Save-A-Boat - The Forum for Plastic Classic Rebuilds!

I always thought it would be cool to have a mid-engine car:



This is my 7 hp Volvo MD1, which a friend showed me how to rebuild last summer.


I picked it up at his place in RI earlier this week, and ferried it up to the Eastwind (Mooney Point, NY, on Lake Champlain).

Since it weighs 290 lbs, I confined my role to recruiting and guiding a few younger fellas.

Just for fun, here's the mockup the previous owner had built - I wish he had saved it!

you are pretty trusting of that engine on your car's interior! :-)

In my experience, engines, even when they have been out for awhile, still tend to burp old fluids at the worst times and places.

Lovely mockup.

-Britton

Although I've never been the sort to do this, that mockup makes me want to somehow put a slab of glass over the top and make a table :-) Very cool! Only question: How could anyone *not* have saved it?!

--- R.

bcooke wrote:you are pretty trusting of that engine on your car's interior! :-)

In my experience, engines, even when they have been out for awhile, still tend to burp old fluids at the worst times and places.

It's an old "boat car" in any case - being downtown, I really have not much need of one otherwise.
I took out the seat cushion, and there was only one little incidental scratch from the whole exercise.

Now comes the serious part - it's one thing to get it running, quite another to get everything 'just right' before committing it to the bowels of the boat. It won't run up to full revs yet, but I think that's got to do with the injector pressure. Has a very nice steady thumping idle, though, and runs up to half-speed pretty smoothly. They are basically old fishing boat engines, so pretty simple and reliable.

I have "most of" another one if anyone is interested. It's disassembled, and has a so-so 7 hp head, and a pretty good 5 hp one. *I think* it could be configured either way, but it would probably be a better bet to set it up as a 5 hp. Needs a valve cover, an exhaust elbow, and a thermostat at least, but it's safe to say that it is 95% complete.

Rachel wrote:that mockup makes me want to somehow put a slab of glass over the top and make a table :-) Very cool! Only question: How could anyone *not* have saved it?!

I never got an intelligible answer to that question - the response was that it "wasn't made out of very good plywood", and I decided not to explore that line of reasoning any further! I think it was because he gave up and installed a Yanmar, so didn't need it anymore, who knows?