What I did today.....

Three months into being a Volvo owner, I mustered enough courage to go after the much dreaded flame trap. There seems to be much mysticism floating around this subject in various Volvo boards. Someone described the task to be better left only for "contortionists & children with freakishly strong fingers". So, I was a little spooked going into this.

Phase 1 - Removal

After finding 'just the right spot' between the intake manifold, I started pulling on the flame trap assembly. I was hoping that it would just go 'pop', and I would have the whole thing in my hand. Yeah, right! I couldn't even get my fingers around the thing. So, the first thing was to clear some space. Removing the big hose from the trap did the trick, I could get my hand around it. I really didn't know where to grab, so I just pulled on it, and the whole thing with came loose. Okay fine, I only wanted the lid but whatever works. I just removed small hose from the manifold and I had completed phase one.


Phase 2 - Cleaning up

Now I had this oily device in my hand, and I decided to proceed with tearing it apart. The hose and the tube came loose as they were supposed to, and inside was that little troublemaker. To my surprise, only a few of the holes seemed to be plugged. However, the trap wouldn't come out of the lid, until I started twisting on it with a small screwdriver. I used WD40 & even smaller screwdriver to poke the holes open, and I cleaned up all the components. No problems here, what's all this nonsense about this being a difficult job??

Phase 3 - Putting everythin back together

After assembling the trap, it was time to plug it back in. Very quickly I realized that trying to cram snugly fitting rubber pieces back in place using only your fingertips is NOT easy! After a good while of cussing I got the bottom part of the assembly to slip back in on the engine. Great! Now all I had to do was attach the hoses. The big hose first.. of course, I forgot which direction the pipes were pointing in the first place, so I had to start trying to twist the lid to get the hoses to meet. Looks like the "right" way is big hose pointing to the left side of the car, and small to the right. Now the small hose... what did I say about the snugly fitting rubber hoses? After 10 minutes of frustration, I yanked the big hose out, pulled out the lid and just connected the small hose first. The big one went in easily after it was pointing the right direction. And DING, the thing was back in! 10 more minutes of tinkering with the thingy on the manifold (COMPLETELY blocked), I was done!


Epilogue:

Overall time spent ~ 60 minutes. A REAL pain in the ass to do the first time, but the second time should be just a breeze. Also a nice way to get a back pain, leaning over the engine. I also learned to appreciate my small hands. As an advice, for anyone else planning on doing it themselves, IT'S NOT AS BAD AS YOU'D THINK!-D Reserve 2 hours for it, figuring in all the time spent trying to find a way to slip your hand in.


Next weekend; new sparkplugs! You guys think I should invest in a torque wrench for this, I have no clue how tight those suckers should be put...



-M.R.