1971 Volvo 164

Went out to the car again on Sunday to check out the timing and the carburetors. It is idling pretty high at around 1400rpm. The air valve on the rear carburetor is not rising as high as the front – indicating a vacuum difference? When you pull the air valve up with your thumb to the same height as the front carb the idle drops to around 700rpm and the timing goes back to TDC. Release it and the idle goes slowly back up to 1400 and the timing slides to 10deg BTDC. Curious.

Jim and I took it for a few spins around the lot and it handles nicely. The speedo cable needs replacement and perhaps the brakes need to be bled. Going to put new tires on it next week and will probably get Jim to help with the brakes then. With any luck this will get it back to town and I can stop driving 30min to go work on it. I can also get it legal and start showing it off to my friends – which of course is more important than anything else

The smoke from the manifold went away – it must have been just a couple years of gunk burning off. There may be an exhaust leak as well somewhere but it’s not smoking from under the hood when I drive it anymore.