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Chuck's '85 244TIC

Chuck W

Active member
Joined
Apr 29, 2008
Location
Indpls, IN
I figured it was time I introduced myself. This is my first Volvo in at least 20 years, and decided that I wanted one for a driver/project.

Well I started poking around about a month or so ago and then a couple weeks ago I picked up this car from mbaker.

It's a '85 244TIC with an M46 conversion.

Evidently the engine/trans are from an '83, but that's kind of irrelevant to me really.

I drove the car home from Chicago with a couple issues, one of which was that I could not accelerate, or really load the engine any more that 10 in of vacuum without the engine laying over on me. The source of this I found the following day was improperly gapped (or I guess the better descriptor would be NOT gapped) spark plugs (.046" vs .026" was causing the spark to blow out).

Anyway, the list of things I've done in the past couple weeks is:
- plugs, cap, rotor, wires and oil change.
- replaced injector o-rings
- tightened 2 loose exhaust flanges
- replaced pads front and rear and bled brakes
- replaced ball joints (driver side was loose)
- "fixed" support under drivers seat cushion
- fixed ground on aftermarket H2O temp gauge so it will work

At this point I have a car that starts w/o issue each time and runs pretty well. I was having a serious stumble on take off in 1st & 2nd gear that would cause the car to buck violently, but today that magically went away. I'll be replacing one of the IC couplers/hoses in the next few days, which is what I thought the issues might have been, but it might have been a fuel issue. I have yet to see a puff of smoke and it doesn't appear to use much oil.

The next couple maintenance projects include replacing a weird inner tie rod on the pass side and a broken speedo cable and perhaps rear shocks as they seem to be shot.

"Fun" projects include replacing/upgrading the exhaust manifold, turbo and installing/building a 3" exhaust for it. I also want to replace the front seats. They are both kind of broken down on the lower cushions, and I have another set of seats that should work out well.
I also want to sort out wheels/tires for this thing. The 195's mounted on the tiny wheels just is not going to cut it. I have a plan...just need to implement it. I also want to address the motor mounts. Seeing as I design/build mounts for a dozen other applications, I should be able to sort out an acceptable solution. The stock-type replacement poly mounts do not do it for me.

One not so fun project is going to be patching the holes in the floor boards. Really not that difficult and shouldn't take more than a day with me, some sheetmetal and the welder.

The other cars I own are shown in my sig as well as another Cougar of similar vintage to the Tbird. I just finished up a project last weekend on the Scorpio that included a complete refresh/upgrade of the rear suspension and finish the install of the 12" C4 Corvette brakes (has them on all 4 corners now). I like to tinker with old **** :-P

Anyway, I think that is enough rambling for now. I'll post up new pics as I take them, and progress of the many projects planned as I get to them.

Glad to be on the forum.

Chuck
 
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I'm planning both, bigger wheels and bigger tires. 17" wheels and most likely 235's.

Yes, that is a FOHA spoiler.
 
Ok, well I did a little more work today, and actually some of it was picture-worthy.

First I replaced the bent inner tie rod I found last weekend. Notice how it's bent at the ball...
benttierod.JPG


Then I took care of the broken speedo cable. Not too bad of a deal, but it appears that the odo in the "new" unit I bought doesn't work either.:e-shrug: Speedo works now though.

Finally I decided that the front was sitting too high for me, but since I had kind of unexpectedly bought wheels/tires these past few days, I couldn't afford to pony up for some springs, etc.
So after reading a few posts...I cut a couple coils out of the front springs. I did it in the car with the spring compressor method. Went pretty smoothly actually.

Here's the final result...

6_28_08_1s.jpg

6_28_08_2s.jpg


According to my measurements, it dropped the front about 1-1/2".

It will probably be a couple weeks before all the parts for the wheels/tires/spacers show up.
(17x8" wheels, 245/40 tires, 25mm adapter spacers)
 
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the stance looks great. i just did mine yesterday, and i love it.

the 17x8's are going to look real nice on your car
 
I had more time this morning, so I set about to tackle the seat swap.

The current base cushions were pretty broken down. When I picked up the car, it was like I sat in a bucket. I had patched up the support a couple weeks ago, but I knew it wasn't going to last too long.

old%20base_s.jpg


It was missing a couple springs (and boy were those a BITCH to get reinstalled when I was "fixing" it.

What I had to swap were a set of CRX seats I had in another car.

I had made up these adapters

seatadapters_s.jpg


for when they were installed here...
interior%2010_07_3.JPG


After a couple quick measurements, it looked like I could reuse my existing adapters with a couple minor tweaks. The rails in the old car were spaced about 12-1/2" and the Volvo ones were about 14-1/2". One oddity to these seats were the fact that the inside mounting points were not in the same height as the outside ones, or with each other for that matter. So that had made fabbing them up originally kind of a PITA.

After looking over things, I realized that if I swapped the inside plates from driver to pass, I would still have the correct spacer heights and since they were offset, that would also give me the width different I was needing (about 2"). More examination showed that all that was needed after that to mount them to the Volvo rails was to cut off a couple nuts from the old installation and drill 2-3 holes per adapter to mount the Volvo rails.

After that and a quick trim to clear the seat fore and aft adjuster bar, this is what I wound up with.

new%20seats_1s.jpg

new%20seats_2s.jpg


They looked like they were going to be short compared to the stockers, but when it was all said and done, I'm sitting in pretty much the same spot.

So NOW, that I have messed with all of this, it's time for me to get some sheetmetal and fix the floor pans. I get a good price on raw materials from my laser cutter, so I'll grab some 20 or 22ga and pull things out of the way and have at it in a couple weeks.
 
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Ok well the wheels and tires are here...

new%20feet.JPG

New%20wheels.jpg


The tires are Falken Ziex 912's (245/40-17) and the wheels are from a 99-00-ish Mustang and are 17x8. I'm going to remove the My-Pretty-Pony from the center caps before I install them.

The adapter spacers are on the way, so hopefully I'll have some time within the next week to get these things mounted/balanced and on the car. :-D
 
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those are nice rims. they are from a special edition GT i believe.

car looks good! those seats look awesome in the volvo. keep it up!
 
I'll have the adapters in hand Mon or Tues and I'm hoping to be able to get the tires mounted at some point next week.

A little "bench racing" now.

[benchrace]Originally I was thinking I might backdate the front end to the single rounds, or the GT style front, but the "Special Edition" front (quad squares with the flathood) is really starting to grow on me. I'm thinking I may go that route. Flathood for sure though. I think DaButcher's car is edging me that way.
Also, I'm contemplating a MS swap as well on down the road. I'm still learning on my TBird, but I like the potential and the K-Jet is really not my thing.[/benchrace]
 
Yes, No?

fogs.jpg


NOS marchal fogs.

I have covers and I need to sort the wiring (ie see what was there from a previous install and sort that out) but I had taken the old broken ones off and decided to stick these on.
 
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Well, it's going to be another couple weeks before the wheels and tires are on. They adapters came today, but they messed up the order. They sent 1-1/4" instead of 1" thick :-(
 
OK, I finally fixed the ODO in this car. It only worked about 40% of the time when I picked up the car, so I eventually got one from a member here and when that one only worked about 10% of the time, I dug in deeper and took the old unit apart to see what was up and to see what was causing the issue.
I know this is probably old hat to this group, but I found the problem. The grey drive gear to the right of the odometer (not the trip) winds up just spinning on the shaft after time, and what happens is that there is not enough friction to allow the gear to drive the odo/trip gears and it just slips on the shaft as the speedo drives it.
The fix involves taking the speedo apart and better affixing said gear to the shaft (I did a little positive deformation of the ID on the gear and a slight bit of sleeve retaining LocTite).
Like I said, I'm sure it's old news to most here, but I suppose I could write up something for those who could use the info.
That has bugged me since I bought the car....
 
OK, well the adapters showed up a couple days ago...

adapters_s.jpg


Yes, they are not hub-centric to the wheel, but they will do for around town, etc (My Ranger was perfectly fine for 3-4 years) and if I need to, I can always make some rings and press them in.

Comparing the old to new. 195/60-15 vs 245/40-17

compare_s.jpg


A couple shots on the car.

testfit_1_s.jpg


testfit_2_s.jpg


I'll get the other two mounted/balanced in the morning and I'll snap some better pics this weekend.

Looks like I'll need to do a little clearancing in the rear, but nothing major. I'll be bring the back down a touch too as well.
 
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All wheels mounted/balanced

newshoes_1_s.jpg

newshoes_2_s.jpg

newshoes_3_s.jpg


I had to clearance the rears a bit, mainly at the back half of the arch. I'll see how they do on the road shortly.
 
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You may find that the rears rub on the innder arch on hard cornering.

But, nice car mate, either stick with the current grill or go for an early grill wih single rounds, I would.

Great work on the seats, do a writeup on the odo if you feel like it, I'm sure it will be useful.

keep us posted:)
 
Well I put a little road time on the car tonight. The wheels/tires totally changed the road manners/feel of the car.

As far as the rubbing goes on the inner arch, poly p-hard bar bushings were one thing on my list to help that a bit.

On the grille, I'm seriously leaning to the "special edition" set-up or the like. I thought the singles rounds were what I wanted, but the other is starting to win out.

The odo thing was covered on D Barton's website actually. I came upon it after the fact, so the write-up is there...so I guess I don't need to repeat it as he pretty much covered the exact diagnosis that I went through on my own.
 
Well the drive to work this morning resulted in this...
beltoops.jpg


Replaced it this evening and all seems to be well.

I am however beginning to suspect a fuel delivery issue...
 
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Well the timing belt went smoothly, but a drivability issue (that had been present before) was still cropping up and giving me grief.

Basically the car would stumble/jerk if I would get into the throttle too aggressively, especially from a stop. It had gone away for a couple weeks after I had gotten the car, but it had come back again last week.

Well Friday I took a longish drive to the other side of town to pick up some stuff on Fri afternoon, and on the way back, the situation was getting worse. When I was a few block from the house, it got even worse, and I could barely get the car moving and I had to fight it to get it up the hill on my driveway(stalled 3 times before I was able to get enough umph to get it to the top. Before I shut it off I hear a noise under the car and as I poke my head under the car I notice it's the fuel pump making the noise. I made a disgusted face and shut the car off.

I came back to it and decided to check the FP fuses. The one for the main pump was intact and fairly new, but the one for the intank was intact, however upon closer examination, was pretty corroded. So I dug another one up and cleaned the contacts and low and behold, the noise was gone from the main pump. Just to test it, I pulled one of the contacts away from the fuse while it was running, and the main pump began to protest. Makes sense.

I didn't drive much over the weekend, but when I did, I made sure to push it a bit, and sure enough the problem hasn't presented itself at all. I'm probably still going to do the 740T pump upgrade anyway as I need to replace the sender for the gauge (evidently had 3-4 bad spots in it as the gauge drops to the bottom a few times during the course of a tank), so I might as well upgrade while I'm in there. I dug up some old paperwork in the glovebox, and the pumps were replaced at some point in the mid 90's.

I still have a hard start issue when the engine is cold, so I still need to check the cold start stuff out.
 
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