aidanahunter
Member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2018
- Location
- Bozeman, MT
There's nothing magical about where the heater hoses penetrate the firewall -- if they're in the way, move them. Easy to block off the existing holes. I did this with the swap in mine -- all 4 hoses (htr/A-C) pass through on the passenger side now.
That's a very good point and I'm almost disappointed in myself that I didn't think of that before. It's unique how Volvo has hoses inside the firewall going to both the heater and evaporator cores instead of hard lines like on, for example, my old NA Miata. I'll definitely be doing what you just suggested now...
On the engine/trans, yes, I'm moving it as close to the passenger side as I can. I've hammered out the tunnel and got an extra inch or closer to the firewall after trying that once. Could maybe hammer it a little more, but I'm having a hard time knowing exactly where interference is happening.
With the trans not attached, you can see how that fits in post 52, 5th picture specifically regarding steering shaft. It works, but with the trans not attached it's simply not accurate. With the trans attached, I see this:
The valve cover is now what is interfering. That chunk I took off of the block helps but it's not enough. I also tried lowering the crossmember and that didn't help either. Looking at that picture, if you imagine a longer slim shaft coming out through the firewall and the U joint attaching elsewhere, I think it would clear it. So the question I'm trying to answer now is can the steering column be modified to be shorter? Or maybe longer? Maybe if a solid coupler existed in that firewall hole, which is pretty large as is, I could add a short shaft and go from there. In any case, I want to get the column out just to look at it. I think I could drill out those weird bolts and use an easy-out to get them out in one piece.