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Project Volvo presents: the Golden Girl

project volvo

spoolakowski
Joined
May 8, 2005
Location
from Burlington now Farmington,CT
In ~2007 I bought a 1990 240. Since then it's been mainly a lot of little maintenance projects as well as some suspension work. I'll try to make this a most basic chronicle of what I have done and add what little pictures I have of the project now as well as updating with more pictures as time passes.

Here she is When I first picked her up:

IMG_0612.jpg


From the time of ownership I have found multiple surprises.

I bought a garaged 240 that was supposed to have no accidents and only had 109,000 miles.

Here's a small list of the little surprises I have found over the years:

80% of the lug nuts were stripped (luckily the studs were unharmed)
One of the studs was cut short for some reason
the passenger front door was bondoed and repainted as well as the front fender (this has lead to peeling clear by the trim as well as orange peel)
It wasn't a huge deal bu the fact that they put the door trim piece on with wood glue was... especially because the piece was coming off
The suspension was mostly untouched (most people would expect that so ehh
The car is developing rust in various places and the frame rails are not very pretty in front (the rust will be taken care of eventually hopefully within the next few weeks but we will see what time decides)

Alright so onto the better stuff.

It's hard to put everything in chronological order since I haven't taken the initiative to make a proper project thread but I'll try to stay on track.

I did a few small maintenance projects and the only real initial mod was 18's that I ran for nearly a year or so

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(only mounted picture i could find:
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Sometime following the purchase of this car I bought b230 with a ported head from Adrian v8volvoman. I swapped the head on with a V-cam and a ttr cam gear and converted to a round tooth belt setup. I also re-did all the rear bushings. we created the bushing tool just one thing to remember is to oil the bolt used in the tool with multiple turn and the amount on force needed to press out some of the bushing the bolt will warm up greatly.

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to add to the small list of problems I noticed with the car there was a problem hat went unoticed. It must have been a broken or missing keyway... but the backing plate on my alternator decided to sheer off one day. I heard a loud clunk as I drove and the car lost power. pulled over and waited till some of the smoke cleared and saw the red liquid on the ground. The plate sheered off cut my trans lines knocked a hole in my timing belt cover and decided to dent my hood as well.

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That project was followed by a modded AW71 but the transmission wasn't in the best condition when we first tore into it and I ended up having to switch back to an AW70. The transmission had both the valve body and accumulator mod done it and when it was in it shifted extremely fast.
 
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reserved for suspension to date:

so upon getting my 240 a few months after I was talking to a friend and they told me to go to the junk yard and check out a 245.

I skipped one of the first days of classes at school just to part the car and it was quite the treasure trove.

Bilstein Hd's
older Ipd lowering springs
25mm sways
hella horns
strut brace (old school IPD)
upper and lower chassis braces
and a pretty sweet 3 spoke steering wheel.

I'll have to sort through my pictures to try to fins some kind of before and after if possible.

Later on I switched to adjustable rear perches. They are the first gen kaphlenke ones and they are quite stuck. I'll have to pull them some day soon to clean them up. Ideally i would like to swap them out to something else that has a set screw as well. If you have found a good set give me a heads up.

heres an after pic for reference:
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styling/ body

not a whole lot in this department....

removed rain gutter trim and sanded down an imperfect NOS foothold to bare metal.

. dremeled/ drilled holes for aerocatch latches (the latches are still not installed but I'll explain that later)

the sanding process was ridiculous mainly because I had painted the hood matte black originally and the pan. Did not want to adhere. The hood had factory primer that was ruined in placed from one kind of liquid dripping on it. It had rust in a few places and it isnt perfect. Pretty much factory primer is impenetrable it doesn't come off with aircraft paint removal, so I used a DA wander and a lot of elbow grease. Looking back I should have just sent it out.

I had the good fresh primered part of which I sprayed. (I had 0 technique) and then painted and cleared by a friend he was in a rush and inevitably did a poor job. The initial paint job seemed ok but then I noticed all the orange peel and uneven paint followed by chipping and a scratch that easily went through the primer. Thing was he mixes paint in house and his supplier mentioned to me that I should have metal etch primer my friend said he would thicken the primer ratio and would effectively work the same... (turns out that's not true and the durability often paint/primer is awful) which leads me to why the latches aren't in the hood isn't very good looking and makes me not want to install the latches as I do plan on getting the hood sorted out in the future.







this is the day after the install/paint in Time for swedish car day
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oh and paint matched the strut tower braces


still had a picture of my seats in photobucket, it isn't a great on but it gives you an idea of whats in the car:

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we made brackets to adapt and offset the original slider, i had to bend the slider a bit to make it work... it also lowered the seat ~2inches (for me is is perfect for short people they need a pillow)

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Figured i'd add some of the new stuff now.

Turns out that when my vband was being welded to my down pipe i also had the wastegate tacked shut...

It was actually tacked open. grinded down the tack and tomorrow the hot side of turbo is going to be milled flat so that it better mates with the milled flat exhaust manifold.

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turbo got milled might just mess with trying to port it to a standard t3 opening, as well as the manifold. I may just buy a sheet of copper and cut it to the same dimensions because the height of the hole is a bit taller for volvo turbo as you can see by the grey lines.

also got wg flapper re-tacked.... seems the person doing the weld got a little bit carried away and wanted to lay some bead. (only wanted it tacked because If i move onto another turbo and sell this one I imagine the person may stick with a standard WG, so i want to keep it reversible)

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I'm being very slow and methodical with the +t (it will probably put people to sleep... but I will be trying to do a good job in documenting it.)

It seems it won't be +t'ed before carlisle though... (as I don't want any surprises with the injectors not working correctly or whatever else might occur between now and Carlisle)

additionally I have to do a few maintenance projects and do front wheel bearings, driveshaft support bushing/bearing and whatever else I might feel needs to be worked on
 
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some parts of this project are on hold temporarily till after Carlisle.

working on wheel bearings even though modified strut assemblies would have been a pretty good idea. Chances are I will just get a new seal kit for the bearings when it comes to doing shortened strut assemblies.

the other things I have to do before carlisle:
- rebuild a rear caliper
- and replace the drive shaft bushing and bearing.
- and still try to clean/ wax the car


If possible I'd love to get an adjustable panhard rod fabbed up before Carlisle.... but that just might have to wait to source the few parts it would need.
 
What are you using for porting? Dye grinder/carbide bit?

I was going to go to Jay's he said he has a bit (pretty sure it was a carbide bit and die grinder). earlier I was using a high speed dremel at 25k rpm to blend the exhaust manifold that's currently on the engine just for ****s and giggles. We managed to get a lot of material off with some kind of sanding stone.
 
I like using the carbide burs made for alum, the barrel shaped 6 flute units.
 
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