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164 Recommendations

driedle

New member
Joined
Jul 26, 2015
164 Recommendations (Now with PHOTOS!)

Hey everybody:

Well, the snow has finally left Michigan, and the 164 has come out of hibernation.

She's a 1971 164 with a 4-speed, and she has driven a grand total of 47,300 miles.

I'm going to switch to a Pertronix Ignitor II electronic ignition for reliability ( I hate points!)

I'm going to replace the plugs since I have no history on them. Any recommendations on the type of plug? I have used Bosch Silver on past cars with great success, but wonder what every recommends.

Also, I plan on doing a coolant flush, again, because I have no history on the car, and wonder about the Volvo blue coolant. There is standard green coolant in the car, and wonder if flushing the system out and replacing the coolant with Volvo blue would be OK, or would I have to do anything else.

Also, would it be worth it, or should I just stick with standard coolant?

The goal for the car is to make it as trouble-free as possible.

Many thanks!


David Riedle
 
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Glad to see a 164 rolling with a 4 speed. You won't miss the points replacements. For plugs I too like the silver plugs in volvos. They were the stock plug on the turbo 240s. W7DSR is what I refer to. But I've used all kind of plugs and most any quality brand has served well. Lately in my 93 wagon I've been using Autolite 64 which have been fine.

The Volvo coolant is really good. That said the universal coolant sold at the chains has served me well. Never seems to be quite as long lasting as the Volvo stuff but a good product. Don't have to do anything special to put the volvo stuff in there. Just a good flush before filling.

Enjoy!
 
Bosch plugs are fine, but my whole redblock life I ran the NGK and they never let me down. BP6HS for your car I think?

Regular green coolant is fine for your car, but if you want the latest and greatest it can't hurt.

Post pictures, we want to see this low mileage garage queen.
 
Here are some pictures.

The car hasn't been driven much, but it was a lot of work to get it this way. Still more work to come...

Sigh...

The paint was the worst thing about it. The paint had achieved the texture os suede. I did very light sanding and polishing, and it is about half finished. Also, the bumper and window frames had a white, milky appearance, which was hours and hours to clean. That's not done either.

Sigh...

I added two NOS fog lamps. The interior is original, but probably needs a little Leatherique work. I have new Pirelli 2" rubber webbing for the front seats...the original webbing is sagging, and hard as a rock. I also have an NOS GT Instruments cluster for it that will go in sometime soon.












It's getting there...

David Riedle
 
That's one clean car - especially for a rust belt car!






Everyone will recommend a good stage zero. Change all the fluids, bets, hoses good tune-up etc.
You could likely run a little hotter plug. Get a little more power and economy.
Stick with the green fluid. Its what these motors were made to use.
 
I'm running NGK BPR6HS gapped at .060" but my setup is a little different. Running GM D585 coils in wasted spark. Your car looks amazingly clean, glad to see another 164 on the road.
 
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The 164 is growing on me. You have a great example of one! Is that a carb or fi car? I agree with all the other posts. I would check the condition of the WP. I had a cheap one without the fins. my 142 always struggled to stay cool, so I replaced it with a finned Hepu pump. It made a huge difference. Happy motoring!
 
The 164 is growing on me. You have a great example of one! Is that a carb or fi car? I agree with all the other posts. I would check the condition of the WP. I had a cheap one without the fins. my 142 always struggled to stay cool, so I replaced it with a finned Hepu pump. It made a huge difference. Happy motoring!

early 1969-1971 164 had carbs.... later 1972 FI became optional & 1973-75 164 "e" einspritzung was FI

here is wiki details link


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_164
 
Thanks everybody!

My car has carbs, and it's surprisingly flexible...shift into 4th at anything over 25, and the will pull up to redline.

I have found a place that has intake manifolds that will allow you to replace the two Stromburg carbs with three Webers. I have talked with a couple of guys who are running these and it is supposed to increase horsepower to 150.

Tempting, but I would have to come up with a linkage for the carbs. I think I would start with a linkage designed for air-cooled VWs using dual Webers, and work from there. Of course, I'm not certain I want to deal with triple carbs...

Dave Riedle
 
DCOE's are certainly fun things. They're not fun to set up, but once they're working properly, they seem to work for years and years with no readjusting necessary.

But it's really is more like 6 carbs, not 3. Each carb is basically two separate carbs that share a common fuel bowl.

They're mostly going to work better than the SU's at higher power outputs, and in a normally aspirated motor that means higher RPM's, which means all sorts of supporting modifications. Cam, head, exhaust. On the plus side, I think the B30 heads have somewhat better exhaust ports, which are one of the B20/18 motors HP bottlenecks.
 
If you decide to go with Webers, Pierce has a nice linkage kit. You may need to adapt or modify the manifolds to accept the larger 3/8" link rod though.

https://www.piercemanifolds.com/product_p/pm3701-l.htm

A properly tuned set of Stomburgs will actually perform quite well. The only difficulty is in adjusting the mixture. The jet tubes are pressed into the throttle body and require special tools to adjust.
 
beautiful car Dave! I would suggest since it is running well and doesn't have major carb issues. Leave the webers alone and stay stock carbs.

I had a 69 164 and the 163 hp it made stock was a lot of fun. Maybe just try to tune it to the early specs? Don't know what the difference was. Probably the compression and cam.
 
I,m actually really good with DCOEs, and I think that accelerator pumps would be nice.

Dave Riedle
 
Well now, you know you are still going to want compression raised and a cam to take advantage of webers on there. I love webers and have had a lot of fun with cars changed to webers. But I didn't want you to mess with such a nice car. I do understand the allure and wonderful noises the webers make. As you mention. Nothing like the throttle response of the accelerator pumps.

With a US model 164 there is a lot of hp left on the table while still having really nice driving manners. The overseas fuel injection cars made 175hp and even with the stock carbs you could probably tune to that. With a set of webers on there I'm sure there is a lot more potential.

Have fun with it.
 
Well, the Pertronix Ignitor II goes in next week, and I'll see how it does.

I'm still strongly leaning towards the Webers. I like the way they drive, like the accelerator pumps, makes the car much more lively.

The Great Lakes Volvo club had the spring dust-off on Saturday, and did more that 300 miles at 70-85 mph. (Strange to be a rolling hazard at 70mph...)

The car ran extremely well, it's seamless at speed, really remarkable for a 47 year old car. Quite relaxed.

If I do do the Webers, it will be this fall one the car is off of the road.


Dave Riedle
 
KGTrimning has all sorts of zoomy parts for B30's. At least, they used to. Big bore B30 HG's, heads, cams of all flavors, etc.
 
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