my magnificent 1989 Ford Sierra. I paid NZ$3,495 for it, and 7 years and $15,000 later it’s now worth approximately $1.55 (excluding tax naturally). Runs beautifully when it runs, which it currently doesn’t due to the viscous fan being dead and made of unobtanium. Like Jon says above, it’s a siren song, whispering sweet nothings in my ear whilst extracting the contents of my wallet. Why do we listen to the sweet siren, why? I hope next week’s COAL truck was a much more satisfying proposition!
Ouch! Talk about self-flagellation Daniel!
I had two 1980 Volvo 240 DLs, both bought used, and for a short while, both were in my possession at the same time. The first one though was purchased when it was 2 years old with only 31,000 miles. It was the absolute base model, a 2-door with 4-speed manual (no overdrive), no a/c (though it was added later), and no power steering. It was the last year for the flat hood and 7-inch single sealed-beam headlights.
The second was a wagon purchased in 1989 with well over 100K miles, electric overdrive, power steering, and a/c.
We kept the sedan for nearly 21 years and an estimated 245K miles (the VDO odometer became intermittent toward the end). It had many of the problems you described, but spread out over the whole ownership period — the heater control valve, blower motor, many mufflers and tailpipes, and the most expensive single item, the fuel distributor. Plus encroaching rust as the years went by, despite living in comparatively mild Virginia.
The wagon was bought with several problems, but I was able to fix most of them with junkyard parts. But as luck would have it, the blower motor went on that one as well.
Still, my least reliable cars were purchased new — 1975 VW Rabbit and 1990 Mercury Sable, both with all the usual maladies for these cars (except I had the Vulcan V6 in the Sable instead of the head-gasket devouring Essex).
Great stuff Daniel.
I have one suggestion only here. After being in the auto repair biz for almost 50 years now, it is a tough game. Techs are weasels, owners of shops can be weasels, the customer always pays the price for fraud and deception.
If your car can run semi ok, (and you know it needs work) consider getting a second or even third diagnosis before agreeing to any work…Some shops can spot a trusting, or naive soul a mile off and thrive on padded estimates and work never performed.
I look at this like going to a Dr. for a serious health issue. I ALWAYS get a second or third opinion from a Dr. who is in no way affiliated with the first.
Reading your list of repairs, and the charges for them made me wince, and swear at the same time. Bastards!
Never bought a thing automotive off the Bay, and probably never will. Life has taught me to think like Fox Mulder: “Trust no one.”
God bless and thanks again amigo.
Excellent advice. I’m very fortunate – near the old house (years ago) I had a Romanian guy who was aces with car repair. Not the cheapest, but his work was always stellar. For the past 20 I’ve been fortunate to have a repair small operation right near the new house. I consider it a blessing.
I ran into the same problems on the retractable headlamps on my 1987 Honda Accord, as you did on this Volvo’s tailgate.
My Renault 12 wagon solved this problem but utilizing spring loaded brass contacts to deliver power to the rear defrost, license plate and reverse lamps. The only downside to the approach was that the rear defrost stopped working when the tailgate was open, and the license/reverse lamps went out. The setup looked exactly like the Jamb Tac product now being sold by Painless Wiring for hot rods.
Well that’s disappointing, all that work to lose money. Great story though, and probably a better long term plan to find a roomier car than to torture Bill.
Having spent all day yesterday fixing electric damper doors in our Caravan, I still have some appreciation for vacuum powered damper doors.
I also still have this affliction with fancy foreign cars. I took one of my Jags to a “specialist” shop to get an estimate on suspension work. They suggested a comprehensive inspection and work needed write up. They came up with multiple pages of suggested repairs that totaled 10,000 dollars! Such as replacing cam cover gaskets for 2,000 dollars! As well as oil pan, differential seals, rack and pinion etc. Yes, there was some seepage on those gaskets ( no leaks on garage floor) but there were shreds of rubber sticking out of the suspension arm pivots. It cost me 130 dollars for this “estimate” and they never mentioned the suspension bushings!
It is very hard to find a an honest, competent shop. I went to another mechanic that had bought the shop when the former owner retired. He had the decency to just refuse to work on my car upfront. He had no interest in working for time and parts, or any arrangement. At least he didn’t waste time for either of us. If you like this type car, either buy new ones with warranty or work on them yourself. Who can afford to pay a shop for crappy results?
Fords may have a crappy design built well, but that’s my choice. I’ve got four Fords right now and they have been quite good. I’ve also got three ailing Jaguars. Anybody interested?
I think your series should be called confessions of a headlight obsessive. Also a series of unfortunate vehicles.
I have had fewer major repainds in 30 years than your Volvo in 30 weeks. My worst was a purchase of somebody else’s project car, an 81 VW Scirocco with a 16V swap and some over ambitious headlights. After a year of fixing the details and replacing a melted headlight switch, I sold it and replaced it with a bone stock 84 Jetta. It still never left me stuck apart form the time I got ham fisted on a wet road and bent the front suspension.
That’s on the docket for after this COAL series ends.
I only put about 90K on 3 BMW E21s/320i’s, with the much maligned K jetronic. While I found the cars lacking, I only had 2 problems with K jet during that time. I had a warm up regulator that made it do odd things, until warmed up, used replacement cured it, and an out of adjustment AFM. But the AFM was stupid easy to adjust, disconnect the O2 from the ECU, then adjust that little 3MM socket screw with the looooooong allen wrench to ~.5V. That sets it up ever so slightly rich on cold start, barely, but runs perfect, and fine on the rest. The calibration was right for the cars, but the initial set point (at over 100K) was not.
Headlights. I’m waiting. While Daniel surely knows more than I do, and I agree with much of his thoughts, I’m headstrong enough to think he’s wrong in some areas, even if very correct in most.