142 Attends SSAVE.org Volvo Meet

Oct 24, 2004 update to the Volvo 142 project car

We attended the class="caps">SSAVE.org Volvo meet at Sebring International Raceway this Saturday. Our newly built engine didn’t leak a drop of oil and managed nearly 28 mpg.

The weekend was not, however, complete without some trouble. On Friday, we ran a compression test and noticed that the numbers were a little inconsistent from cylinder to cylinder. Since the engine only had three hundred miles on it, we decided to drive the car to Sebring and back and see if the numbers improved. While they did improve somewhat, #4 was still down. We ran a wet compression test and found that the numbers improved on #4, but they also improved on all of the other cylinders, meaning the head was still suspect.

After a little deliberation, we pulled the head this morning and when we flipped it over and filled the combustion chambers with carb cleaner, we could see leaks around the exhaust valves on #4 and #3.

The head is back at the machine shop and should be turned around pretty quickly.