Back in California, I worked with sailors, almost all of whom were men. That was OK as far as it went, but we rarely had any of them over to the house. The last thing I needed at home was to hear more of the same jokes and the same opinions as at work. Therefore, almost all of our personal friends -- at least, the ones we'd have over to dinner -- were women. In any case, neither sailors nor dinner guests cared a bit about old Volvos.

Up here, we got to know most of our friends because they like old Volvos, and most of them happen to be men. I call us "the unclub" (Cameron prefers "the tribe") and it's been great. I'm sure I'd like Cam, Shayne, Teague, Peter and Mike (and a few less frequent unmembers) even if they didn't care about cars, but that's what gives us an excuse to get together. It's been great.

We seem to have acquired a new unmember. Grant works for the Post Office and I met him while mailing magazines a few months back. "Is this really a magazine about old Volvos? I've got an old Volvo -- a 122 wagon. Doesn't run yet, but..."

Due to the vagaries of which postal clerk would yell "Next" as I got to the head of the line, several months went by before I chatted with Grant again. "Hey, did you get your wagon running?"

"No. It's all back together, but it won't start. I'm not sure what's wrong."

"Want me to come look at it? No, really -- I know this stuff. Want some help?" We exchanged phone numbers.

A few weeks later, Grant actually called and I went over to his place across town. His wagon's a nice '68 with a perfect interior and a very good body. I've been back several times since, once with Cameron, and we've almost got it back on the road. There were a lot of small things wrong; mostly the result of being worked on by people who don't know much about what makes old Volvos go.

Grant and his wife Joan were fairly flabbergasted (so he now tells me). Here were total strangers (at first, anyway) coming to his house and healing his cherished car that no one had been able to make run in a year -- and we didn't want anything for doing it.

Which is not the same as saying we don't get anything out of it. If you don't understand what, you're not a likely candidate for the unclub. Send your money to one of the club clubs and I'm sure they'll let you join.

But I really wanted to tell you about a different 122 wagon that's come a lot further: Shayne's. This is the car that Shayne evicted from his garage so our 1800 would have a place to stay in the weeks between my house-hunting trip here last year and the time we actually moved. I'd never even spoken to Shayne before that night and was fairly flabbergasted myself, as I recall.

Shayne had pieced his wagon together from the best portions of quite a number of other cars. He got it running well and used it for a daily driver, but it didn't look like much at first. It was mostly faded dark blue with some parts in gray and some in black primer. The interior was largely stripped out and the dash pad had been removed. Under the hood, though, a clean 2130cc motor gleamed against a background of black Hammerite; just the first indication of things Shayne had done to make the car run "better than new," things like OverDrive and suspension mods being less apparent to the casual observer.

The wagon gradually got a nice wooden steering wheel, 240 seats, a new 4.30 rear axle and many other improvements. Finally, it had an extended stay at The Works in Eugene, where Bob Moreno put the finishing touches on the bodywork and sprayed the car all one color. Shayne likes bright red.

And thus, this little red wagon inevitably became known within the tribe as the Radio Flyer.

There'd been talk in the unclub for six months about renting garage space. It was all fine and good to get together at each others' houses and tinker in the driveways, but not always convenient. We were forever schlepping floor jacks, jack stands and such back and forth, and that problem would get worse as one or another of us bought larger units like an engine hoist or welder all would like to use.

Storage was also an issue -- remember, these are guys who tend to have several Volvos and lots of spare parts. Cameron bought a house in Portland, which gave him a garage of his own and more storage than in his old shared rental, but Shayne and wife Sarah simultaneously bought their own house (three blocks from Cameron's) and had to seriously condense all the stuff that had accumulated in various storage barns and sheds on their old acreage out in the sticks. Some of us had money to rent space, some didn't; some wanted to take in paying Volvo work, some didn't have time for that -- we never did work out a sensible deal involving all.

Shayne and Teague finally just grabbed the kraken by the scales and went in together on garage space -- I think it was actually Teague that found the opportunity and they jumped on it. They figured they could defray the expenses by taking in repair work after hours and on weekends, but they were a little nervous about it. In fact, they soon found that none of the established Volvo shops in the area want to work on the old OHV cars anymore -- within a week, they had everyone referring that business to them. Don't know if it's true, but I heard they made the rent through the end of the year in their first six days.

A business -- even a part-time one -- has to have a name, and they came up with "Professional Amazon Repair." The slogan is on their business cards: "Bring Your Car Up To PAR." Very cute.

It was some weeks before I had a chance to go play. The project was converting the Radio Flyer from the Weber DGV I'd always known it to have back to SU carbs. I collected Grant in the 1800 and we headed over the river and into Portland to check it out.

Teague was just opening up as we got there. It looked like they had chosen well -- PAR was easy to get to and easy to find (even for me and my notoriously haphazard navigation when south of the river). There was room for a couple of cars outside and at least six more inside. It would lock up securely and there was a big gas heater to keep the place toasty in winter. It had decent electricity, lighting, storage, and office and a rest room. Cameron soon arrived, followed by Shayne, who pulled the Flyer right into the building. What a concept!

Now, Shayne is as nice and as generous a guy as I've ever met, and it seems life sometimes rewards him for it. Some of you will recall the great worthless carburetor fest we held earlier this year -- well, Shayne had somehow bartered enough of those old junk SUs straight across for a gorgeously rebuilt set. All the aluminum was polished until it glowed; all the steel was zinc plated an irridescent gold. They were so pretty that Cam and I borrowed them as a visual aid for the Tech Session we gave at the VSA meet a few month back.

Shayne, though, who had never owned a good set of SUs before and liked the reliability of the Weber setup he had, had been reluctant to actually bolt these onto the Flyer. I think several things convinced him -- I'd worked on him some (and so had Cam, I suspect); the Flyer had run well on Track Day, but not as well as expected from a 2130 motor -- but in the end, it was probably just the thought of all that polished aluminum against black Hammerite that got to him. I was sure it would perform better after the surgery. It had to, or I'd be really disappointed (not to mention Shayne).

In fact, we'd thought of just about everything and the work went quickly, in spite of increasing numbers of prospective Volvo customers (most of whom I'd never met) coming by to see if they really did want to bring their cars up to PAR. We tried to look like we knew what we were doing, although I'm not sure just how that looks. We did hit a few snags, but nothing that wasn't readily overcome.

Finally, it was time to start the Flyer. The only thing we didn't have were the little fittings that hook the choke cables onto the chokes, but that was no big deal. After one good cranking to get fuel into the bowls the first time, I held the chokes open by hand, hoping not to get a faceful of lean backfire out of the carb throats. It fired right up without fuss.

After warming it up, we started tuning. Cameron had brought his UniSyn gauge and I'd brought an old 1800 defroster hose to listen through. We tried to see which was more accurate or easier to use for synching dual carbs -- we finally called it a draw.

We very quickly came to another conclusion, too: if you run engines indoors for any length of time, you won't like what you're breathing. The exhaust fumes ran us right out of the building for a while, after which we ran the Flyer out instead (the back few feet of it, anyway). This is one of those obvious things we'd simply never had to think about before.

Cam and I tinkered a bit more and then declared the Flyer good for a test run. Shayne took off down the side street. Five minutes later, he came back up the side street, clearly going way faster than the speed limit. He got out grinning like the Chesire Cat. "Yeah, well, I thought it would be good, but I didn't know it would be this good!"

We read the plugs, tweaked the carbs a flat or two richer and called it a day. Shayne left in a zoom of newly-discovered rpm; I took Grant back to his house and got home well after dark

You know, sometimes I really like this old Volvo stuff.

Photo by Gary Ramstad