• Hello Guest, welcome to the initial stages of our new platform!
    You can find some additional information about where we are in the process of migrating the board and setting up our new software here

    Thank you for being a part of our community!

White 83 242 Commuter

You can find polished center caps on some Lincoln Town Cars with mesh wheels. They just sort of press tightly onto the hex. I grabbed some from the junkyard but haven't tried them yet. I wouldn't spend a lot since I'm not sure if they like to fly off over time.
 
Love both your 242s man, great work on this one and I can't believe that find from the estate sale.. 75, Louvers.. You're a lucky guy. I'm from over the mountain but drive my wagon over frequently! I'd love to go on a cruise over there somewhere too as its already a favorite pastime ;-)
 
Thanks everyone!
Got to work on the car a bit this weekend, from 11:00pm to 3:00 am while the family slept. My free time is scarce around our house, so I do a lot of of my project car stuff at night. It kind of sucks when it's something heavy, but it's nice when the jobs allow me to bring the parts in the house and work in the comfortable, warn, music-filled living room. LOL

The front seats in my car already new seat bottoms, but the backrests were totally broken down and disgusting:





I have collected some good condition seat parts from Jack and Luke (Thanks!) But they are all 244 seats, so the seat release mechanism had to be added. It's a pretty straightforward job, just really time consuming and annoying. I took a few pictures of the tricky and/or notable parts of the swap.

Here's my workshop (living room) with all the various seat backs all over the place:


242 versus 244 backrest attachment:



the attachment is a direct swap:


Two Philips screws hold the seat back release lever:


A tiny clip holds the release lever plastic handle in place. Just pry it up a bit and pull the plastic straight off:


The most annoying part of the job was having to cut holes in the frame and foam for the seat release lever mechanism:





After that was done, it was just a matter of hooking up the cables, routing them through the lumbar area, and just bolting everything back together.




Trim the seat cover, and install the trim plate. I am annoyed that I got it a bit (a lot!) crooked, but it works just fine, and is not outwardly noticeable in the car.





I took the time to add a couple of thin layers of foam to the driver's side outer bolster, because it was a bit flattened, but other than that, assembly was the reverse of removal. And then repeat for the passenger side. I wasn't fast about it, and it took me a good 2 hours per seat.

After a bit of scrubbing with carpet cleaner, they look better, feel a lot better, and smell clean. Makes me much happier to drive the car!



 
Looks great; thanks for documenting that process! I was planning to do this exact same job on the same shade of late-model seats in a white '82 242 DL when I had one, but didn't accomplish that before selling :-)

Style 5s are looking great on this too. Carry on..
 
slammed145 said:
After a bit of scrubbing with carpet cleaner, they look better, feel a lot better, and smell clean. Makes me much happier to drive the car!



Click to expand...

If the old smells come back, try removing the seats and scrubbing them with a mix of water, white vinegar and a Oxyclean (or 20 Mule Team Botax, I love that stuff). Cleans nice and really gets the deep down sweat out that seems to creep back up in time. Then hose it down with a garden hose and let it sit in the sun to dry. If you can, do the carpets too. Your car will smell like heaven on those hot summer days for years to come. And the crud that rinses out of the carpets will amaze you. If you decide to do it, avoid using a pressure washer. My experience (others may differ) is that it removes some of the carpet fibers and the carpets are already a bit thin. The garden hose on high dose just fine. Oh yeah and don't forget the back seat!

You have a lovely car. My 16 year old is following your thread. He's refurbishing a white 83/242 and keeping it simple but attractive too. You're helping him just by doing your thing, :nod:
 
Tuff240 said:
Great write up. That should be turned into an article and posted somewhere other members can easily see/find it.
Click to expand...
Thanks! Maybe I'll repost in the non-performance area with a little more detail.

Jack said:
looks like ****
Click to expand...
Thanks, dick!

LC4CARL said:
Nice!
Click to expand...
Thanks!

ellist said:
If the old smells come back, try removing the seats and scrubbing them with a mix of water, white vinegar and a Oxyclean (or 20 Mule Team Botax, I love that stuff). Cleans nice and really gets the deep down sweat out that seems to creep back up in time. Then hose it down with a garden hose and let it sit in the sun to dry. If you can, do the carpets too. Your car will smell like heaven on those hot summer days for years to come. And the crud that rinses out of the carpets will amaze you. If you decide to do it, avoid using a pressure washer. My experience (others may differ) is that it removes some of the carpet fibers and the carpets are already a bit thin. The garden hose on high dose just fine. Oh yeah and don't forget the back seat!

You have a lovely car. My 16 year old is following your thread. He's refurbishing a white 83/242 and keeping it simple but attractive too. You're helping him just by doing your thing, :nod:
Click to expand...

That's awesome! It's really cool to hear that my little updates and tiny projects can help someone directly. I know that I've benefited a TON from reading little details in people's builds, and that's why I bother with these. I'd love to be posting progress about building a custom stainless turbo header, custom short coilovers, a roll cage, full repaint, and other crazy big projects. But it's these little things that help sort a car out and make it enjoyable to drive. Plus, these little projects are cheaper and require less time, so you can do one per weekend and feel good about your car without getting too deep into it and losing enthusiasm.

Thanks for the tip on the cleaning. One of my future weekends is going to involve pulling the seats, door panels, and carpet, and going to town cleaning, re-winding the seat belt mechanisms, lubing and re-attaching the center console to reduce squeeks, etc.... But first, I need to get new motor mounts installed, center support bearing, one of the strut mounts, an alignment, and a couple of other maintenance items. It'll get there, one thing at a time.
 
Never got that far, but I did clean up and paint the headlight buckets and grill. I got these from Pat244ti a while back. They came off his silver 244 race car: http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=43122 He had some clear headlight covers on them, so the buckets had glue and screw holes in them:
Img_1678.jpg


I chipped all the gunk off, sanded them down, and painted them with Duplicolor bumper paint. Turned out great!















Very happy with how it turned out. I ran out of paint, otherwise I would have painted that section of body underneath the headlight buckets that you can see through the little grills at the bottom. So now I need to get a few more cans of the same paint to do the bumpers, wipers, rockers, and window trim.

I have some spare lexan in the garage, and those holes are already drilled into the buckets. So I might try adding covers like Pat had, except without the tape. It might look awesome. If not, I'll just take them off.
 
Last edited:
Just went through this entire thread today.

Fantastic work!

If I was to get into the Volvo game, which would be the best year model that's "easy" to work on?

I'm trying to avoid complicated electrical systems.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top