Hi Dave,

Boy hasn’t the BRICKBOARD been dead for a few days.
It is getting punched out lately by a lot of 403 error codes.

I don’t know what else to do but write about your other post in my notes.
I do that to put my ideas down and massage the bad spelling and ideas out.
Otherwise, the rambling would be a lot worse! (:-(
Here’s what I jotted down.

I was just reading through this thread and I always try to read your posts.
I’m agreeing with you on the price of that purge valve being insane.

You and I know that Volvo designers with the bean counters shouldn’t have never let this evaporative system crawl off the production boards.
It’s crazy to just think that one part costing as much as they would spend to prototyped the whole system. It really is nothing but rubber plumbing.
Prototype researchers have a budget line to follow no matter how exclusive or proprietary it might look to be from the outside.
Cost Projections and ROI’s are made long before vendors bid on the production numbers.
These include during production and aftermarket bidders doing post production.

Decisions include estimating time on a shelf turnover.
Interest rates on that investment placed there versus projects making a Return On Investment.
Even the odds of failure statistics are weighed in a plus or minus decision to make an “obsolesced part” a factor.
The elbows are in favor of staying produced industry wide as being very useful. They’re not going away the later models provided.
That factor alone make the elbows to be only pennies each, not whole dollars as listed from a dealer.
Anyway, enough of that!

Since you are into experimenting with repairing rubber or plastic line and elbows I have gone to using heat-shrink tubing that’s used on electrical wiring.
It’s has weather and oil resistance of a polymer and toughness like a wire tie but thinner.
I think most are made from polyolefin is a used everywhere plastic with different treatments to change its characteristics.
On lines after shrinking it stays somewhat flexible.
The material has vacuum or pressure capabilities.

You can shrink it to a diameter to get it as tight as you need it.
Good narrow bands can act like a clamp and will seal the circumference along the splits.
Holds the hose end on the fitting.
It comes in colors especially black and it’s endless in circumference. No adhesive ends to dry and curl loose.

A three foot length and unknown size, shrink tubing could repair a lot of dried ends or long splits of an evaporative system on that posters car.
It shouldn’t weather like the rubber underneath the car.
I can understand where Blindboy was thinking of a plastic adhesive for under there. Plastic is real picky about accepting adhesives though.

I have used a purple color tubing to tell me to keep an eye on it.
A subtle one of my longevity experiments.

I have another experiment going with the 240 wiper motors.
I needed to seal the hole through into the cabin better.
I came up with a closed cell foam tube used to insulate pipes.
It looks likes neoprene too.
I found it in some of my “Hesitant to throw away boxes.”
This was a slip-on cushion piece from a Thule Kayak rack for the top of a car.
I’m a saver of scrap materials of what I can make stuff with.
All Materials are usefulness’s waiting for a project idea.

It’s a 3/4 x 1 7/8” tube x 1 1/2 long and gets stuffed between the inner cavity where the wiper motor gets bolted down through it.
I tapered the inner bore of the foam to give it a lead end relief opening.
The two diameters seal over the original grommet and deflects water from the cowling drain pan.
It backs up or sits on top of what the grommet has to do all alone
The air vent pan drops water directly over it.
Not a good design and this discrepancy has gone on for too many years. IMO.

Have you done something for yours?


Phil