I bought the '69 144 without even thinking about this....

Were they running LEADED fuel back in '69? Or, what grade of unleaded will I need?

What kills exhaust valves & seats is prolonged amounts & large quantities of hot exhaust gas passing over them. This happens during sustained full throttle that happens when you are climbing hills or passing cars. Around town use the cheapest petrol that doesn't ping & it can be unleaded. If you are going on a trip or going up & down mountains you do need a leaded fuel or an additive.

Hi Zee,
Like most everyone else, I run the highest octane available and keep the valves adjusted regularly. One of my motors has hardened seats and I do not know about the other, but have not had any problems.

One thing I would want to find out is what kind of carbs and intake manifold it has.
'69 Volvo's were fitted with Stromberg carbs and, what I believe George refers to as, "the pipefitters nightmare" intake manifold. The manifold can be identified by extra "butterfly" flaps in the cast iron runners. If you accuate the throttle to wide open, you'll notice about halfway through, an arm on the carb accuates a little rod on the manifold.
If there is any slop on the extra butterfly rods, you will have a lean condition that could cause damage to the pistons and cylinder walls.
Could be someone has changed it to the early aluminum intake manifold and changed carb style by now but, from past experience, I would want to know.

Carbs can be identified by very squatty domes. Of course if you've nothing to compare...maybe go to google and do an "image" search for SU carbs and then look up Strombergs. Chances are you have a black plastic airbox?

Best,
Shayne.

Shayne,

Good info., thanks.

From what I've read so far, it looks like a good idea to go ahead and add a bottle of lead substitute for the 1.5 hour drive home.

The carbs are SU's. I don't think it has that butterfly manifold. It has one butterfly on the manifold, something to do with emmissions, using warm exhaust manifold heat to pre-heat the fuel charge when the engine is cold.

It is removed, however. I beliee it will only mean the choke will need to stay pulled out a little longer for cold operation.

It does have the long, rectangular airbox.

Not so sure about the earlier ones, but on my 74 144, the Stromberg is clearly marked.
--
...and the bricks keep on rolling

I just need to get to the car saturday and look it over better. Checked the internet and the SU photos I saw looked like those on the car. Strombergs didn't.

On the other hand, I see references that 69 had Strombergs. and other references sayig they had SU's

Emphasizing what Bob said - I have burned and cracked exhaust valves
because of insufficient clearance. So listen for valve noise and if it
gets TOO QUIET, check it out.
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

As a matter of fact.....

Listening to the car, I was (then) happily surprised to notice no valve rattling, tapping of other strangeness which I half expected on a 100K+ car.

OK, so I'll add checking valve clearances to my list of "To Do's"

No argument with what George and Gary have said, however; and this is only on the basis of what I have read here on the BB; the old Volvo valve seats, although they didn't have hard inserts, were case hardened to some extent. Furthermore, over years of use with leaded gas, they would harden some more, or, at least, acquire properties that made them act as if they were hardened. So, if the seats have never been ground or lapped, it is likely that you can use unleaded gas and not have them recede. I would say, run the thing with unleaded and use a lead additive (for the real or the placebo effect), but keep an eye out for drastic valve gap reduction.
Bob S.

Come to think of it, Sunoco used to sell unleaded gas in the late fifties and the sixties. I used that in my B16 equipped 122s and never gave the valve seats a thought. Ignorance is bliss!
Bob S.

I think you mean Amoco not Sunoco. Sunoco had that neat feature where you could dial in your blend and a lot of racers used the highest octane stuff that was all the way off the scale.

At the A+W Root Beer stand that I frequented in my callous youth I remember one aquaintance that had a new '66 Dodge. It was a plain jane, no frills, stripper but it had a 426 Hemi. He had a "contains no lead" Amoco sticker on the rear decklid. Neat.

Jim

Right you are! But at least I got the "oco" part right. ;-)
Bob S.

Understood, thanks.

I just want to drive the thing home and park it with an eye to beginning me body work and mechanical going-over. Lead additive won't hurt, so , I'll add a bottle.

When you say lok out for drastic valve gap reduction, would that show up as a valve gap which measures too wide?

No, the other way around. When the lash gap at the tappets starts getting smaller it means that the eroding valve seats let the valves come up too high when they close. If the gap totally disappears, the valves no longer close completely and get burned by the combusting fuel.
I think that blueprinting means that the machine shop not only bores out the cylinders and turns the crank journals, but also straightens the crankshaft trues up and aligns all the machined surfaces of the block as specified on the manufacturer's blueprint to take out the biases that develop as a block ages. This is normal practice in a good machine shop, at least, it is in the one that has done my engines.
Bob S.

Hey Don!
Back into the world of "Real Volvos"!
I always use the cheapest here in Oklahoma ($2.119/gallon today)
and get a bit of pinking climbing steep hills. The Yellow Peril
has the same engine (not blueprinted) that Gary runs. We both
have slightly milled heads. I have only had valve seat recession
on one engine and it was pretty badly abused. If I were you I would
use whatever you can get that runs within acceptable limits and
make whatever changes are necessary when they become necessary.
Hope you got SU carbs!
Best regards,
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Hello, George!

Hope you and the family are well.

Yes, I believe the car has SU carbs. The owner said so, and though I can't tell by their looks, these are the pair of bottle-shaped guys that I recall require a squirt of tranny fluid every 600 miles.

It is really uncanny what a Deja Vu moment it was sitting in this look-alike to the 67 (?) model I had back in college! I even remembered where to hang up the shoulder harness!

I really don't need a fifth car, but I had casually looking on eBay and Brickboard for about two years for a late 60's model trimmed out the same as my car. so, when I went to see this one, I negotiated on the spot. Couldn't let is go to some knuckle-head who doesn't even work on cars, or know them.

(Just doing my part to keep another car out of the scrap stream)

It has issues in almost every system and in the body, most are nuisance items. Overall, a pretty good specimin at a decent price. 114,000 miles.

BTW, what does "blueprinting" an engine mean?

A factory engine has a range of tolerances, like .010-.012, for all of the moving parts, cylinders and valves, etc. Blue printing makes all of these parts the exact same dimention and in the middle of the range, ie. .011
You would also expect intake/exhaust port polishing to be done at the same time.
This costly expense yields the best possible bhp for the particular engine and is used mostly by racers.

Klaus
--
(1975 164, 1995 854T, 1998 V70R)

There was no unleaded gas in '69; IIRC, in the USA, unleaded became available in about '73 or '74. What grade of unleaded you need, and whether you need a fuel additive (to make up for the missing lead) is entirely dependent upon what may have been done to the engine over the years. If it has never had the valve seats replaced, you may need an additive. As for which grade of gas you're going to need (octane rating), try it on a short tank of regular. If this makes it "ping" or "knock" under acceleration, you may need to move up a grade. (Or tinker with the engine to make it run on regular, in which case you'll get lot's of advice here on the board. Just be aware that detuning an engine that needs higher octane fuel in order to make it run on regular, usually carries a hidden cost in the form of decreased performance, to include fuel mileage.)

But do try to find out from the previous owner(s) if the engine has had the later valve seats installed, which is the "cure" for lead dependency. And maybe they have already lowered the compression ratio somehow (e.g. thicker head gasket) to alleviate the need for higher octane fuel.

Gary L.
--
1971 142E ITB racer, 1973 1800ES, 2002 S60 T5

"But do try to find out from the previous owner(s) if the engine has had the later valve seats installed, which is the "cure" for lead dependency"

Gary, I heard people claming that some of the B18/20 engines had 'the later type valve seats installed'. Here in Europe I never encountered them and I've seen quite a few of the later type B20A/B/E/F heads. Are you sure this is actualy true? Perhaps in the US you did get them, and we didn't?

Cheers, ben
--
P131, '65, B20B+M47+DGV. P131, '69, B20E+AW71L+LSD. (www.tinustechniek.tk)

Ben,

The US market definitely had unleaded-compatible B20's. I've owned 2 '73 models (142E and 1800E), I'm sure they were both "unleaded-ready" as delivered new. And if I'm not mistaken, the '75 B20 powered US models had a catalytic converter... they certainly would had to have been fully unleaded capable.

Gary L.
--
1971 142E ITB racer, 1973 1800ES, 2002 S60 T5

Unfortunately, for the Euro market, only the 75 244's were unleaded ready. However, on my 74, I made switched over to unleaded overnight (it was night time when we filled in our first tankful of unleaded) in 1995 at about 250K miles on the clock, and never looked back since. Its a do or die situation here in Malaysia as the unleaded is rated at RON 97, whereas leaded fuel these days come ONLY at RON 87, used only for lawn mowers, weed whackers and Honda Civics...
--
...and the bricks keep on rolling

Thanks, Gary.

I'll be keeping i close touch with you about this car becasue I see you are racing one. While I have leaned toward restoring this car to Antique status, mostly stock, the performance driver in me wants to look out for performance mods the car will jously accept.

I have ambitions of getting my competition license next season, but don't yet have a car. Will shop for something over the winter. I could just put the safety stuff into my street-performance 740 turbo, but it's a slow car against Mustangs, Subarus, etc. anyhow.

Right now my concerns on this car are just to get it home reliably, then tend almost immediately to its beginning rust issues (rear wheel arches), interior and paint.

I'll do a compression and leak down test, go through the brakes, change fluids, etc.

For the drive home, yeah, I guess I'll add a bottle of lead.

Thanks for you advice and information.

Thanks, Gary.

I'll be keeping i close touch with you about this car becasue I see you are racing one. While I have leaned toward restoring this car to Antique status, mostly stock, the performance driver in me wants to look out for performance mods the car will jously accept.

I have ambitions of getting my competition license next season, but don't yet have a car. Will shop for something over the winter. I could just put the safety stuff into my street-performance 740 turbo, but it's a slow car against Mustangs, Subarus, etc. anyhow.

Right now my concerns on this car are just to get it home reliably, then tend almost immediately to its beginning rust issues (rear wheel arches), interior and paint.

I'll do a compression and leak down test, go through the brakes, change fluids, etc.

For the drive home, yeah, I guess I'll add a bottle of lead.

Thanks for you advice and information.