Fred's 1989 360 5-door hatch, goin' for (low) 15s

Thread title is a humorous nod to Kenny who I'll be trying to emulate to some extent with my 740 sedan in another thread at a later date, but without the block filler and under 700whp (apparently).

On with the thread. This is the car, as I got her:










I bought this some months ago for a pocket-change $700nz with a blown head gasket. Body looked straight enough. It has a few issues, but it's mostly rust free, and no big deal breakers. My very first manual Volvo. ~300kg lighter than my 740 sedan and with perfect 50/50 weight distribution thanks to the M47-based trans being in the rear! Sweet.

The night I went to pick it up it would:

1) blow white clouds out the back on the overrun and/or at idle (anywhere with vacuum)
2) instantly shoot up in temperature during WOT acceleration (such as motorway onramps)
3) Cruise at anywhere between 50kph and 110kph just fine.

Because:

• Vacuum would suck glycol into the chamber and spit it out the exhaust.
• Cylinder pressure would push searing hot combustion gas into the cooing system and onto the sensor displacing any coolant from the area.
• So there was a sweet spot of gas pedal for any given RPM that resulted in a net balance in pressure and a fairly normal (if quite slow) car.

Therefore step one was to get the milkshake out of the crank case. So I dumped the coolant, then flushed the oil out. Refilled, new filter, ran up to temperature a few times, flushed and dumped that oil too. Refilled with a bare min of about 2l of oil and NO coolant. Could drive it about 2km and 2 minutes before it hit operating temperature and began overheating. Enough to put it on a nearby street, or bring it home from there. Between the flushes and the coolant-less heat cycles, the water in the oil was all but gone. Any remaining milkiness was from the combustion by products finding their way into the crank case from the head gasket issue.








Fast forward a few months and I decide to do the head gasket for which I'd already obtained a B200E head set/top end gasket kit.That was this morning.








This evening the block deck is clean, the head deck is clean, and I have a few photos of testing fitting certain B234F parts into the engine bay...














Looks GREAT in there But does it fit?








Yes! But only just! The belt and cam gear will be very close to the bonnet interior, but should be OK.

Other pain points:

1) A new slimmer or offset brake master cylinder reservoir will be needed to give clearance to the upper part of the head and cam cover.
2) Installing the exhaust manifold will require removing the brake master cylinder, or at least unbolting it and pushing it out of the way a bit.
3) The factory heat shielding on the master cylinder should probably be upgraded to include some sort of heavy duty insulation.
4) Stiffer mounts and/or a top-end brace to the engine bay tin will be needed to prevent the engine hitting the master cylinder under load transitions.

Recipe for scintillating low 15 second quarter mile passes:

1) Two cams instead of one.
2) 2.3 litres instead of 2.0 litres.
3) More duration and overlap in the cams.
4) More compression ratio, possibly by way of forged pistons.
5) More throttle plates. (4) (ITBs...) (probably blacktop 4age ones as I have 4 sets and more are only 150-200nzd away at any time)
6) Last, but far from least: FreeEMS engine control

An LSD wouldn't go astray, either. But they're custom and not cheap so it can wait for lucky last. I already have some 15" rims for semi-slicks in waiting.

Don't expect much progress on the 15 second dream anytime soon. Tomorrow the SOHC head will go back on with a fresh gasket and it'll be a usable car for the first time.

So I'll probably just use it for a while. I was inspired to put up this thread by the glorious look of the DOHC head in the engine bay, and the fact that it fits!

Over and out, for now.

Fred.

My DD project vehicle also started as a blown HG rescue! Hopefully yours stays more "low buck" than I was able to

The little 360 is cute.... albeit in an ugly sort of way! Never seen one in the States...... it almost has a SAAB-esqe 9000 look to it.

Lots of stupid stuff needed doing while having the head off, but it's torqued back down now and I probably saved a pound or two from removing the rust on the bottom of the exhaust manifold

Still need to time the belt, and reassemble everything, but all up I'm into this car:

$nz:

700 car
10 change of ownership
120 top end gasket set

Time in days (1 day = 8 hours work):
1/2 day flushing out filth
2.5 days on the gasket job

Plus fluids:

oil
oil flush bottles
filters
brakeclean
degreaser
CRC 5.56

I have a split view on car costs:

Buying them: as cheap as possible for the quality/value/model I want.
Modifying them: DIY everything, use good parts, try to get good parts as cheaply as possible.

IE, not really worried about the cost going up a bit, but for the sake of interest I'll track it here

I can see these costs:

1k LSD unit
2k DOHC cammed up build revving to 8 or 9k
1k brake upgrade to go with DOHC engine
1k low volume cert and associated fixes (maybe, may be able to just claim it came DOHC)
? fixing silly things that break (door handles are a big one on these)

Question for the Volvo experts: This M47 derived box, what's the best way to restore synchro functionality through fluid change, a 75w80 synth manual trans oil? Or the ATF the internet claims?

Fortunately the diff oil is separate, so I know what I'll put in there (full synth 80w140).

Subscribed. I'd love to have a 363 here in the states. These cars are awesome.

They go pretty cheaply down here, if you really wanted one you could have one, it's just shipping as a corvette or a chevelle wagon would be for me

Got the belt timed last night, and did it without taking the lower pulley off. Took the power steering pump/bracket off instead and looked through the crack of a pried back lower cover.








Put various other stuff back on. Hoping to finish the job tonight after work and take it for a drive

Might take the trusty old GF1 and do a car-with-posed-background photo or something.

She's all back together running and driving. Good news

But: It's like the Regina/Rex ECU is too advanced everywhere. Which shouldn't be possible with a flywheel based setup, unless the pattern can be improperly indexed in a way that's still close to correct.

Filled it with 98 RON/~93 AKI and the pinging didn't get any better.

I'm guessing it's the same pinging that caused the HG failure in the first place, so I'm keen to get it sorted and avoid a repeat of the work I just did.

Or maybe just expedite the FreeEMS install so I can dial in the timing as required.

Took a few long exposures, but won't get them de-plated and uploaded tonight. Bed time now.

One photo worth sharing, proof that it drives without overheating

FreeEMSFred said:

It's like the Regina/Rex ECU is too advanced everywhere. Which shouldn't be possible with a flywheel based setup, unless the pattern can be improperly indexed in a way that's still close to correct.

Click to expand...

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. 8 bolt flywheel, one bolt off, 45 degrees too advanced!! No wonder it was pinging. Timing in the order of about 60 BTDC at idle, and 75 to 80 BTDC under load! Wow. No wonder the 98RON didn't help!

Engine out?
Crush and part out?
Trans and tube rearward?
FreeEMS install and configure timing to suit?

Probably 1 or 4, not 2, and probably/hopefully not 3.

Got in touch with the previous owner, and the one before that, neither of them did the clutch job, which means it had been pinging for a whopping 30,000km+ And probably on 91 RON gas, too! :-o

No wonder all four pistons were pretty badly pitted... didn't click about that until a friend showed me a picture of his detonation killed engine's combustion chamber with pitting. I had wondered when tearing it down, but that was the light bulb moment.

Been driving this every week or two just to keep it alive. Keeping my foot out of the gas to prevent the pinging from having much force behind it.

Scheduled to come in and be sorted out mechanically in the next month or two. Then I can enjoy the thing!

Also learned that you can fit 700/200 diff cores in these with light mods. Great. G80 might be a good option for the little car? Or the trutrac.

30.000 kms with 80 degrees of timing and the pistons are still in one piece. That is actually amazing.

I always loved 360's. Light chassis, b230's bolt right in. How much torque can the transaxle of these take?

Apparently it's the same guts as an M46/M47 so fine NA, not so fine with much/any boost/abuse. I would say "lighter" but one of my cars is 700kg, and another 800kg, so 1150kg or 1200kg or whatever these over-appointed hatchbacks were is not really that light by my standards. 200kg or so lighter than the other 4 Volvos I own, though

It's also softly sprung and with worn out shocks feels a bit like a 3 tonne 60s American tank. Stiffer springs and/or fresher shocks will cure that, though.

What you can feel, though, is the neutral balance, it corners insanely well for a high soft mini-barge, 50/50 really is quite good.

However, I came here not to respond, rather to post this:










I love my country, New Zealand, and it's full of great people, however Aucklanders have a huge unjustified sense of entitlement that really is second to none.

This area is full of 2 million nzd houses and mostly nice people, once you meet them and have a chat or glass of wine or whatever. But many of them strongly believe that they own the street they live on, when reality is they don't even own the grass either side of the foot path in front of their place. Fourth or fifth note I've received since moving here 4 years ago. Plus being accosted three times. One of the notes was pleasant, nice, and fair in it's request. I honoured it. Ones like this make me want to spray the car pink and put messages to these people on them. What I'll likely do is go for a walk up there and door knock until I find them. Then have a little chat... then wander off and if necessary catch a train one stop to obscure where I actually live (a few hundred yards away).

I wish I'd found it before the bad weather washed half of it away... might have been some good advice in there! Or not...

Re the detonation and timing:

This is what got me the car cheap:










And these were the pistons, one steam cleaned due to above gap:













You can clearly see the "salt and pepper" on the pistons in the dirty shot, and the pitting in the cleaned-up shot. Pretty interesting wear patterns IMO

Wandered up to the car to door knock until I found the author of the note, and happened upon him coming out of his driveway for a random parked-360 checkup. Walked RIGHT past him and stopped in his driveway, looked back at him, looked in, looked back at him, he turned, I said in a firm voice "Did you put that note on my car???" to which he replied "Is that your car?" and "Yes, it is, and don't touch it again!" and a long conversation filled with repetition and chopped logic and so forth. Quite entertaining throwing him around with language. The poor old guy was very upset that someone, anyone, in any car, had parked outside HIS house. We even discussed property boundaries and how he didn't own the grass in between, let alone the road my car was parked on. And then...

Another neighbour appeared across the street and headed toward us, so I walked towards him and extended my hand, like the gentleman that I am. He refused to shake. Then nose-to-nose tried to intimidate me, which of course, didn't work at all, nothing f***ing phases me. To and fro, etc, and I pointed out that I had an audio recording of the entire fiasco including his veiled threats to vandalise my precious little 360

Anyway, so I left it there last night, checked on it around 9pm, and went there at 8pm tonight and picked it up for my commute for the rest of the week. Will plonk it back 50 yards up the road a little away from that guy at the end of the weekend, or fix it during the weekend and start driving it much more often. No vandalism on it when I collected it - checked for strategic nails before moving it. All good.

Never considered Auckland as a Kiwi city for that reason. Wouldn't happen in Chch or Wellington I reckon..!
Used to live in Wellington, looking at going back there soon because of how much I loved the country.
Am I correct in thinking that NZ never had Europe market Volvo's? As in no 940's After '95 and no redblock M90's? At least impossible to find on TradeMe.

Lovely little 360 though, I'll be following this little project!

Yeah, in Chch it'd be stolen long before being complained about! (yes, this happened to me...) Welly, not too many parks, probably be ticketed and towed, or lose traction and slide down to the water front and into the tide

More seriously, it takes some specific attributes to get this:

1) Mostly empty streets so a car stands out
2) Reasonably affluent area so *some* people have this "better than you" attitude
3) Concentration of unemployed or elderly (and thus retired) people high enough that there's some people who are bored enough to care more about what someone else is doing than what they are

The last one is key... I have my 93 940 wagon and "hotel hyundai" next to each other in some limited angle parking that is full all day and full all night (residents) and those people have seen me get in/out of both numerous times and never said a word: young (sub 40).

Auckland has its ups and downs, but as cities, go, it's still my favourite from all countries/cities I've visited for a tonne of reasons. However the human aspect is a bitter tasting icing that's only getting worse with more influx. I'm done with cities, period. The wife and I have bought land up north and are working toward being gone in 3 or 4 years, maybe less. Will still visit for late night motorway speeding (no real motorway network anywhere else in the country) and cultural things (concerts, events, etc) and friends/family and engineering services/supplies, etc. Land is 400m from the beach, though... Bliss.

Re 96-98 940s, not sure. There are M90 940s here, and I know a guy with an M90 in a 740, but there were quite a few tourist/diplomat cars that ended up here, including my 93 940 on Polaris wheels, and they could have been specially imported, too.

You're expat in France or French in NZ or just a prolific visitor that browses trademe for fun?

I'm a French student that took a 1.5 gap year in NZ, and always keep an eye on RWD Volvo ad's on TradeMe aha

When/if I come back I'll probably import my LHD '97 945 over as I've spent too much time/money/blood on this old girl to leave her behind. Easier said then done!

So I take it you liked it here, then

Was going to ask about your wagon, but did my homework, here it is: http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=338913

FreeEMSFred said:

So I take it you liked it here, then

Was going to ask about your wagon, but did my homework, here it is: http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=338913

Click to expand...

Yep, fell in love with the country and it's people. Cool to see brick lovers in NZ

And yep, that's the one !

A couple of photos of this car this evening:

Nice to see another 360 here.

There are a number of LHD 16 valve 360's but I can only think of 1 RHD car that has been built. I'm failrly certain the fitted a pedal box to sort the clearance issues.

To fix your ignition the easy fit would be to drop in a 240 dizzy so that you are no longer running off the flywheel marks