Teague was embroiled with several ambitious projects of his own, and the box from RPR arrived before he could get back over with the hoist. With one engine stand and no hoist, there'd be no swapping oil pans or doing much else to the motor, so I started in on the suspension work.

I'm not one to charge full-tilt into a big project, so I did the easiest job first: replacing the axle limiting straps. One nice thing about this 1800 is that it's spent most of its young life in salt-free central California, so bolts come loose with nothing more than a shot of WD-40 or Liquid Wrench and a little torque. It took longer to put the car on stands and take the wheels off than it did to actually replace the straps. Close inspection confirmed that all the bushings back there were in fine shape.

As for the front, the first order of business was to take off the brake calipers. Applying some force with a breaker bar, I felt and heard a thunk. Thunk? Five seconds of investigation revealed the fact that the left steering tie rod had a good 1/8" of play in it, well into "dangerous to drive on" territory. I still don't know how that had gotten by me -- but its brother on the right wasn't much better. Oh well, what's another $120 or so on the credit card? It's not like we could really afford any of this anyway...

It didn't take long for that $120 to figure out that Ma and Pa Budget had just left on vacation -- it rang up all its buddies of various denominations to come right over and PAR-TAY. The first to show up was a swaybar end link whose bolt would not slide out from its spacer. OK, I'd deal with that once the control arm was on the bench.

The next one was a fairly rare beastie: a failed Bilstein shock. The right one was stiff and self-expanding; the left would push in and out by hand easily. I set both aside for thinking about later (they're something over $100 apiece, and best replaced in pairs).

Before my trip north, I'd been gratified to find that it took very little gear oil to top up the steering gearbox, even after five years of inattention. Now, I noticed that the whole length of the Pitman arm connected to the bottom of the box was covered in oil. Hmmm -- I pumped in a tablespoon more, which topped up the box again; within minutes, oil was dripping off the end of the arm. I didn't know how to explain this, but it didn't have "simple" or "cheap" written on it, as far as I could see.

The other party guests were over in the corner being wallflowers; I didn't even notice they'd arrived. I was busy running into a stumbling block. Having removed the springs and upper control arms without incident, I found that the big lower control arm bolts were not interested in coming out. Not even interested in turning, for that matter. Putting their nuts back on to spare the bolt threads, I gave them a few serious whacks with my biggest hammer. I could just as well have been whacking anvils. The bolts had apparently rusted solid to the tubes through the cross-member.

A quick run to Pep Boys got me a large spray can of PB Blaster, serious de-rusting stuff (Rost-Off is even better, but hard to find). Problem was, there's no good way to get such goop to go in between the bushings and crossmember, but I squirted away anyhow as best I could. It would just have to penetrate on its own.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not always cold and cloudy in the Northwest. In fact, July and August afternoons can easily push 90 degrees. Our garage door (which doesn't close) faces west, so the hot sun creeps further and further in along the floor as the afternoons progress. For some reason, the encroaching sun brings with it quantities of low-flying, sunbathing wasps with a proclivity for landing on sweaty skin in search of a nice, salty drink. I don't enjoy serving up Margueritas to stinging insects -- I gathered up my tools and what parts had managed to come off, and retreated to the cool of the basement shop, emerging once in a while to give the bolts another squirt. Best to try them again in the morning.

Marsha insisted (wisely, I think) that I leave my clothes in the basement before she'd let me upstairs for a shower.

By morning, my main purpose in life was to make the bolts turn, and I could see that propane heat would be required. I set about this early, before any of the 90-degree / sun / wasp business got underway. I'd torch one end of a crossmember tube good and hot, torque on the breaker bar for a while, torch the other end, torque some more, let it cool down, squirt on some PB Blaster and move to the other side of the car for a repeat performance. This didn't seem to have any effect on the bolts whatsoever, but it was good exercise.

One thing I often tell people about doing mechanical work is this: "If what you're doing isn't working, don't just keep doing it. Think of some better way." In this case, I made an exception -- if there was a better way not involving expensive things like air compressors and impact tools, it never did come to me. I had time to do a lot of thinking, too, much of it consisting of Not Very Nice Thoughts. The very last time I heated the front left tube and really bore down hard on the breaker bar, though, I noticed the tip of the control arm move a millimeter. That must mean that the front part of the bolt was unstuck and I was seeing the results of the shaft of the bolt itself twisting very, very slightly. As soon as it cooled down, it locked up tight again, but that was the first sign of change that I'd seen. I gave the garage over to the wasps thinking there might be hope, after all.

To make a long (and very boring) story short, I spent six hours the next day sitting on the garage floor with my foot pushing hard on the breaker bar while heating the crossmember tube for thirty minutes at a time. Eventually, it began to turn, very stiffly. Another hour of ten-degree foot pushes and hammer whacking finally extracted it.

The whole following day was spent removing the second bolt just the same way, and in just the same amount of time.

Day the next: with some clean-up work on the bench, both bolts polished up just fine, apparently undamaged by all the heating, torquing and whacking. The nuts were smashed beyond recognition, but they'd done their work saving the bolt threads.

After a messing a while with more propane and vice-grip pliers, I gave up on the stuck end link bolt. I don't own a Sawzall, but a regular hacksaw made short work of removing it -- I wanted to do something with urethane bushings in that area anyway. All four control arms got a few hours of wire brushing, cleaning, sanding and spraying with satin black Plastikote paint, and were hung up to dry in the Chamber of Horrors.

Those stupid bolts were the toughest things I've ever taken of a car that were usable afterwards. Our 122S has lived in a lot less benign environment than the 1800, has a lot more rust on it and has triple the mileage, but it never fights back that hard. It's been driven regularly all its life -- it's really not good for Volvos to sit.

A whole week spent doing what should have taken an afternoon... More than high time to move on to other parts of the project.