Volvo 1800e B30f and other things

Greatings All, I hope this is the forum for crazy builds and oddball misfits or I don't belong here. I've been designing the "Worlds Fastest Street Car" for over 53 years. When I started on my quest, the fastest car in the world went an amazing 180 mph. I have tried to keep up and now only need to reach 250 mph. The thing below is not that...

When I was a mere lad, I asked my mom for a go cart for Christmas.  I didn't get one and vowed to have one some day... I finally got my drivers license and moved on but never forgot my promise. So... I bought a Volvo 1800E and promptly turned it into the go cart I never got.

Presenting the 'World's Scariest Volvo'.

1986

1994? What a great GT car that is, there are 5 people in that thing. The only car ever designed as a dart. Kids love it.

It all started in 1979 when after 3 years torn apart, I did a burnout from the driveway with the complete drivetrain from a 164...as Volvo should have built it. Unfortunately, the donor 164 came with the 3 speed auto and the B20 trans bell housing doesn't bolt up to the B30 engine. I eventually found the correct 4 speed w/ o.d. and then found out that the B20's driveshaft was a little weak after punching the gas pedal and shearing off the middle u joints yoke ear.

There are a few issues with the thing though.

World's Scariest Volvo

Holy cow... I've seen that first picture floating around the internet for years.  I never thought I'd get to message the owner!  I also never knew that it had a B30 swap.  Super cool!

VolvoHeretic said:

There are a few issues with the thing though.

World's Scariest Volvo

Whats with the vibration? Steering wheel seemed steady enough.

glad to see you over here.  I remember following your project years ago on tb.  welcome to the community!

Thanks. The shake is the 20 out of round welded and redrilled axle and hub studs that some wino machinists did when I went from 108mm to 4.5" bolt pattern back in the mid 80's. The rattle is the wore out rod ends of my home made 164 front swaybar on my rear axle. The bouncing is the unknown junk yard front springs I cut down and stuck in front and back. 

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

And the future for this car is...? Assuming you still have the car.

Oh, yah, I still have it, I'm a horder... Well, I finally have it in a garage after 35 years of living outside, bought one new tire, am replacing the bad electric fuel pump with a spare I have been saving for 40 years, and finally found the last registration from 1992 to prove I own this thing so I can apply for a new title to replace the long lost original. Then get vintage vanity plates for $100 for life that read "the SAINT" and terrorize my local town again. 

I have a nephew with an 8.8 axle jig and want to shorten an Explorer long side axle tube to the short sides length and get another short side shaft that will make the wheel flange to flange width the same as the 164's axle width (well, the 240's). That will fix the out of round bolt pattern, get 3.73:1 gearing plus posi traction. I haven't figured out what to do about the front hubs yet, but I am leaning on cutting out the 1800's upper A arm frame hole larger, adding a 1.5x3" steel tube to the inside of the frame to mount a 164's front suspension cross member who's mounting points are narrower than the 1800's cross member. Then replace the ball joint cups with Mustang II ones and use Wilwood extended height dropped Mustang II spindles to wind up with the 5x4.5" bolt pattern. Or just send the front hubs to Dutchman Axes in Portland OR (dutchmanaxles.com) and have them weld and drill them correctly.

After all of that, add two Volvo Mitsubishi turbos mounted in the trunk to get something like 300hp.

The 164 wheel to wheel spacing is something like (edit) 1.5" wider than the 1800 and the Weld Draglite wheels added another 1/2", so new wider steel flares to fix what I don't like about my original ones.

Then extend the front flares under the front valance for an air dam, more conveyer belting and aluminum nurf bars front and back with the rear ones extending up above the trunk and attached to a home made 18" deep P-51 Mustang fighter "laminar flow" wing.

Wow; is that the car currently? I'm definitely in to see where this one goes! Interesting car and interesting revival/upgrade project!

Do any 1800 owners out there know what the front cross member mounting bolt center width is across the engine bay? Unfortunately, a bunch of my Cad drawing files are damaged after my previous computer's hard drive crapped out and I can't open most of them to verify the 164 and 1800 measurements I drew. The 164's mounts and frame rails are at least 2" narrower I think. Too bad my 164 front suspension is 50 miles away and the motor is in the way on the 1800.

Here is my Cad drawing of the 164 suspension at ride height with stock Volvo spindle and hub w/ 10x15" Weld Draglite wheel and 265/50-15" tire on the right and Wilwood extended height Mustang II dropped spindle and hub w/ 9.5x17" Covette wheel and 265/40-17" tire.

After looking at my drawing, I realize that it is messed up and not finished. I also forgot that it was meant to analyze what would happen if I added the support tubing on the outside of the 1800's frame rails and adding around 6" to the 164's cross member so as I didn't have to butcher the 1800's frame rails. So, new frame rails on the outside of the frame for 17" wheels and on the inside for the current 15" wheels.

Laminar flow wing.

I am confused...where does the tube frame chassis come into the narrative? Clearly not residing under the P1800.

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

I will try to measure the engine bay of my car tomorrow. The engine is out, so I should be able to get any engine bay dimensions you need.

In the 1800 world, there are occasional questions about fitting a B30. My response to the question is, "well... sort of".  I have seen pictures of another 1800 with a B30 conversion. It was a little cleaner, but it's still a tight fit.

Thanks to Volvoclearinghouse's photos, something like this. I am not even sure if the inside engine bay frame rails are aligned the entire distance on the 1800 and some angle iron might be a better material to use. I will make a path in the garage over to it and try to take some photos of my car. From the photo of the 164's cross member, you can see how it simply bolts onto the bottom of the car's narrower frame and the control arms are entirely contained in the 164 stock wheelwell. Their inner pivot will reside inside the 1800's notch after it has been hogged out and reinforced. After all of that, the lower ratio power steering unit would fit and be nice since I've discovered that a 13" steering wheel is a real workout parallel parking 265 mm tires. I am saying all of this from old memory, I can't remember any of the actual measurements.

The B30 is a tight fit, but slid right in - after moving the heater box over to where the battery used to be, cutting out the transmission tunnel and replacing it with the 164's tunnel, cutting out a notch in the radiator support and replacing it with angle iron to clear the crank pulley along with building a custom radiator to fit in the nose of the car, and finally, beating the top of the passenger wheel well down to clear the intake. A piece of cake. lol

Thanks Ian F, I need to know what the inside frame to inside frame measurement is at the crossmember location. And are the frame rails straight in the engine compartment side to side or are there a bunch of jogs? I can see that the rails are straight on the outside in the wheel well but would Volvo make anything so simple and easy? I don't know if the front mounting bolt location will mean anything. (edit: I just can't see down in there even to just take a photo, but it looks like the front frame rail spacing steps out about a 1/2" wider in front, each side than behind the crossmember.)

If memory serves me correctly, the inner frame rail to rail distance is 22". This is also the distance for the steering box and idler arm mounting. The photo has a lot of distortion, but with 1.5x3" tube frame additions, the inner distance is 22" and out distance is 25". There is 26" distance between the upper A-arms so 1/2" clearance to the new frame rails.

I drug the 164 cross member home and tomorrow I will figure out the vertical crossover mounts to the upper and lower control arm pivots and the bottom of the crossover to find out if it is close to the same as the 1800. The next step won't be easy however, since I have to clear out room around the car, put the back tires on and take out the jack stands to lower it onto the ground so I can slide the floor jack under the front crossover to put the front on jack stands before lifting the rear and doing the same again.

And holy cow, that front suspension sure is heavy. Now to find out the 1800's frame widths and distances apart which hopefully will be easier with it on stands. I am dreading pulling out the motor and trans and wonder if I can just hang the motor from a 4x4 sitting on the hood opening sill to get all of this done.

So, every time I measure my 164 suspension, it is in the dead of winter. After measuring today, I found a few discrepancies in my previous measurements. AutoCAD is not user friendly as to dynamic rotations of interlocked or interlinked objects. It will take some time to calculate and rotate the suspension to my new locations. The second image is with 2 deg body roll around the moment center with the wrong measurements to see where the roll center goes . (Sure wish I could have passed Calculus.). 

So, while I procrastinate fixing the Cad drawing, here is what you do with an entire Volvo drivetrain and suspension when at the age of 25 and after dropping out after one semester of stick welding 101 and Statics and Dynamics... well, you get some graph paper out and lay all of your components out on the concrete and you design the world's heaviest and slowest 2 liter CanAm race car. But after building the frame, you start to wonder where you are ever going to get to drive the thing, so you convert it into the world's heaviest and slowest dune buggy. 

...And then you discover this concept called Crush Zones and you start thinking about just how fast this thing might go and what would happen if you bounced off some bridge embankment after you welded it up...

The only thing left to finish was to wire it up and strip it down to paint the frame... and bond the aluminum body to it.

Yard Art

and just in case you all think that I have been slacking for 30 years, ever since the world's fastest street car went an astonishing 180mph, I have been designing the world's fastest street car:

Inspired in the 70's by the Countach and BMW's M1 concept show car. Later converted into a Subaru turbo powered three wheeler.