mini ****ty update.
I got a window, door handle and wagon springs from Ken yesterday down in SF. Figured I wanted to be able to actually close my car up so we got the window in today. I didn't know what was wrong with the driver's side door handle... turns out the linkage just came undone. So we popped that back in. And then threw the wagon springs in.
The rear fender arches were pretty much right in line with the tires and after the wagon springs there's a solid ~2in gap. It matches the front in terms of wheel gap. It's not a huge, drastic difference but it's notably higher than it used to be.
****ty pictures but pictures nonetheless:
before:
after:
bonus pic: tylor cleaning the glass out of the window run channel:
So Bret told me yesterday that the window was broken by his ex (who was driving/"financing" the car) because she locked the keys in it while it was running. Tylor was trying to clean out the run channel with a screwdriver when I yanked the channel out of the door and brushed all the glass out. Then I showed him the trick of using soapy water in a spray bottle to lubricate the metal "frame" for the run channel so you could get it back in easily. I turned around to scrape some stickers off of the rear glass and when I turned back he had the new window in and working mint.
Also apparently this car has quite a history of being passed around. According to Bret...
Noah got this car for essentially nothing. He swapped the trans out (It's actually an 86, AW70 car) with the M47 from an '88. Noah did the maintenance on it while his then-wife was driving it. They got divorced and Noah kept the car. Then Bret got it for free from Noah. Bret did some work on it too (front end work, ball joints, new clutch) and made an agreement with his ex. She wasn't keeping up her side of the deal though and the car was being beat pretty badly. She was unable to keep up with the maintenance on it. Also she's living out of a Winnebago and stopped driving the Volvo for the most part.
When we went to Sebastopol to go get it, she was using it as a closet. The back seat and trunk were full of clothes and other knick-knacks.
Turns out too that it does have some sort of running issue. When it was idling cold today it bogged down a bit. It did respond to throttle though.
It has some problems and it's pretty beat on the outside but underneath it's pretty solid. The trans and driveline were all pretty good with the exception of the trailing arm bushings but no surprise there. The guibo seems pretty new. It did run really well when it was warmed up before I drove it home. Once I get the mounts in it (next weekend, hopefully) I'll have a better feel for what's happening and can go through and do a stage 0 on it.
