Ok, I liked silver but white is well pulled off Also facking YES on the bumperless. My landlord suggested and it got me thinking - took the bumper off and it looked great! Reminds me of mk3 escorts and how great they look without.

Wheels do look nice white man. White wheels look well against the colour of your car.

Deffo smooth the rear end man.

Cheers, I love the wheels I missed the white leos for their colour

The bumperless look is rather nice, ahad a lot of 'escort-esque' comments. I might have a play on photoshop see if i can find something that looks good.

OK

I started on tackling the rust yesterday. Didn't get very far. Found that where the wheel well joins the rear valance was pretty crumbly so dug most of it out and was ready to clean it all back to clean metal when i found i had no wire left in the welder. I'll get some tomorrow and finish the fix. Then it's the o/s sill, hole in the back and pretty crusty along the bottom where it meets the inner sill.

While the welder's out I'll sort the centre exhaust hanger, doin it 340 style as there's no centrebox.

Do my head bolts need retigtening?

A mate of mine who claims to know a lot about car, said that head bolts ALWAYS need retightening after 500 mile and again at 3k mile. I'm not convinced myself like.

Got some new plugs to stick in but need to buy some feeler guages first. Shopping list for tomorrow grows...

Thanks for looking,
Matt

Hi Matt,

I don't know about 3k but it is always good idea to do re-tightening.
Since you have a turque wrench, why don't you have a good use?

Make sure to use etch or Zinc primer so that rust won't come back.

Cheers
Atchi

Thing is i dunno what to tighten it too, when fitting the head it was 20nm then 60nm then a quarter of a turn. So what do i set the torque wrench to?
Think i've done about 750 mile so far. Runs lovely now, think the heat may have freed up the bi-metallic aux air valve as it idles much better now
Checked all the front suspension with the torque wrench, as i never torqued any of them, just tightened.

Have got some red oxide primer, that's what i've used for now. Think I'll get some etch stuff as i've seen that used a lot.

I've welded the gear linkages onto the torque tube, think i was just a bit too far back as when you select 4th the lever just hits teh reverse bracket screw, with no bracket there. Still, it works better than my current set, 3rd gear is becoming harder and harder to engage, think it muist be wearing the plates i welded in away

I'll grab photos tomorrow

Oh I see, bolts are angled...
That will be difficult as it will have stretch in bolts now.
I did have a digital angle torque wrench which cost £1500 but I have now send it back to the supplier.
I sell top end of torque wrench as distributer so I have all of the knowledge in a book. I shall read through it and see if I can find out for you.

Cheers
Atchi

Matt, follow the green book spec mate. It's there for a reason, Volvo knew what they were doing!

aye i did follow the green book when doing it, 20,60,quarter turn. It says nothing about re-tightening. Of course i want to take every precaution to keep the motor running good like

Matt,
Generally speaking you should not retighten head bolts if "stretch" bolts have been used together with angle tightening rather than pure torque values.

The whole idea of a retighten was to "take up" any slack caused by gasket settlement and bolt stretch - bearing in mind that using a torque is not actually as accurate with respect to clamping force as you might think ( slightest dirt in threads, oil, not oiled, temperature will all affect resistance to bolt turning and hence clamping pressure for a given torque value).

Gasket technology has moved on and with "waisted" stretch bolts used, clamping pressure is now more of a calculation based on thread progression for a given bolt rotation ( ie, x deg of turn for a given ramp angle of thread will give y progression (actually the bolt shank stretches) and a quantifiable clamping pressure).

If you slacken a "Stretched" bolt you would have to replace it with a new one to reproduce the same level of accuracy.

Follow the advice of the gasket manufacturer - but with new stretch head bolts and a Volvo gasket there is no need to retighten. On a B14 however, without stretch bolts and torque value tightening only it would be quite correct to retighten at 500/600 mls.

What you should do at 500 mls. or so is to retension the cambelt (bung out, slacken tensioner, hand rotate engine two full turns, retighten tensioner, bung back)

Mac.

just for i would add this is here, look how ridiculous dthe head bolts are on the f7r!!

and the williams also has stretch bolts

Cheers mate! So probably not needed then.

Yep I really should re tension the cambelt, not having that slip a tooth now.

Now that is rediculous!! think what a garage would charge you if they actually did all that for you!!

When I did mine the computer in the garage had a similar procedure as the f7r for the B19 I think or the high compression b200, I could be wrong but i was glad it wasnt mine!!

just bought some pretty things for the car, Spend a few quid more than i should be at the moment Nowt amazing but i'll wait till its here to tell

Off to tackle some rust :/ I have a nice big hole between the wheel well and rear valance to plate and then the holes in the sills
MOT next week still need to get tracking done, better horn button, replace a couple of rear bulbs and fix this rust!