Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I guess everybody is running fine, or garaged up for winter?

I'm not sure what the front turn signal lights are, I thought they were factory, the lights came with the car when I bought it. I will have to check about the gasket don't remember of hand.

Thanks, I do enjoy working on the 544 and have a lot of fun going to car shows and cruise nights. I've had big block chevys in the past but the are a dime a dozen you see them everywhere. I do get a lot of looks and for most folks the 544 is the first one they have ever seen.

Hi Skeetman,
Great looking 544, what did you use for front park/turn signal lights?
They look just like what i have in mind for mine.
Thanks,
Deloc

I'll second that! The car is gorgeous.

Those blinker lights look to be vintage tail lights of some kind. You have any kid of rubber or gasket behind them to protect the paint?

I do not have a vintage interior,Mazda front buckets and modern retractable 3 point front seat belts and just adding rear lap belts.
Here are some pictures
if they dont load I'll try again

Oooooh...that's nice!! That rear seat is sweet.

I put rear retractable shoulder belts on mine. Lap belts were found (by data mining real world results) to not actually be of much net benefit. In more common minor accidents they can cause more severe injuries, in major crashes they're beneficial, but those are more rare.

I pondered the setup for a while. There are two mounting points per side on the bottom for the factory lap belts. Just nothing at the top. The hat shelf area also tapers in somewhat past your shoulder. It seemed like putting the retracting reels in the normal position (near the C-pillars) would leave the belt a little too far over for comfort. Could have used a loop on the C-pillar to reposition the belt's 'dangle', but I didn't think I could make that strong enough.

So I did mine 'backwards' - I put the retracting reels in the middle, on the hat shelf, with the other end of the belt bolted straight down to the center stock lap belt mounts. Then I put the buckles on the outside edge, poking up between the top and bottom of the seat near the wheel well.

To me this also had the advantage of offering more side support in a side impact. If you're on the side that gets hit, you're going to smash up against that side of the car, belts or not. But if you're on the opposite side of the car, it's a matter of being supported by the large 'double' side of the 3-point triangle vs. the point 'single' side. Plus, when not in use, the belts retract into a nice neat single straight vertical position. I used 240 sedan belts for that.

More recently I replaced the gray lobster claw front belts with some retractables as well. Mostly because the spring broke on the driver's side lobster claw. I found some neat looking herringbone black/white pattern (very fine, almost looks gray) belts in a Land Rover Discovery and used those. Used the center buckles out of a Volvo 740 rear facing jump seat. This change was well overdue, my car is a little rusty around the bottom edge (ahem), and when I tried to unbolt the passenger side low mount on the original belt, the bolt just twisted right on out of the rusty sheet metal. That's not good. :(
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

Great idea. How'd you mount them on the hat shelf?

For the record...I'm a chiropractor. :P I completely agree with you on the lap belt vs. 3-point belt

I drilled holes through the hat shelf. Then took a long chunk of 1/4" (IIRC, pretty heavy) X 3" wide by roughly 12 - 15" long piece of steel and drilled through that as well, and used hardened bolts to bolt the reels on top, through the hat shelf, through the steel 'load spreader'. With hardened washers on both sides. Thus the reels are bolted on the top to a large, wide, solid chunk of steel underneath the hatshelf. The hatshelf itself looked to be solid enough to handle the stress, as long as the force wasn't concentrated on a small hole and a washer, pulling against a drilled hole which would easily rip out.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

Just rebuilt/upgraded the entire rear suspension on the PV444 (1958) and am wrapping up a 6V-12V conversion now. Also got the heat working again, so I can use the car on "nice" winter days.

Going to take her up to the Boston Volvo Tech and Speed session on Feb. 2nd...though there is no tech or speed from the old girl.

My '62 544 is wintering up on jacks. Had a great summer logged 3600 miles with only two rides on a tow truck. One when the freeze plug let loose and when we lost a couple of u-joint bolts. Short list of things to do:
1- install rear seat belts
2- rebuild or replace radiator
3- replace motor mounts
4- adjust hood hindges
5- correct steering box play
6- adjust divers window
7- rebuild carburetors
8- make new air cleaners
9- check front and rear suspensions
10- check and adjust brakes
11-adjust emergency brake
12-touch up paint on dashboard
13-install interior defrost and heater hoses
14-custom make a front bumper
15- paint rear left rear quarter panel and bumper

What are you putting in for rear seat belts? I found a place online that sells vintage looking kits but was curious what you're going with.

Yay! Thanks for the good reading and updates everybody,

Garaged and applying acoustic mat on the floors so that the silence continues in the spring. Also slapping some POR15 to the underbelly.

Dynamat..... Or something else?

Dean

I put down Fatmat MegaMat first and then Dynaliner foam over that. From what I've read, the MegaMat or an equivalent like Dynamat is really not a sound deadener but more for reducing metal vibration within the car. That's why kids use it to line their trunks when putting in those subwoofers. Keeps the trunk from rattling too much. The Dynaliner foam absorbs more sound and quiets the interior. I went with MegaMat because it's all butyl and doesn't have a stink to it like some of the other sticky products--especially those ones made with asphalt. It sticks very well, too, as long as the surface is nice and clean for starters. Now I have to find some carpeting to put over all of that. There are no pre-cut carpet sets that I'm aware of so I guess I buy by the yard and pull out the scissors. I might actually hear my passenger after I get done.

Ours are running well and neither will be garaged - they live outside year 'round.

I thought about posting something about recent misadventures with a tow truck damaging the 444 - only time it's been towed in the sixteen years I've owned it - but I don't know if it's that interesting. Tow truck bent the car. Bodyshop did an amazing perfect repair. I was surprised but not bothered that the car was completely covered in sanding dust and that they hadn't even rinsed it off when we went to pick it up. Unfortunately, the bodyshop clowns also damaged the choke mechanism, flooded the engine, ran the battery completely flat while trying to start the flooded engine, broke the window cable in the driver side door, burned the wiring to the right side fog light, and broke the left side headlight cover.

The manager wasn't there, and none of the fellows who worked there knew anything about any of it. And for some reason, they won't return my calls.

Great bodywork though.

Cameron
Rose City

Sorry to hear about the broken bits but glad the bodywork was done well. My duett is my only car, and thus I drive it all year round and unfortunately it is parked outdoors all year.

sorry about the empty posts. I have never been able to successfully load a picture on this board....at least not in the message body.

I posted two pictures in the 544 gallery.

Just finished front cross member rebuild and conversion to disk brakes. Thinking I will stay with single MC but add a remote brake booster. Considering a wilwood tandem MC instead. Has anybody installed one of these?

Also posted a picture of the last of the body rot repair: Drivers side door. Already finished all new floor boards, replaced spare tire well bottom, numerous rust holes in the rear tire wells, front and rear rockers, and damaged drivers side front quarter. Still have this door and a crunched front fender to go. So that is what I have been working on lately.

Dean
61 544
69 p1800

double post

Garaged in my case. There' salt out on the roads!

And the 245 would stay out of the salt too, but it has the motor apart, part of trying to move from 300 whp to 400 whp.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

WHP = Wheel Horse Power?
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Yeah, some 20%-ish less than crank HP. The amount of HP put down at the wheels.

It last motor dynoed a just over 300 whp (305 or something) - the next one should hopefully be around 400.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

Considering what my two T5s are like at 247 hp, I am wondering if you'll EVER be able to use
400 whp more than a few seconds at a time.....
I have habitually tried to get back in line as quickly as possible when I pass someone on a
2-lane road. I have often found that by the time I get past the car I am doing nearly 100 mph
and prime ticket bait for the OHP or KHP....
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Yeah, even at 300 whp you tend to only use very short bits of full power in polite society (public roads). The last iteration of the motor was a bit bothersome in traffic as well - it had some overly optimistic 'race cams' in it. Basically, this made the motor pretty much on and off. Off was low rpms, off the cam, motor not moving enough air to spin up the turbo. Very sluggish. Once you floored it and got the revs up over 3700-ish - the turbo would spool and it would be VERY FAST, in a rather violent manner.

This next build is going back to a pair of stock cams (initially) - stock 16V cams were pretty sporty to begin with. And a major unplugging of the exhaust side - a much, much nicer manifold and a much nicer turbo. Before I had a poorly flowing 'log' style manifold (all 4 cylinders dump out into short connectors to a common plenum, with the turbo plumbed in midway). The cylinders get to interfere with each other's breathing a lot more, the air has to make short tight turns here and there. And the turbo was a Chinese knockoff GT30R, with a smallish T28 flange.

The new manifold has long separate tubes, more or less equal length. They're paired and the pairs are kept separate, for use with a twin scroll turbo. The pairing is the 1&4, 2&3 360 degree separated cylinders. This keeps the cylinders from interfering with each other's breathing as much (each port is much longer, and each half of the system gets pressure pulses half as often). This will get blown into a BorgWarner EFR turbo, much more efficient than the Chinese copy of a Garret was.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

The twin-scroll, if small enough, should keep the torque and HP curves much more linear. Where are you getting it from? Off the top of my head I can't think of too many junkyard twin scrolls small enough for the relatively small air volume of a 2.3L.

At the LeMon's race in Joliet there was a guy using turbochargers off snow mobile motors. Of course he was turbo charging an old dodge slant 6 with two of them in a blow-through card arrangement. Very quick car but saddled wit a Chrysler chassis and brakes.

I was briefly pondering using a twin scroll Holset HX40, possibly a little on the large side, although a 16V head does move air very nicely. I happened to find a somewhat rare version used on some large Volvo diesel thing with a nice cast Volvo logo on the compressor housing:


It's twin scroll internal wastegate. Supposedly a T4 flange (I have the manifold already, it's non-external WG, T4). But when I got it in hand, it didn't have a true T4 flange, but a Holset variation - same width, .25" longer. Plus the WG was only on one scroll, didn't think that would work well on a gas motor - either to control boost or to keep both pairs of cylinders breathing similarly.

So I've decided to get something non-junkyard. A brand new gee whiz BorgWarner EFR 7064. It has a T4 divided housing with an internal wastegate that bleeds both sides, and is designed to control boost on gas engines. Very light wheels, ceramic ball bearings, should spool very well for the flow it's capable of. Just a bit of sticker shock...
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)

I can't wait to read the build up on this one as well.

*double post*