TrögBlog – Volvo C306 Firetruck Restoration and Camper Conversion

I spent the day rewiring the electrical system.   In the process, I have put an ignition switch on the instrument panel.     To keep things tidy, I decided to remove the old ignition switch and cowling.   This involved removing the steering wheel.   What I thought was a simple task ended up taking a few hours.    The service manual indicates to use a special Volvo tool.

This tool pulls the wheel without damaging the plastic.    Not having that tool, I tried making my own.    As you can imagine from the bodgy welds, this version took many iterations, all failing, from bending the clamp to cracked welds.

Ok, something simpler.

I made up an aluminum ring with a conical interior profile to match the steel turn signal cancel ring.

Using that and a gear puller and it came off, still with a fair amount of effort.

I’m thinking of installing the wheel in the foreground as the new wheel:

It’s 20″ in diam, vs 17″ for the stock wheel.   So I’ll have to make it mount a little higher for leg clearance.

I’d love to tilt the steering column forward a little bit as well, but doing so would require fabbing a new bracket down near the steering box.

Camper, Trog

So the camper conversion went much smoother and quicker than I thought. Here’s a couple inside pix

Bench seating on both sides, the bed is two sections, the forward section sets over the folded down bench seat in the mid-cabin. The white box is a drawer style marine refrigerator

and check out the slide-out add-a-room, like on high end RVs!

The propane stove is attached to the door so you can cook outside, or in really bad conditions inside while squatting. If you look closely, you can see I’m cooking up some Indian fry bread and an acorn squash. Yum. To the right of the door is a detachable sink that uses the same faucet as the external shower.

The cool thing about this conversion is if anything gets trashed, it’s super easy to replace.

Camper, Trog