By Sven Olafsbrosson

Sorry about last month, folks. Will the person or person that anonymously left the case of Jack Daniels Green label Sour Mash in front of my garage door after the last article was published, PLEASE STOP!? (Or leave Black Label next time!) I still cannot get rid of this headache, and I finished bottle #12 over a day ago, ya.

   Enough drinking and thinking, it's time for action, ya. Beg, borrow, rent or steal a 'cherry picker', or hang an 'Industrial Strength' (Ask C.Everett Koop for clarification of Industrial Strength.) 'Come-along' from the garage roof or tri-pod. None of this stuff is that heavy, if you can curl beer cans you should be able to extract a 4-cylinder Volvo engine. I saw 'Navy Rick' one time remove the head and disconnect an engine from the bell-housing, climb inside the engine compartment (there IS room), and extract a B-18 engine from a 122 sedan with his bare hands! Also, since a B18/20 crankshaft is so well counter-balanced, it makes a great curling bar. Just wear lifting gloves and cup either end with your palm, (wipe off all the old 30 wt. oil first!) lift with your legs to the standing position, one leg slightly ahead of the other, curl up slowly to your chin, pause momentarily exhaling as you lift (blow up the weight!) and then very slowly return to the starting position. Since it is kind of light, do 5 sets of 10-15 reps and on the 6th set, repeat until you reach muscle exhaustion. Do this every other day until I'm done with this article series and my latest bout with alcoholism has passed; and you, too, will be strong enough to just lift that old 3-main-bearing B14/16 engine out of that car with your bare hands! That block'll feel lighter than a bushel basket full of iced Lutefiske in the dead of winter, ya.

   Since we have that eternal pounding 'tween the old temples, we don't want (besides some hair of the dog that bit us!) to do much that requires contiguous thought. If you have a box the size of a Jack Daniels case, or Absolut as the ethnic alternative, we can remove and throw all the parts in here for a few units of time. (I myself would write years, ya, but if some wives read this they may get anxious about the extensive planned down-time of all that Swedish Iron.)

   You will need Metric Tools (Yes, I wrote that, Jim, but my fingers will never be the same!) as in 1958 they were not yet building cars to please the rich and excessive Americans; but rather were building cars that would start at any temperature, stay bolted together and in alignment after days of travel over unpaved roads or even where there were no roads, were strong enough to pull and be pulled out of snow banks, ditches and tundra in general, had heaters and fans hot enough and strong enough to let you at least unzip the outer jacket and remove your hat as you drove, a gas tank small enough to force you to buy the optional roof rack just to keep the jerry-cans full of spare petrol so you could actually make it to your destination, and of course with a turning radius that would let you pull a U-turn on a logging road or at the edge of a fjord cliff top without needing to engage reverse gear.

   The PV445 (and PV444 for the un-married man) were this and so much more. They had  style, looks, innovation and a certain charisma not seen since - until Chrysler released the PT Cruiser. In 1959 they were called the Family Sports Car and were shown jumping hilltops 4 feet in the air. Of course, some wimpy passengers were bound to lose cookies at that point, but never fear, the Volvo PV was equipped with rugged naugahyde seat coverings that could just be wiped clean as you carefully selected the next passenger (victim?)!

   They were easy to drive (take note 1800 owners and Lady Drivers), as they can be maneuvered into a parking spot at 5 kph with just 2 fingers from one hand. This by the way is where the original '2 fingers' slogan came from, the PV 445's parking ability, it had nothing to do with hippies in America during the 60's, ya shur.

   Step One: The dog that bit you. Yes, it's ugly. Don't curse the guy that sold it to you. Think of the marriage you saved - his! Reach under the dash and pull that locking bar toward you. It's right in the center. The hood (bonnet) will pop up an inch (2 1/2 cm.) or so. Lift the back of the bonnet upward toward the front of the car. Better have a soft drink, maybe an Anchor Steam beer made by Fritz Maytag in the bay area. It'll calm you and help you to take the next step, which is to find a broom and de-spiderize the engine compartment. Those of us with arachnatic phobias will appreciate the Anchor Steam more than others among us.

   Remove the 4 metric bolts/nuts that hold the hood brackets to the hinged extensions. See how those hinged brackets are bolted thru right to the outside of the narrow honeycomb radiator? 

This is why, my friends, that the nosepiece must be changed to use a wider radiator. (If you are skilled with sheet metal and a M.I.G. welder, please ignore the last few comments re: limitations of a stock nosepiece.)

   Jack up the front of the car. If the brakes don't work, then use your 4-way tire iron or air-impact wrench, (Highly recommended to both remove stubborn bolts/nuts AND to bring that vicious headache back to the front part of your head right behind the eyes, pounding with perfect harmony to every beat of your heart.) before the tires are lifted off the ground. 

   Loosen those lug nuts for the two front wheels, then jack the car up evenly under the engine crossmember, in the center of the car. Put a solid jackstand under each lower A-arm BEFORE you remove the wheel/tire. If you do not know how to use a floor jack or how to place the jackstands under the car to keep it from falling on you, STOP. Get a beer, go online to the AutoTrader, place an ad to sell the car, then leave the house and go back to the bar. We at S.D. VSA do not want our members (or anyone else unfortunate enough to be reading this with too much seriousness) to get squished by a falling Volvo. Headache or not, if that car falls on you, the headache will be gone - perhaps forever. Even if you DO know how to place the jackstands, better say a prayer before crawling under there. Eternity is such a long, long, time.

   Remove the wheels. With wheel/tires removed, it's time for more arachno-cleansing. Use the air nostril on your compressed air line if you have one. This will move around that 45-year old grease, too.

   Break time: 2nd Anchor Steam. Cheer up. I drive a 1958 PV445 60 miles per day on So. Cal. freeways, usually in the fast lane. This CAN be done, but your alcohol tolerance will have to go up.

   I just remembered: (a Jack Daniels-free moment) remove the battery. It's big, black and ugly. Mounted in the center of the firewall, inside the engine compartment. Has a woven flat metal cable for the 'earth' contact to the chassis ground attached to the negative pole of the battery (During both wars Sweden stayed neutral, and hence never adopted the positive-earth deviation that the British succumbed to!). The positive lead was probably red but perhaps brown and went down to the starter on the left hand side of the car. When dealing with the battery, remember this simple rule of thumb: "If it's wet, and it's NOT yours; DON'T touch it." Same for bodily fluids as for battery acid: "Don't get any on you." Do I need to elaborate here? Any questions?

   If you have any Puckers or pre-mixed Kamikazes in the freezer, now would be a good time for a little 'nip'. Keeps the blood thinned and flowing, and wards off the cold, ya.

   Ok, back to where we were. Locate the bolts that hold the bumper onto the car. Spray the WD-40 liberally - remember Bill Clinton? Now that's liberal with a capital… no, never mind. Do the 'Oprah' thing, "don't go there!" if it's wet…

   So, did you know why it's called WD-40? It was invented and is manufactured here in town; did you know? Well, the 'WD' stands for 'Water Displacing,' which is why on one of those RARE years that it might rain, you can spray this stuff on those 20 year old spark plug wires (Yes, they last THAT long, ask Irv Gordon), and it'll start even with the hood still off (no, not off for the whole 20 years!) The '40' stands for the number of experiments they ran before it was perfected. The lesson here is to never, ever, give up! It might take 40 tries, but it can be fixed. Let the WD-40 Company be your inspiration!

   Soak down the bolts that hold the bumper brackets to the frame. Yes, on a PV445 there is a FRAME. Now go have another soft drink and then come back and remove these with a socket and that pneumatic impact wrench. Do not try to remove the bumpers parts from the brackets on the outside of the car! This will just waste your time, because you still need to remove the brackets from the frame.

    Follow the wires from the turn signals, horns, and headlamps back to the junction panel/fuse box in the engine compartment and unhook them all, pull all the wiring out and remove them back to the fenders. 

   Now remove the front fenders. All of the bolts up front are of the 'Tinnerman' type and will come right out! The back 4 on the body proper may be rusted in. Use WD-40 liberally just as if you were an F.O.B. the bolts may strip and/or break. This is NORMAL! Don't stress, now is a good time for that last Anchor Steam Beer, ya. Don't stress, have the seventh Anchor steam. Those weldnuts inside the body are the worst you'll encounter, so once you get past this it's like sliding downhill in Goteborg in January on a Swedish Iron toboggan. Next month we find out what to do with those fenders.