This will carry on soon after a previous story left off: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromAutoRepair/comments/aqryzs/valhallas_road/

Many years go, I was a broke meat factory worker who was too dumb to even know how dumb I was. My trusty 21 year old Volvo was treating me as well as it could, and I felt like a king.

After a while I felt like I should treat my car a little better and decided to take it for one of those 'services' I'd never had done, but heard so much about.

At one end of the small town there was an old dull silver building that in big bold white letters said VOLVO above a few blue faded and scratched roller doors. So of course I took my car to there.

It was on that day that I learned that there are two Volvos; one that makes cars and are now a subsidiary of the Chinese manufacturer Geely, and the other is part of a massive multinational company called AB Volvo that heads Mack trucks, Volvo trucks, Renault trucks and many other brands we all know and love/loathe. The two haven't had anything to do with each other in about 850 years.

So out of pity or perhaps curiosity they took in my 21 year old pathetic looking half broken Swedish chariot anyway. I'd recently picked up a hotrod magazine in and attempt to learn something about cars. It had nothing at all to do with the pale skinned, sailor tattooed, red lipped, dark haired lady on the cover. From it I'd picked up some excellent car jargon such as: "spark plugs", "tune up", and "Oldsmobile Rocket".

Armed with my depth of knowledge, I told them with pride that I wanted a service and the belt changed. 'Which belt?', they patiently asked. This threw me at first, but I stuck to my guns and couldn't let them know my secret: I had no fucking clue what a belt even was.

'All of them!', I beamed. I thought this was an incredibly clever answer and I was pretty proud of how quickly I had improvised. 'No problem', they said.

Since the previous story, I had upgraded from my tent at the back of the local fairground and gotten myself a fine caretaker's shack at the back of a rundown apartment building. Half my rent check later, I had my car back. Of course, it felt amazing and ran so much better than before. Driver seat dyno never lies. I celebrated by going up and down the town's one street many times that evening.

A short while later I decided that my 21 year old Swedish chariot was in desperate need of what all useless shitboxes need: moar powah.

After the embarrassment of having nearly been caught not knowing anything at the Volvo truck dealer, I could never go back there as long as I live. So I found a local small workshop. The kind with one guy who 'works' only when the river tides, or whatever rivers have, are not good for fishing.

Once again, armed with my depth of knowledge, I asked the fisherman/part time mechanic if I could get a tune up. 'No man, your car doesnt have blah and the blah blah blah means that blah blah. So we can just do that, ok?' It was just like the peanuts cartoon. His words he said meant nothing to me.

Looking back now, I'm pretty sure he was telling me that my car didn't have points and so a traditional tune up that people still asked for wasn't going to happen, but he would change my plugs, leads and distributor rotor if it's worn. 'Sure', I replied with all the false confidence I could muster.

Due to bad tides or pity he was not busy now and could take a look if I had nowhere else I needed to be. I opened the hood. He peered in and laughed.

'What the fuck is that thing!?', he laughed while pointing at a silver colored metal tubing looking thing coming out from the side of the boxy top part of the engine that had the word 'Volvo' which I had meticulously hand painted International Orange to match the vehicle exterior.

I was a bit dumbfounded. He was supposed to be the expert after all. He craned his head around, looking under this and over that. Finally he said 'oooh, I get it! It's like fuel injection and a carburetor fucked and had an ugly kid'.

That silver tubing thing was the intake plenum for what was one of the most interesting forms of fuel injection ever made: Mechanical fuel injection. Apart from a few small solid state conponents there was no computer. It measured incoming air by the use of a deflector plate that simply flapped over more when more air rushed past it.

The deflector was connected to a piston that regulated high pressure fuel flow into the injectors. Which were little more than spring operated valves. When the pressurized fuel was forced into them, they opened and fuel squirted out into the cylinder intake. Sounds simple but effective, but in reality it was complicated and expensive to make, so it never really took off.

Having spend yet another rent check on my car and my car running so much better than ever , I decided I needed to figure this car shit out for myself. So I put away that magazine with the milk skinned lady and started reading the Haynes manual for my old Swedish Chariot.

My own father was a gearhead and an amateur racer. When I was the age of 12, he stole money from our family business and took off with his 21 year old assistant, leaving my mother, brothers and I broke and homeless. To be taken as a positive, he didn't take his very expensive, labeled, brand name tool box, barely filled with cheap, mismade knock-off wrenches. A summary of him as a person really.

The teal green covered Haynes book became like a father to me. Using those old tools, that book patiently guided me though lifes troubles one broken part at a time. Installation is the reversal of removal.

The book jacket eventually got ripped and the inside got dog eared and grease stained as I slowly worked my way through the pages, with the book resting on the valve cover as repairs and life lessons came and went on my old beast.