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Volvo 850R AWD Conversion

Well long time no update. I have had a bit of a nightmare with this one recently. I got the engine in fairly easily after swapping subframes. Once it was in i kept plodding along in the evenings after work etc getting bits put back in. As i have changed to a 98 onwards gearbox i needed to have a new clutch line made, i couldnt get one locally in a breakers so i grabbed an S40 one as it has the same ends and had some braided line made up for in between. The gearbox has had all new seals etc and a thorough cleaning.
I also got around to buying some MR2 poly gear linkage bushes, fited those and made myself a quickshift complete with aluminium turned gear leaver shaft. Fitted my ITG filter, then the problems started......
I mixed some coolant up and started filling the expansion bottle. When i realised it had taken nearly all required coolant but kept emptying the bottle, but no leaks. Strange so i left it till later that day and found a very wet and blue passenger footwell. Up under the dash i went as i relaised it must be the heater matrix. So i set about ripping all seats and carpet etc out before the coolant had stained everything. I used some carpet valet i have here scrubbed the carpets and pressure washed till water ran clean. Luckily Wales was having a rare type of weather... Sun... So everthing could dry quickly.
To be honest the carpets cleaned up much nicer than i ever imagined they would and the day after the carpets had been refitted the new matrix turned up. So armed with a cup of coffee i set to refitting tehy new one.
On tuesday the boost pipes turned up, so once i had cut the silicone and worked out the routing i got to painting the hard pipes as im not a fan of the bare polished alloy. Very very happy with how they turned out too.
Plus i did a bit of work on my mates T5 estate.
Got transfer box in today to make exhaust... pics to follow tommorow.
Thats all for now.
Cheers Adam

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wasn't standard in England. Nothing was. My Dad had a T5R with wind up windows. I wish we got such awesome flexibility with options in the rest of the world. Though I don't wish the 2.0L 10-valve on ANYONE.

How is not having a passenger air bag or power windows a good thing? The only thing that Volvos have now that bugs me are sunroofs. What a waste of space and a guaranteed noise maker later in that cars life.
 
My 850 R has electric everything else, the only thing it didnt have really was pass airbag. Doesnt bother me in the slightest.
Adam

Good, it shouldn't. All the passenger airbag in an 850 does is add weight. Completely useless. Volvo actually did a series of crash tests with varying degrees of powerfulness of passenger airbags, including none. The dummies with no passenger airbag/too small/weak of one to do anything were the best off, all the other ones got smashed in faces. The passenger side airbag in an 850 is a gimmick, it's the too small/weak to do anything airbag, because they knew they'd get called out on not having it available, didn't want the hassle of that, but didn't want to smash faces.

EDIT: also, congrats!
 
The car was booked in for MOT on the 24th so I had a mad rush to get everything sorted including all the bodywork repairs and painting of all the parts. I repaired the front splitter and repainted that along with a pair of the smooth 850 skirts which appear to be slightly deeper in the centre. Anyway I also painted a set of v70/s70 door handles for the car to clean the doors up, I welded the aerial hole up and fitted a glass mount aerial. And lastly repaired the massive key scratch down the side of the car. All this done by late Thursday and a final once over check on the Friday morning.
Well, the time has finally come. The 850R is finished (for now) it went for MOT Friday and only failed on a pair of front arms, which I must admit I knew were dubious but still. Arms back on and she went through. Big thanks to SImon (Rufe) on here for sorting the MOT out at Volvo. Apparently the car had a few admirers and alot of attention.
The driving.... Well I cannot get over how well the car does what I was aiming to achieve. Driving it around it seems very very sure footed, (shimmed front arms to gain a bit of camber on the front)
Saturday morning was wet and I decided to have a bit of a play, at 1.2 bar boost in 1st and second up hill with small crests the car would not unsettle itself. NO WHEELSPIN and no torque steer. So the 4wd system I feel is a very worthy upgrade to a moderately powered 850. The car drives like a dream, really willing to go round corners, even at the moment with very little setup.
In my opinion I would do the conversion again, and don?t forget it could be done to a C70 too......
Adam
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Looks like the perfect ride to me:cool: The wheels are just awesome

Any tips on the painting? Need to fix some stuff on my car as well and you seem to know your way around that:)
 
Looks like the perfect ride to me:cool: The wheels are just awesome

Any tips on the painting? Need to fix some stuff on my car as well and you seem to know your way around that:)

Full ACK.. rims are pr0nz !

And could you make some closeups with daylight as mirror ? :) Never thought that paintfixing like this is possible without colorborders...
 
Excellent work- I'm extremely impressed.

With the brackets being out of production how would you go about doing this again?

Chop the brackets out of the donor AWD 850?
 
Do you use a blending agent when spot finishing panel's ? or do you just fog your edge's & wet sand them out ? Never had much luck doing mid panel blends, but from the pix yours look's perfect.


.........Dave
 
Full ACK.. rims are pr0nz !

And could you make some closeups with daylight as mirror ? :) Never thought that paintfixing like this is possible without colorborders...

The blends are not perfect but are only visible at less than a couple of feet. i will take some more pics tommorow now i have waxed the car.
Adam
 
Excellent work- I'm extremely impressed.

With the brackets being out of production how would you go about doing this again?

Chop the brackets out of the donor AWD 850?

Only 7 brackets need welding to the shell and 5 of them i bought from volvo at a cost of around ?70. The front 2 i cut from the awd doner very easily then cleaned them up before welding them in. Buying them from volvo made my life easy.
Especially the panel that sits inside the car.
Adam
 
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