I performed one of the time tested and highly coveted hot rodder traditions this weekend and I made a trip down to the pull n save junkyard in town. This is one of the most fundamental tools in a hot rodders bag of tricks. You go down to the somewhat dirty industrial part of town, and pay your $1 dollar entry fee to get into the junkyard and peruse the “JUNK”. There is a gamble here, and there is no catalog.. You just show up with your tools, and take your chances that there may be the part you need hiding somewhere in the lineup of 100s and 100s of cars. And if you are so lucky as to find something and remove it from the donor car in one peice, you can often get an unbelievably good deal on said item.

The trip was extra cool because I gathered up a small posse’ of junkyard saavy Volvo nuts and headed down for some shopping. Girls like to go hang out at the mall. Die hard car nuts enjoy a day at the junkyard. Its fun to poke around in all the neat cars that you wish you had owned in the past. And get a close look at the once high tech motors that moved the hottest sporty cars of the past. The two guys below are students at CU Boulder, and build their cars on tight budgets, alot like myself. We have a pretty cool little exchange of services and parts between us. They help me pull engines and big items in the yard, do some heavy lifting, etc. And I do some fabrication stuff for them now and then. It works out well for everybody. Here are Volvo freak #1, and Volvo freak #2 hard at work on a 940 Volvo we found.

This past weekend was particularly good junkyard hunting. We stumbled upon a 1992 Volvo 940 Turbo. Well, the first thing that the shadow man says is: “Hey, I think this one should have the limited slip differential that you are looking for!” SWEEEET! I have made numerous trips out there looking for one of these newer 4 cylinder volvos, and have had no luck until now. This car only had 109,000 miles on it, and the engine had blown. PERFECT! There was no way I was leaving without grabbing this differential, especially since I had some helpers. And as an added bonus, it turned out that rear axles were on sale this weekend! So the normally $109 rear axle would now cost $45.99. Awesome. The trick was that rear axles were on special, but not differentials. So it would cost less to just remove the whole axle, brakes and all, and buy it that way. So thats what we did. It was easy with some help. There is no way I could have removed and carried that thing by myself.

So, soon Irene will be running again, and now she’ll be laying 2 black stripes down the road instead of just one.

Howdy folks, so I spent my entire weekend out in the shop working on my new header. I’m trying to get it ready to install with the new turbo I picked up for my Volvo 745. I haven’t done a big weekend thrash like that in quite a while. It was mostly an enjoyable weekend, but It was really hot out there, and I think I cooked my brain a little bit. I must have lost a few pounds from sweating so much. Sitting at the bench welding isn’t the most pleasant thing when the weather is hot. Welding has a way of making a hot day even hotter. It doesn’t help that I had to turn off the fan, because the argon shield was blowing away fouling up my welds. And on top of that I am holding a torch thats burning at a couple thousand degrees. It all makes for a really sweaty day of work. It is really much nicer and more fun to weld and fabricate in the winter. I just saw th weather report and they are saying it was 95 degrees over the weekend. But despite the weather I did get some work done on the header and turbo install.

Here is the link to many more photographs of the build. HEADER PICTURES. I spent alot of time organizing them chronologically so you can follow the build by paging through the images one at a time.

Here is the final header/turbo/wastegate assembly. Some of my pals were commenting that it looked a little like something from a science fiction movie. Or that I should wire it up and put a lamp shade on it because it looked like art. I guess thats a compliment of sorts. I just hope it works. I tried my best to make the bends smooth, merge the collector nicely, and take flow into consideration wherever I could.

And here is the entire header, wastegate, and downpipe assembly, all ready to install. This thing looks shiny and elegant, but actually, it is REALLY heavy. You could seriously break a toe if it fell on your foot. stainless pipe headers really make for a heavy manifold. 45lbs was what I got on the bathroom scale, just because I was curious.

It felt good to lift the ball of snakes into the engine compartment hopefully for the last time. For the first time, I fully intended to leave it here. I am sure I installed and removed the header 20 times while building it. So, this was a big milestone. I’m excited to be getting close to running again. The install went great. One or two of the bolts were a bit tricky to get threaded in. But overall, it wasn’t too bad. In the picture on the left, you can see the wastegate poking out down below. It is right next to the oil filter, and just above the bottom of the car. It should be nicely protected from debris here, and still be nicely accessible.

Stay tuned, Irene should be on the road again in the next couple weeks.

When I started this whole internet diary thing last year, I intended to make it purely an automotive topic journal. To help me remember how I did certain things on my car, or to share with other automotive enthusiasts. But really, the people who were visiting the site were family and friends more than anyone else. So, slowly I have thrown in some non-automotive things that I have felt like sharing with others. This web journal has been a great way to reflect on daily life in the same way paper journals and pens have been used for many generations. For me, “daily life” often means tinkering in the garage on my cars, riding and racing my bicycles, or just spending time with friends and family. I’m slowly becoming comfortable putting more personal things on the internet in a public place. Slowly. And now and then topics will be something besides garage bumbling.
This week I celebrated the 10th year of marriage to my wonderful and beautiful wife. We took a trip to Las Vegas and invited many of our friends and family to join us for the celebration. The highlight of the weekend was a trip to the Graceland Chapel where we were re-married by a great Elvis impersonator. I have collected some great photos from the weekend, they are all stored in the photo gallery. You will need a login and password to see most of them. I did this to protect peoples privacy. If you are a friend, just pop in and create an account. I’ll approve you as soon as I get notification.. Or just drop me an email and I can give you a password. And if you have any more pictures to add. Please let me know. I’ll add them to the growing collection.

Link: Las Vegas Gallery - remember you won’t see all the pictures unless you log in.
Here are a couple highlights from the weekend.

Three days of staying up REALLY late took its toll. I was really exhausted when I returned to Colorado. Las Vegas nights just seem to go on and on somehow. We were up so late we watched the sun rise once over the weekend. Thanks to everyone who came, and we really missed all the rest of you. Enjoy the photos.