1989 245 Craigslist Gem in The Making

Good inexpensive 240s can still be found if you're ready to buy as soon as you see one.

I just picked up a one owner, 170,000 mile, fully documented, 1989 Midnight Blue wagon. I saw the add on PA Craigslist and had a good feeling about the car. I called the owner and discovered he was the original owner. In late 1988 he went to Keeler Volvo 347 New Karner Road in Colonie, New York and told them what he wanted, specifically, a car with manual windows and a manual transmission. The car was located at Barry Pontiac-Buick 166 Connell Highway in Newport, Rhode Island, put on a truck and shipped to Albany. At the dealership the owner added fog lights, large tach, no small clock, added a volts gauge, oil pressure gauge, third row seat and cruise control. The car stayed in Albany only a year and then moved to PA and that is probably why it is rust free.

As you can see in the photo the owner even kept the original window sticker. The car came with all of its owner's manuals with the maintenance book properly stamped, original touch up paint (purely a novelty item by now), the "what to do in the event of an accident" brochure with the original Volvo pencil, a full set of factory manuals and even the original dealer's key tag with two regular keys and a valet key. What more could I ask for for $1500.00. I drove it 330 miles home and it didn't skip a beat.


The first thing the car will get is a timing belt, water pump, all belts and hoses and a coolant flush along with plugs, dist. cap and rotor. The whole engine compartment needs a good cleaning and detailing. The seat covers will be taken off the seats and washed. The carpets washed and probably redyed. All the plastic appears to be in good condition so that's nice. The rear springs are tired, but I have a new set of overloads from another project as well as new shocks.


The hood is tweaked and will need to be adjusted, the paint buffed and waxed, and just a good all around going over.

In case others are curious about costs of installed options back in 1989 here are the ones installed on this car:

Fog Lights $179.00

Cruise Control $399.00

Tachometer (80mm) $189.50

Oil Pressure Gauge (52mm) $112.95

Voltage Regulator Gauge (52mm) $59.95

What a great score! Would love to find something like that in Germany...

*****

The fender had a little mishap earlier in its life when a new driver was first learning how to drive a manual transmission car. I am hoping a bit of hammer and dolly work will be able to straighten this out.

And by the looks of this leaking water pump the timing belt and water pump replacement can't some soon enough. The green coolant will be flushed and Zerek G05 used. The car also has either a leaky heater core or heater control valve. I am hoping it is the heater control valve and not the core. When you turn the heat on anything but the coldest setting I am getting the smell of coolant in the cabin as well as the tell tail fogging of the windows.

Let the cleaning begin. The car seems to be very mechanically sound and just needs a good cleaning both inside and out. The first step in this journey was removing the cars decorative roof rails. As you can see one stave was bent and these really aren't my taste besides just being a trap for dirt. I will probably remove the main roof racks as well, but would have to figure out a solution to seal the mounting holes without major body and paint work. I guess I could always just paint the bolts to match the color of the car, put a dab of sealant on them and just screw them back in. I would see them, but I doubt others would even notice.

Nice car, and nice with all the documentation on the car.

The engine compartment is both good and bad... Good in that the original owner said he never washed under the hood, so there are no hidden surprises and just how honest the car is, bad that it's not as clean as I like my cars to be. A little Purple Power, some stiff bristle brushes, elbow grease and she will clean up nicely. The other good thing is that all the decals are in great shape under that grime. Especially important now that Volvo took Dave out of the picture. I will see if I can glue down the corners once all the cleaning is completed.

Great find! Quick question, what are you doing with all these gems? Haha

Funny, my wife just asked me that same thing. The car I bought from NC, the one I am redoing the entire interior in leather and new plastics, will probably be sold. I would love to keep it as the interior is coming together very nicely, but I don't need two sedans. The maroon wagon is rustier underneath than what I want to deal with and will be a parts donor to this blue wagon as well as some of the parts sold, like the newly covered seats. The Texas car will be a keeper. With only 90,000 miles on it and in such great shape I will put it away for the winter and enjoy it again in the spring when all the snow and salt is gone. This wagon will be cleaned and given a new life as my utility vehicle. I don't have a truck, so this will be my substitute, minus hauling dirt and mulch of course.

That's a little better. Still could use a more detailed cleaning, but that will have to wait until I do the timing belt/water pump and have a lot of the engine compartment pieces removed.

I will work at removing the rest of the foam on the cowl.

When was the last time you saw an 8-track in a car? The previous owner said that he was having issue with the original radio cutting in and out and somehow this is wired in with the stock radio and everything works. No Clue...

Great project car

Sweet. Keep the updates coming.

Cool. A shame the owner added the permanent rack in 1993 or so... He should've hunted down one of the removable racks that Volvo sold in the 1960s-at least the late 1980s. What you can do is go to your local ACE Hardware (or even a False Value) and get 8 5/8" rubber grommets and 8 3/8" black nylon hole plugs. Goop everything up, and install them in place of the roof rack wellnuts, use some of the medium blue code 213 touch up paint to paint the plugs, then call it good until you can get cut some sheetmetal off the red car, and install it with some structural urethane to seal up the holes permanently.

John242i I was thinking the exact same thing. The thing that I can't understand is these racks appear to be mostly decorative. Even the main bars that run parallel with the car seem pretty flimsy compared to the gutter mount Thule type racks that are on my other wagon. And the gutter mount style don't require holes to be drilled in the roof. I don't like anything in the roof, including sunroofs, just something that can leak. I like the rubber grommet idea, it seems like a viable semi long term solution. Man that roof is going to be a lot of buffing and waxing.

Question??? Do the well nuts stay in place or get removed/pushed through? One of the 8 had already been pushed through and is now rolling around on the headliner somewhere.

Today the car got a new ContiTech timing belt, new idler, new Hepu water pump and all new accessory belts. Nice to have everything back together and no more leaking water pump. I also replaced the underbody engine splash shield.

The paint on the car is very faded so just for the heck of it I gave a part of the hood a quick buffing then waxing. The difference was pretty noticeable. When I get a few extra hours I will do the entire car, but other projects have to come first, like replacing the well worn sagging rear coil springs.

Too hot to work on cars today.

Feels always nice with new timingbelt and water pump.

Great job with the hood!