By Glenn Goodspeed (May, 2001)
For years I've contemplated ways of displaying on the web the pages of my tattered parts manual for the early-to-mid production Volvo 1800. The drawings and descriptions have been an invaluable aid in figuring out how parts fit together and which parts my car was equipped with originally. The part numbers have been equally valuable when ordering parts.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the time or the web space to make the project feasible. But, like many good ideas, you only have to wait and someone else will carry them out. Now my catalog and several others are available for searching on the web site of Genuine Classic Parts. GCP is licensed by Volvo to reproduce parts for older Volvo cars. GCP began by selling parts through the Volvo dealer network, and now they are offering them over the Internet via their web site.
To make it easier for customers to order the correct parts, GCP has published the parts catalogs of some classic Volvo models. However, there are no instructions for using the catalogs, and they seem to assume that you have some experience using the paper versions as well as some familiarity with web pages. For those who have little of either, here are some instructions.
First, navigate to the GCP web site at http://www.gcp.se. You may select English or Swedish, but some of the older catalogs seem to be only in Swedish. Fortunately, the catalogs for the 1800 were printed in several languages, and if you select English, many of the pages will contain not only English, but one or more other languages as well.
On the GCP home page, click "Catalogue" on the left. This brings up a page with pictures of some classic Volvos with a drop-down list underneath each picture. Pull down the list under the 1800, and you'll see three models listed, P1800, P180 (B-18), and 182-183 (B-20). The first choice does nothing. The second pulls up the catalog for early and mid-production 1800s, and clicking the last choice pulls up the catalog for later 1800s with the B-20 engine.
When you click one of the latter choices, the cover of the catalog is displayed. If you are using a slow connection, such as a 56K modem, it may take as long as twenty seconds for each catalog page to load. Depending on the size of your computer screen, there may be one or two scroll bars framing the view of the catalog page. Scroll down to the bottom of any page, or look in the frame below, and you will see the links, "Back" and "Next."
If you click "Next," you will normally be taken to the next page of the catalog, which in this case is the table of contents, although GCP calls it the "Main Index." Note that on the Main Index page, the numbers in blue represent links to the various sections of the catalog. So, if you were looking for air filters, for instance, you could click on the blue "2c" and that would pull up the contents for the Fuel and Exhaust System group. On this page, there are links to the first page of the group and to the index for the group in various languages. Since you're looking for air filters, you'll click the link for the Index under the English language group title, represented by its page number, 1:2.
On page 1:2, scroll down to the English language section. Beside each item in the list there are page numbers that serve as links to those pages. Find Air Filters and click on the page number, 20. Here's where it gets a little tricky. You see a list of part numbers with a short description of each, but you have no way of knowing which part number you need. You are looking at about one-fourth of a page of the catalog, and the only way to look at the rest of the page is to use the scroll bars. Kinda clumsy.
There are no links from the part numbers to the drawings of the parts, so this is where it helps to know that the catalog was originally printed so that the drawings of the parts would always be on the page facing the descriptions of the parts. If you want to look at the drawings of the air filters, you have to click on the "Next" link in the frame below the catalog page. Now you can see the drawings and the position numbers. The air filter for my car looks like number 1 in the illustration, so I'd click on "Back" to go back to the description page. Then I could see that the part number for air filter number 1 is 73606-6.
GCP includes a search window beneath the catalog window that allows you to search for the part, once you have the number, to see if it is available, how much it costs, and to add it to your order if you intend to order it.
You could page through the whole catalog by clicking the Next button repeatedly, but of course this would take much more time than using the index pages or flipping through the pages of a paper catalog. Some illustrations contain so many parts that the descriptions take up as many as three pages, such as External Embellishers, which is reached from a link in the Coachwork index.
You have to remember that in the original catalog, the descriptions would be on the left page and the illustration on the right. If the descriptions took three pages, the illustration would be repeated on the alternate three pages. This means that if you click "Next" to get to the next page while looking at External Embellishers, you will get an illustration, then another description page, then the same illustration, then the final description page, then another identical illustration page.
GCP seems to be improving the site incrementally. Perhaps in the future, all part numbers will be linked by position to the appropriate drawings.
There are some pages in the catalog that you might miss if you are not familiar with the original. Some people will find them fascinating, others won't care enough to look for them, but I'll list them here and you decide whether to check them out or not. From the Main Index, click on section "1", the Foreward. This brings you to a list of catalog amendments, not very interesting. Click "Next" at this point, and you will be transported to the next page of the catalog, which is blank. Don't even bother scrolling around, just click "Next" again. This brings you to another dull page. Click "Next" again, and the next page is blank.
Click "Next" again and finally, you are at an interesting page, but it's in Swedish. Click "Next" again to see it in English. This page tells you where to find the various identification plates on the car and what they mean. It also has some very informative data on the body types and descriptions. I imagine this will throw quite a curve at the folks who insist that the "P" was dropped from the model name at some point.
Click "Next" several more times to get past the same info in other languages, and click past the info in Swedish about abbreviations, and then things get interesting again. There is a page that shows various major part numbers and what cars they belong to, some instructions on how to use the catalog, and then there is a page that you will find valuable on occasion. It has a list of Swedish abbreviations that are used in the margin notes to describe parts, and it has a list of corresponding English words, so now you can translate those margin notes. I've looked at these so many times in my paper catalog that I know what "tid utf" and "sen utf" mean without looking them up.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to "bookmark" catalog pages for quick reference, but once you get used to it, you'll find what you need pretty quickly anyway. And you can always print out the pages you need to look at. (Different browsers have different ways of printing out things. Generally, you would click in the catalog page and then use the "print frame" capability of your browser.) This might be the easiest way to use the catalog, and if you keep every page you print, you will end up with a paper catalog of your own.