Chuck's '77 242 - "The Yellow One"

OK, well as some folks might've seen, my '85 244TIC was killed a couple weeks ago.

I've been looking for a replacement to alleviate my sorrows. I was kind of looking more for a 244, seeing as my old car was a 244, and I would've had a bunch of good black interior stuff to use if needed.

Well, I wound up picking this up instead.

A '77 242DL







Other than a few scratches and some small rust spots, the only real boogered spot is this.

Looks like a recent occurrence as well.

The suspension is shot, and it needs a tune-up or some other sorting. It idles really high when it warms up, and kinda down on power. The suspension isn't an issue, as I have all the good stuff from the 244 and eventually it will get the B21FT dropped into it. I do want to sort the engine out in the mean time however, so it's less tedious.

Looking at a couple things, the engine isn't original to the car. There are no AC controls in the car, but there is an AC compressor (with what looks to be a looped hose) acting as an idler pulley.

I'm not keen on the interior, and I am going to swap most of it out to black, I imagine. Did any of the early cars come with a black headliner? The one in the 244 is nice, but that car has a sunroof, and this car does not. I could dye it, I suppose.

I need to see how my FOHA rear spoiler would work on here too... Hoping it does.

The '78 242GT's have a black headliner with no sunroof cutout. Looks like a decent project. I'd almost be tempted to modify the B21F block to accept your T3, then drop your head and turbo onto it. 8.5:1 compression wouldn't be too much for a boosted application, as long as you're running 92 octane.

The high idle problem might be an AC solenoid that thinks it's supposed to be on all the time. My original 242 had a B23E installed in it with parts of an AC system. It, too, would idle around 2000 rpm or so when the solenoid received power. If the idle is more of a surge between 200 rpm and 1200 rpm, check the S-shaped hoes coming off the aux. air valve and going to the intake. It probably is worn.

With respect to the seats, if the latches work properly, save them from the old seats and put them on your black leather seats, cutting the vinyl part of the seat skin to allow the latch piece to stick through. Carpeting from your 244 will work fine, as will the dash, although you'll probably want to transfer the body harness over. Otherwise, the instrument cluster plugs will need to be rewired to work. Probably best to wait to do this until it's swap time. In the meantime, you can probably swap the M46 and the rear axle in, that way you can get 25 mpg again.

-J

Well, now that you mention it, I was thinking that +T-ing this engine (with a turbo head) might be an option. I *could* do that, and use my T5 adapter with what's there. I had thought about swapping this engine plus the M46 into the 245, and using the B21FT and the T5 here. Hrmm...

The idle doesn't surge, and is moderately low when the engine is cold. I haven't had too much time to diagnose it, seeing as I drove it home last night, got in about 11:30P then drove it to work this morning.

The front seats in the 244 aren't stock and flip forward, so that's covered.

My IPD 25/22 sways showed up yesterday. Hopefully I can get a chance to address some of the suspension issues this weekend. The main problem is kinda waiting on the insurance before tearing apart the 244 completely. Evidently there was some "delay" in the accident report getting posted, so that is slowing things down.

Turned the idle down a bit and poked around a bit more under the hood. Found a few more capped off vac hoses, with no indication of where they *should* go. The rumor is that this car was owned by a "Volvo mechanic" before the guy I bought it from had it. Kept it as a loaner car, I guess. Not too impressed so far at his skills as a mechanic.

I also need to crawl under it and adjust the clutch pedal. It has at least 8" of travel, and grabs really high (well, at least higher than I'm used to).

Chuck,

Good score. I think you will like the change to a 242. They are great looking cars, IMO.

Thanks, Roy. I can't wait to get it sorted. I miss my 244 though. I was just relishing in driving it right before it got smooshed.

Not too much time to work on the 242 until the weekend. I did get a couple good days of driving in it this week, and the engine did run better as it warmed up. Still seems down on power, even compared to the B20 in the wagon. I'm hearing a bunch of rattling from the exhaust, so I wonder if the cat is broken down? The engine isn't running warm, so it's not clogged ( at least not badly).

More thoughts on the +T option of the B21F. I actually have a flat 90+ manifold as well as a .60/.63 T3 from one of my Fords sitting in the garage, as well as a B23 intake, Ford brown-top injectors, an Avalanche B21 crank trigger wheel adapter, etc. So I have parts that I could use on this, and leave the B21FT complete to swap to the wagon.

Looking at the FAQ on the matter, one thing I didn't see was a comparison of the pistons between the NA and turbo varieties. Obviously that's where the compression change comes from, but what are they made of?

If you end up gutting that interior, keep me in mind. It's groovy.

That's going to be a sick ride.

IIRC, they're made the same way, just dished deeper on the B21FT. Unlike the late B23F (M46 version) blocks and the B230 blocks, the pistons and crank are the same, except for the amount of dish between the three versions of pistons on the B21's. Con rods, however, did get beefed up around 1980 or so, when the M rods came out. So, while you're modifying the block, it might not be a bad idea to swap con rods to the later style...

-J

IIRC, they're doublepost

-J

Interesting on the con rods.
Seeing as it looks like this engine isn't original to the car, any way to tell what year it is?

Easiest way is to look at the area of the block above the distributor. There's a stamped number. Six digits, then another five digits. The first set of digits is your part number. The second set, the serial number. B21F's with the 8.5:1 compression pistons are numbered: 498304, 498305, 498312, 498313, 498516, 498517, 498518, 498519, 498578, 498579, 498580, and 498581. I know there are some Canadian part numbers that exist, but I no longer have the 1977 and 1978 New Car Features manuals handy. The 498518/519, and 498580/581 engines are the ones with Lambda-Sond. The others either have EGR, or nothing.

-J

So, I'm still stuck waiting on the cops and insurance for the old car, but I needed to take care of the front suspension at least. I went ahead and grabbed the struts and springs I had in the front of the 244 and installed them, along with the wheels and tires.







I didn't install my IPD sways yet, though. They are an older plated set that I think I'd rather refinish before I install them. I can either powdercoat them or paint them. I also discovered that the car has Bilstein HDs on the back. Not sure how old they are, but that was a nice find, and they seem to be functional. The rest of the rear susp is shot, but I'll get to that.

Here's a shot of the current interior...blarg! Need to address that too.



I did check the engine part number, and it looks to be 489518, which looks to be a Lamda-Sond engine. Still doesn't tell me any more at least on whether it has the uprated "M" rods or not.

Another fun bit today, the fuel pump is making a bunch of noise. I have all the stuff from the 244 I can swap, but that's going to involve the tank, etc. Maybe I should just poke my head into the tank and make sure nothing is blocking the current fuel pick-up.

Anyway, the driving is much improved with the front suspension work, and the car looks better (to me, at least) with the slight drop and different wheels.

Ok, so at least it's the original year of engine. Yeah, it'd have the early con rods. It may be the original engine, but someone may've either deleted the AC, or decided they wanted to add it and never got past swapping the AC compressor on. Any sign of an evaporator in the heater box? I do note that it is a California-spec car with Lambda-Sond, at least, according to the badge.

With respect to the tank, check to see if there's extra wiring in the trunk that'd go to a prepump. If not, take the car to the local Volvo dealer and have them do the recall work on the car. 1974-77 Volvos had a recall involving the fuel tank and a leakage problem. That might save you the trouble of having to do the work yourself. Or would let you use the parts on the '75, if that car hasn't had the recall done either. At the same time, I'd have them move the pump and accumulator to the later spot, mounted to the sled that attaches to the bottom of the car.

-J

OK, well after reading your post, I dug into the trunk. I did find the wiring that is for a pre-pump set up. I pulled the access cover for the fuel pump and found that the small brown wire, which looks to be the ground for an in-tank pump (it's attached to the same spot as the main pump ground), was broken. So, I put a new connector on it and hooked it all back up. Didn't seem to change the tone of the main pump, and when I unplugged the power connector to the pre-pump, it didn't seem to change things either.
There is 12V going to the pre-pump, but I can't tell if it's working or not. Looks like I'll need to futz around and swap the stuff from the '85.

I don't think this car had AC to begin with.

Also, in messing around with the stuff in the trunk, the fuel gauge stopped working. Since the odometer doesn't work, this will make for fun times. I think I screwed it up probing wires while the car was running, and crossed it with the wrong one.


Looking at wiring diagrams has me a little confused. There are 3 wires at the tank. A black, a grey, and a brown. The black is the power for the pre-pump, and I'm guessing that the brown (attached to a small spade connector on the unit) is its ground, as it attaches to the body in the trunk. The grey wire comes out of the top of the top of the tank like the black wire does, and connects to the same connector as the black power wire. It then disappears into the wiring harness. The pics in the wiring diagram Green Book(77-78), shows that the black and the brown are for the fuel pump, and the grey for the gauge. However, in the Electrical Systems book(76-), it shows the gauge wire to be brown, and attached to that spade connector. Was this a change perhaps when they added the pre-pump?

So, I did a quick fuel pump check. I put 12V to the power lead on the pre-pump, and got nothing. Sounds like it's dead.

Also doing some digging regarding the clutch adjustment. I don't see anything on this car that looks like an adjuster.

So, one of the first decisions will be to either see if this this spoiler


will fit here


or if I just go ahead and sell it.

I messed with it a bit, and the slight curve on the '77 trunk may cause things to fit a little funny. It was too dark to take pics, but the curve causes the edges of the center section to no be in line with the trunk opening seam, thus meaning the end caps would need to be angled a bit.

That looks just like mine did when I got it! Awesome! Purple-faded brown interior and all! I think yours might actually be in better shape minus the rust, though. There is a reason mine's in pieces

I guess I have to post some pics now when I finally get around to making an intro thread and possibly build thread as well.

either way, nice car! The wheels look awesome. And I'm with you on figuring out a spoiler.

Well, I picked up a new in-tank pump for it last week, and got it installed over the weekend. It's now getting fuel like it should, but the main pump is getting pretty loud after about 15-20 mins of driving.

I managed to get the tank, pump/accumulator & mount, lines out of the 244 turbo last night, but it's going to be at least another week until I can even thing about getting them into this car. Looks like I'll have to use self-tapping screws to hold the pump "sled" to the bottom of the car, since it doesn't have the provisions for the bolts that the later cars do. The only other issue I see is the wiring. On the '77, both pumps were fed from the same power wire, and I guess I "could" just extend the wiring for the main pump as it sits right now, to keep things rolling. If that doesn't work, I could always run a new fused feed directly from the battery through a relay, using the current pump feed to activate it.

After replacing the pump and driving it for a couple days the car is running smoother, so it appears to be fixing itself slightly. It still idles rough, and is down on power, but is better than it was. I have a couple tune-up parts on the way, and I need to chop out that dead, rattling converter from under the car. I doubt that is helping much, and probably clogging the exhaust from time to time.

Other things accomplished this past weekend were replacing the outer window scrapers on the doors (thanks Redwood Chair), fix the odometer, reinstall the main alternator mounting bolt (had come out completely and was sitting in the splash pan), installed my other stereo, and fixed the shift boot.

The car drives and feels pretty solid now. If I could take care of the driveability issues, annoying exhaust rattle, and that stupid fuel system, I can then set to getting the mods ready.

OK, the schedule has been busy, but I've managed to spend a little time with the car sorting out more details.

I got the fuel system from the 244 swapped into the (tank to fuel filter), and spent a little bit trying to track down an issue that hasn't been cleared up yet. The pumps are working, but I haven't gotten a FP tester on the system to verify that they're operating within spec. Normally a fuel pressure issue will cause issues the harder it's pushed, and that's not the case. Which leads to the next...

The car still runs like there's a big vacuum leak someplace. I've gone through and replaced, plugs, wires, cap, rotor, O2 sensor, and cleaned up and sorted vacuum lines. I rechecked the timing and throttle stop adjustment, and even with the idle air adjustment knob turned all the way in, the car idles WAY too high. Still trying to find the source of that. There is a miss on acceleration (and at idle), but when you get into it and get past 3-4K RPM (Guessing w/o a tach), it smooths out. You can clearly feel it. Still need to poke around a bit more to try and find a hose that loose or missing someplace.

Still haven't had time to take care of the rattling cat con yet, but I should have time this weekend to tackle that. I have most of the bits for my 3" system in the garage when I get to that point.

One of my future desires for the car is power mirrors. Looking at some stuff, it doesn't look like those were available until '78. I'm also wanting to keep the chrome and not black things out on this car, so I'm not sure what my options are. The later black mirrors are relatively easy to find, and it might be possible to paint or powdercoat the housings to keep the effect I want.

I've also got some nicer tail light lenses, and maybe I can get them put on this evening.

So, news to me- Hella tail light lenses won't fit Cibie housings.... *grumble*