pat244ti
Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2002
- Location
- Santa Cruz CA
I figured this car is starting to deserve a project thread, so here it is.
[Also, sorry if it's a lot of reading, I like writing]
Back last February, I was on Facebook and got a message from a friend named Matt Kile I used to race stock cars with. He was working at a machine shop in San Jose at the time, and the tenant next to the machine shop passed away.
Apparently, the tenant that passed was a Volvo enthusiast. He left behind a stack of parts and a complete car at the shop for his brother to dispose of. The brother wanted no business trying to sell everything, so he told the other businesses and tenants around the building to come pick up what they would like.
Matt was curious as to the value of a few gauge clusters he grabbed, and he also let me know that the guy also was giving away the complete car - a 1979 262C. He decided to take the car himself, and his boss let him park it in front of the machine shop for a month or two until he found a good home for it. He was really pushing it on me but I was hesitant.
I decided to help him out with finding a home for it. I went on the different Lemons racing groups I am a part of. I had numerous interested parties, but due to the fact that the car had the PRV6 yanked out at some point in it's life in favor of a KJET B21F/bw55 combo, it somehow made it LESS desirable to the Lemons crowd. It had a BAR sticker for the engine conversion, but due to the lack of a title, along with rust potential, it was more than what most people who wanted a street car wanted to bite off.
Matt had enough with storing the car and told me he was going to send it off the the crusher. I decided to step in and use one of my AAA tows to get it from San Jose to Santa Cruz. After some convincing to the tow truck driver that in fact I had driven the car to Matt's shop, where it broke down [lies] he dragged it over Highway 17 for me.
I got it back to where I store my cars. It was grungy, so I hit it with the pressure washer. The violent stream of water ripped the vinyl right off the roof, exposing many fist sized holes where rust had eaten its way though.
It sat in the lot for a month. Although I had locked it, someone kept breaking in to the car and sleeping in it, as evidenced by the now reclined seats ; as well as possibly doing drugs in it as evidenced by the dirty napkins with an unknown substance and blood left in the car. Santa Cruz has a skyrocketing homeless and mental illness problem. The squatter also stole the crown emblems I had removed from the C pillar and placed on the center console.
Months before, in a separate incident, a different squatter had literally built a "tarp fort" between my 244 and 245 Lemons race cars. He even had a campfire about a foot in front of the 244. I actually caught that guy in action, which resulted in an immediate eviction.
So I decided it would be best to start stripping it it's reasonably valued parts off of the car [including the seats and glass to deter more squatting] to take to the Davis meet, where I was met with much disappointment when the only part that sold was the beltline trim.
Sometime during the summer, I caught this post
https://forums.tbforums.com/showthread.php?t=334470
So now, I had a B6304S & trans I had no idea what I was going to do with. Part of me wanted to put it in my truck. Part of me was wondering what the hell I was doing cluttering up my life with free Volvo crap.
Around this time, I met Moses. I know he hangs out on here, I just don't know his screen name. Moses was looking for a good gas tank for his 242 on the Facebook TB group. I had a spare, and told him not just to come down and pick it up, but that we could change it out that night on one of the lifts at my work.
He came down in his 242, which had just survived a cross country trip requiring changing out the fuel filter constantly due to the rusty junk gas tank strapped to the back of it. We put the tank in. He gave me more money than I had asked, and on top of it he brought me down 2 giant hunks of corned beef he smoked himself. It was delicious. What a dude.
I continued to hold on to the Bertone for months, threatening to crush it. I had more people claiming interest in it but no takers. One day, I had to relinquish it's spot in the yard for a G60 Corrado my boss gave me as payment for work, which I was going to fix and sell to a VW friend. So I loaded the Bertone on the trailer to bring back to work in Campbell to put in place of the Corrado, where I was either going to cut the poor Italian/Swede into pieces, or skip that altogether and simply leave it in one of my bosses parking spots as some sort of practical joke since I was planning on leaving the job soon, but that seemed almost hard to do since I make active efforts to not be an *******.
Earlier in the year, Al [Megulon_7] and I had spent a ton of time together building the roll cage as well as other chassis prep on my rally car. At this time [November] I linked him up with another tech at the shop I was working at because that tech was given the task of finishing up an E36 convertible him and some friends were going to race in 24 Hours of Lemons races. Al built them a nice cage, and as I found out later my coworker upsold the cage to the tune of $1k to the rest of his teammates which honestly I thought was a dick move.
A few days later, Moses and his cousin Kayla came by my shop to say hello. We started talking about Lemons racing since the E36 was outside. Moses seemed genuinely interested in running Lemons. I really could not say no to Moses because he's a good dude.
Even though it seems like having two Lemons race cars in the stable would make this a non issue, I had a slight dilemma - one of them [my 244] I realized I really only trust two other people other than myself to this point to pilot it due to it's sentimental value - one of them being Rob [Volvorules] and the other my best friend Terry. My dad had ran it a few times, but I could barely even trust him behind the wheel of it. I put together the other Lemons car [the 245] for my dad and others new to road racing, including my brother in law. My brother in law is technically the owner of that car now, and I had become aware the open seats for it would be filled with his friends wanting to give crapcan racing a crack.
So instead of crushing or leaving the Bertone for my boss to deal with, I talked with Al about caging it and making it into a Lemons car. Being in rough shape, it was an ideal Lemons car - on top of the fact the judges love seeing oddball/obscure/special edition cars "ruined" via crapcan racing.
The B6304S & AW30 I picked up in the summer would be the most fitting powertrain for it, seeing how the B21F was seized and installing a PRV6 [which the judges would love to see due to its unreliable notoriety] was honestly counterproductive. I can't afford to spend money or time on racing when I am certain we would be destined for failure.
Al was on board to do the fabricating bits, Moses was on board to feed us/get us baked/help out however he can and here I was plotting this out in my already busy head, coming up with ideas on how to build the first "true" Lemons car I've attempted.
[Also, sorry if it's a lot of reading, I like writing]
Back last February, I was on Facebook and got a message from a friend named Matt Kile I used to race stock cars with. He was working at a machine shop in San Jose at the time, and the tenant next to the machine shop passed away.
Apparently, the tenant that passed was a Volvo enthusiast. He left behind a stack of parts and a complete car at the shop for his brother to dispose of. The brother wanted no business trying to sell everything, so he told the other businesses and tenants around the building to come pick up what they would like.
Matt was curious as to the value of a few gauge clusters he grabbed, and he also let me know that the guy also was giving away the complete car - a 1979 262C. He decided to take the car himself, and his boss let him park it in front of the machine shop for a month or two until he found a good home for it. He was really pushing it on me but I was hesitant.
I decided to help him out with finding a home for it. I went on the different Lemons racing groups I am a part of. I had numerous interested parties, but due to the fact that the car had the PRV6 yanked out at some point in it's life in favor of a KJET B21F/bw55 combo, it somehow made it LESS desirable to the Lemons crowd. It had a BAR sticker for the engine conversion, but due to the lack of a title, along with rust potential, it was more than what most people who wanted a street car wanted to bite off.
Matt had enough with storing the car and told me he was going to send it off the the crusher. I decided to step in and use one of my AAA tows to get it from San Jose to Santa Cruz. After some convincing to the tow truck driver that in fact I had driven the car to Matt's shop, where it broke down [lies] he dragged it over Highway 17 for me.
I got it back to where I store my cars. It was grungy, so I hit it with the pressure washer. The violent stream of water ripped the vinyl right off the roof, exposing many fist sized holes where rust had eaten its way though.
It sat in the lot for a month. Although I had locked it, someone kept breaking in to the car and sleeping in it, as evidenced by the now reclined seats ; as well as possibly doing drugs in it as evidenced by the dirty napkins with an unknown substance and blood left in the car. Santa Cruz has a skyrocketing homeless and mental illness problem. The squatter also stole the crown emblems I had removed from the C pillar and placed on the center console.
Months before, in a separate incident, a different squatter had literally built a "tarp fort" between my 244 and 245 Lemons race cars. He even had a campfire about a foot in front of the 244. I actually caught that guy in action, which resulted in an immediate eviction.
So I decided it would be best to start stripping it it's reasonably valued parts off of the car [including the seats and glass to deter more squatting] to take to the Davis meet, where I was met with much disappointment when the only part that sold was the beltline trim.
Sometime during the summer, I caught this post
https://forums.tbforums.com/showthread.php?t=334470
So now, I had a B6304S & trans I had no idea what I was going to do with. Part of me wanted to put it in my truck. Part of me was wondering what the hell I was doing cluttering up my life with free Volvo crap.
Around this time, I met Moses. I know he hangs out on here, I just don't know his screen name. Moses was looking for a good gas tank for his 242 on the Facebook TB group. I had a spare, and told him not just to come down and pick it up, but that we could change it out that night on one of the lifts at my work.
He came down in his 242, which had just survived a cross country trip requiring changing out the fuel filter constantly due to the rusty junk gas tank strapped to the back of it. We put the tank in. He gave me more money than I had asked, and on top of it he brought me down 2 giant hunks of corned beef he smoked himself. It was delicious. What a dude.
I continued to hold on to the Bertone for months, threatening to crush it. I had more people claiming interest in it but no takers. One day, I had to relinquish it's spot in the yard for a G60 Corrado my boss gave me as payment for work, which I was going to fix and sell to a VW friend. So I loaded the Bertone on the trailer to bring back to work in Campbell to put in place of the Corrado, where I was either going to cut the poor Italian/Swede into pieces, or skip that altogether and simply leave it in one of my bosses parking spots as some sort of practical joke since I was planning on leaving the job soon, but that seemed almost hard to do since I make active efforts to not be an *******.
Earlier in the year, Al [Megulon_7] and I had spent a ton of time together building the roll cage as well as other chassis prep on my rally car. At this time [November] I linked him up with another tech at the shop I was working at because that tech was given the task of finishing up an E36 convertible him and some friends were going to race in 24 Hours of Lemons races. Al built them a nice cage, and as I found out later my coworker upsold the cage to the tune of $1k to the rest of his teammates which honestly I thought was a dick move.
A few days later, Moses and his cousin Kayla came by my shop to say hello. We started talking about Lemons racing since the E36 was outside. Moses seemed genuinely interested in running Lemons. I really could not say no to Moses because he's a good dude.
Even though it seems like having two Lemons race cars in the stable would make this a non issue, I had a slight dilemma - one of them [my 244] I realized I really only trust two other people other than myself to this point to pilot it due to it's sentimental value - one of them being Rob [Volvorules] and the other my best friend Terry. My dad had ran it a few times, but I could barely even trust him behind the wheel of it. I put together the other Lemons car [the 245] for my dad and others new to road racing, including my brother in law. My brother in law is technically the owner of that car now, and I had become aware the open seats for it would be filled with his friends wanting to give crapcan racing a crack.
So instead of crushing or leaving the Bertone for my boss to deal with, I talked with Al about caging it and making it into a Lemons car. Being in rough shape, it was an ideal Lemons car - on top of the fact the judges love seeing oddball/obscure/special edition cars "ruined" via crapcan racing.
The B6304S & AW30 I picked up in the summer would be the most fitting powertrain for it, seeing how the B21F was seized and installing a PRV6 [which the judges would love to see due to its unreliable notoriety] was honestly counterproductive. I can't afford to spend money or time on racing when I am certain we would be destined for failure.
Al was on board to do the fabricating bits, Moses was on board to feed us/get us baked/help out however he can and here I was plotting this out in my already busy head, coming up with ideas on how to build the first "true" Lemons car I've attempted.