Blue 92 - The Kid is Back

realy nice car! would it be possible to pop on some old style small chrome hubcaps?

K&N filter arrived on Wednesday, but I was in Houston until Saturday evening. Got it installed this afternoon with a shoutout to Rectilinear for shipping it already cleaned with fresh oil.

Had an idea for a lighting mod floating around in my head for a while and when I dropped a big order on Amazon for the roof rack I threw a set of LED strip lights in with it. It came in a set of 3 for under $9 and they're waterproof.



I took down the trunk light and hooked a jumper connection to both the + & - leads to the light. The trunk light is triggered by a plunger switch when the trunk is raised. Checked the correct connections with a test light and had to run a short extension for the furthest light. Lights are held up with double sided tape and hardly draw any power. The only downside was the included wires coming from the lights are super thin, so I had to strip back a good length of the insulation to make sure they wouldn't come loose from the quick connects.

Installed one on each side of the trunk lid and now I have enough light to see everything in the trunk.



I ran all the wires for the fog lights, but my lights still haven't shown up yet. Looks like they'll be here on Wed. I even discovered a factory fog light switch stashed away in my parts hoard in the shed.

The back of the truck was full on our trip from Houston. Brought back the strut inserts, reinforcing plates, egg crate euro grille, BBS wheels, VX cam plus some other odds & ends to keep me busy.

Here's a link to the lights I ordered if anybody is interested. Total install was less than 30 minutes.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071PFC1H2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Better photo of how well the trunk is lighted with the LEDs in a dim garage.

So I got hit skipped by a guy with road rage on the way to work this morning. Lighting was pretty poor, I'm still trying to get a clear image of his license plate from the video. Asshat was weaving in & out of traffic behind me with his high beams on and wound up behind me pretty close. I tapped the brake with my foot still on the gas to warn him. He then passed me on the right and swerved into my lane clipping my front corner. No damage aside from some scrapes to the bumper cover and a buster corner lens. I've already ordered a replacement.



Once I get his license plate I'm going to track him down and file a claim on his policy. I have a few connections.

From what I can see from the video he's stuck with a hole in his rear bumper corner. He was in a Pontiac Vibe - lots of plastic.

EDIT :

Got a screen capture of the other guy and working on uploading the video clip. Can't get a clear view of his license plate though. Check out the angle of his rear wheel after the impact. LOL

Now with more plaid. One step closer to achieving ludicrous speed.

The weather finally cleared and warmed up some, so I took advantage and got some things done on the car today. Changed the oil and following this post : http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=255028 I made my own lower chassis braces.

After shaping with a 2.5lb hammer



And installed



the car has been running a little warm the last couple weeks. After searching here, I pulled the airbox out and found the warm air flap was stuck which was constantly feeding hot air from the exhaust shield into the intake. I just removed the whole flap assembly from the airbox.

Really like the way you mod your car. That's terrible about that dude clipping you. Some people are such ****.

A little more progress today. Ran out to pick n pull this morning and sadly there was a really nice 1990 244 there, silver on black MT with a mint interior. Somebody beat me to the black leather front seats, but the rear seat was mint. Soft leather and no signs of dry rot. No broken plastic on the interior, completely stock down to the tape deck and speakers in the front and rear doors.

I grabbed the rear headrests even though they're black. The blue rear headrests that were with the car when I bought it were pretty much falling apart from sun exposure.



It also had the first unbroken factory black manual antenna I've ever seen. I grabbed it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to sell it or install it.

Lookin’ good, very clean!

Thanks to swedishK's adapters, I was finally able to get the euro egg crate grille to fit correctly.



I originally had the fog lights mounted to the front spoiler after seeing another board member install them this way. There were too many vibrations on the highway which was causing the chin spoiler to flex enough so the lights were shaking. It drove me nuts, so I mounted them as far back on the bumper as I could.

Hi
I like the way your car is coming together.
I fit an egg crate grill on my (UK) 1993 240 & always felt the gap between the headlights & the grill was just that bit too much. On the version of the coffin nose hood we have here, the trim piece attached to the top of the headlight also extends down the side between the headlight & the grill. I managed to get hold of a pair & they fit into the stock location & filled the gap. You'd just need to wrap them in black.
Tim

So I like the look of the darkened trim inside the e-codes, but I didn't want to make any changes permanent by painting it black. I haven't had much luck with plasti-dip in the past, so I ordered a 6" wide roll of vinyl. I didn't want it black, so after some searching I came across a black chrome option which I think sets the lights off just a little without making it too dark.

Headlight disassembled and cleaned with vinyl installed. Because the glass lens is fluted, it doesn't matter too much if the vinyl is overlapping slightly.



Installed on the car



And both lights installed



I also finally changed the rear differential fluid and swapped out the main cluster bulbs so i can see the speedometer. The lower chassis braces are transmitting more vibrations into the cabin than without. I'll probably pick up some heavy polyurethane or rubber to make a gasket between the braces and the chassis.

Been a while since I've had any updates. Took a couple vacations this year - California in January with the wife, Lake Tahoe for some skiing with my dad & brothers in February. Got back from that trip and my wife decided we were moving from San Antonio back to Houston. Things got sidelined while we packed and planned.
Made the official move last Saturday, I was able to transfer back to the home office where I was working before. My wife quit her job last week and got hired already yesterday.

While packing I made sure everything I needed was available in the storage unit we rented as I knew today I was finally going to tackle the big work on the Volvo I had been putting off.

Started disassembly this morning and we're cleaning as we go.

This weekend involves, new tie rod ends (outer & inner), ball joints, fresh grease for the wheel bearings, strut inserts with strut mounting reinforcement plates from 15A and Sachs heavy duty front struts with one coil cut while everything is apart.



It's her car, so she's helping and learning as we go.



Making a mess of the garage at my mother in law's.





Everything was going fine - even with the gland nuts until we got to the driver side outer tie rod end. It refused to come loose, even with a lot of heat and a pipe wrench. Had to use the angle grinder to cut 3 reliefs into it then spread it apart a bit with a pry bar in order to get it to spin. I was really careful with how much cutting I did as I didn't want to get into the threads at all.

Tomorrow we'll be able to get it all bolted back up. If I have enough time I'll install the VX cam and IPD timing gear. Cutting a coil off the rear springs will have to wait until next weekend for now.

While everything was apart we took advantage of cleaning and painting what we could. Just primed & brush painted with rustoleum as this will never be a show car. All the bolts and especially the strut gland nuts got a coat of anti-seize to prevent any future problems.

My daughter watched as I assembled the passenger side because she was going to assemble most of the driver side.



Repacking the wheel bearings



Installing the calipers

Took it back to the shop for an alignment and while they could fix the toe-in, they wouldn't complete the alignment because the front control arm bushings are cracked and worn. Time to start figuring out how to install poly bushings and hopefully finding a spare set of front control arms to install them on to minimize down time.

Did a test fit of the OMP strut bar from my old 245 and it doesn't clear the newer style brake fluid reservoir.

Also ordered a few more parts - VDO oil pressure sending unit & and adapter to fit the block and finally ordered 25mm wheel adapters.

Time to buy a Harbor Freight 12 ton press. Make sure to have your coupon ready and to get it on sale. Those can be had for about $100. Otherwise you will have to torch the bushing and cut the shell out.

took the car off the road Friday night to install an IPD cam gear and the VX cam Slow240 gave to me a while back. I've never messed with anything timing related because my luck is the worst.

Most of the removal went pretty smooth. Kept track of all the parts and did a lot of reading here before I even started so I knew what I was getting into.

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Got the cam gear on and the cam in.



Set the Cam gear to TDC, checked the crank pulley for TDC (or so I thought), got it all back together and it started up fine. Sitting in the garage and applying throttle, the car had a stumble around 2000 RPMs, but seemed to rev ok. Went for a test drive and the car had no power, stumbling and running pretty poor.

Bring it back into the garage and open the hood. Oil is leaking from the front cam seal. Time to start over. Pull the top of the timing belt off, removed the cam gear, reinstalled the stock cam gear, set cam to TDC, set the crank pulley to TDC. Get it back together - no start. Great.

Pull the fan and shroud off for better access. Realize now that the crank gear wasn't set to TDC. Reset the timing on both, kept the stock cam gear on. Get it back together and it runs! No misfires, no stumbling at 2k.

Girl & I jump in the car, back out of the garage, get 3 houses down the street, the car stalls and won't restart. Super awesome.

Push the car back into the driveway, pop the hood and start poking around, call Slow240 again. Discover the distributor cap has come loose while I'm on the phone. Rear clip refuses to stay put. I learn something new in the distributor cap has a notch that fits only in 1 place & this one is 180 out. Flip the cap, go to reinstall and decide to check the rotor. Find out the tab inside has pretty much sheared.

run to AutoZone up the road, overpay for a new cap & rotor. get home, install cap & rotor, bend the rear tab so it fits a little more snug. Car runs again! Pull it into the garage, go drive around all afternoon shopping for a house. Get home, reinstall the fan shroud and fan, double check that everything is tight, start the car in the garage and let it run until it's warm. Finally no issues. Back it out and take a drive for another 10 minutes - no issues.

The VX cam is noticeably better. Much more mid range power, throttle is more responsive. So after a day & a half, the car is running great.

While it was in the garage, we painted the front calipers to get rid of the super crusty rust. Girl installed her Dave Barton decals I bought her over a year ago.





Added more plaid to the roof rack



And I got these in the mail on Friday

Such a clean 244, pretty cool you two wrench on it together. The wheels are going to really set your car off!

I'm so ready to see those wheels on the car.

slow240 said:

I'm so ready to see those wheels on the car.

Click to expand...

Going to order some ready to spray professional paint in aerosol cans to refinish them as soon as I figure out a color I'm going to be happy with.

They will probably get installed next weekend and refinished some time later this spring.

Minor updates. Car was leaking oil pretty bad after the cam install. Closer inspection showed the valve cover gasket - my fault, I monkeyed it up when I fixed the leaky front cam seal last weekend.

Had the car in the garage today to fix that, change the oil, install the oil temp drain plug and clean & paint the driver side front brake caliper.

It was my plan to install the BBS wheels today, pulled them from the storage unit and unpacked the adapters only to find out the center bore of the adapters is about 1mm too small and won't clear the hubs.

This is the second set of adapters I've ordered that haven't fit right. Partially on me for not measuring the Volvo hub size. I'll probably have to find a machine shop to try and enlarge the center bore.

Up on the list are :

- pull the crappy water temp gauge that didn't work after I installed it
- install oil temp gauge
- take care of the adapter issue
- install new heater control valve
- locate a pair of used control arms to install new control arm bushings
- install new hardware for the rear speakers & door speakers
- clean the engine bay