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Mike K's '79 242 Barn Car Revival

Stiggy Pop

In the cool kids club
Joined
Feb 27, 2011
Location
Granville, MA
Current:

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1/6/13 I bought this 1979 242dl in Hadley Mass. The original plan was to just get it up and running with a b230ft, but it has turned into a bit more of a project since then. I have been building it with the help of my Dad, tbricker mikezohsix, and he deserves a lot of thanks and credit (especially for letting me hog the garage).

Day 1 shot:
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The owner was a nice older guy who drove the car for a few years before putting it in a barn in 2002, where it sat until I dragged it away. He had planned on doing a v8 swap so had spent some time repairing the body; rockers and quarters were replaced with all new metal and "the last guy doing real LEAD body work in Mass" did all the work for him. The quality of the work looked really good, and it was a nice complete 242 on the east coast for scrap value... couldn't pass it up.

Sporting beige on brown
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Inside was pretty musty and a little mousey, plans are TBD

Last it was on the road. Will need to do some repair at the windshield corner eventually.
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This was empty thankfully :grrr:
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Because of the body work the outside of the car looked great. However, the barn had a dirt floor so when you look under the hood :omg:
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And underneath
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Floors were pretty solid, but lots of surface rust and a few punky spots. Altogether not bad considering the circumstances, and nothing really scary so we were still feeling positive about the car as a starting point.

lovely
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The b21f spun freely but had no compression and the clutch was seized. So started pulling it out
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and pressure washed decades of grime away, again a bunch of ugly surface rust, but nothing structural or too significant.
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It was obvious I was going to need a donor car, so I started looking for a late model manual 240. In the meantime I started thinking about cleaning up and prepping the body.

At first I thought I would spot treat some rust underneath, but the more I scratched around the more I wanted to expose it all and try and seal it off. There weren't any holes big enough that made us want to cut and weld sections in, so we decided to treat it from underneath and fiberglass the holes that were there from the inside of the car. With the best intentions, and not fully understanding what I was in for, I headed underneath the car with a $16 Harbor Freight pneumatic scraper and got to work. A few years ago I worked at a marina in Vermont and had to sand and paint a 34' tug boat by myself. This was equally as miserable and tedious.

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The dry undercoating wasn't bad, and the scraper chipped through it quick enough. But the gummy stuff was tough and I had a LOT of area to cover with a 1.5" blade. I buzzed away at it for weeks on nights and weekends. For the tougher stuff I had a spray bottle full of kerosene and would soak it in and then peel it away with the scraper. I also did the same with the hood.

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Many moons later I emerged soaked in kerosene and with an undercoating free car. I used a needle scaler to break off some of the crustier spots, and gave everything a thorough grind, scuff and sand.
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I decided to use a rust inhibitor called Rust Bullet, reviews were good and it seemed like the right kind of thing for what I was trying to do. I was happy with the way it went on, really seemed to soak in.
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After spending all of the time scraping and cleaning underneath the car, it felt a little anticlimactic to just have it be black undercoating again. So we ended up giving both the engine bay and underside coats of primer and beige.
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I actually struggled with the paint a little bit. Despite what the internet tells me, my build plate from the passenger side strut tower does not have a paint code on it.
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So I started guessing. Now some of the car was repainted obviously, but even going off of the back of the gas door which is definitely original I couldn't get something to match. This was all Limco Supreme Plus single stage acrylic, which painted nicely.
The left in this pic is 122 - mojave beige which was way to yellow
the center is 137 - artesia beige, this was too pink
the right is what I ended up with after several trips to the patient paint shop, 137 base tinted to match the gas door. I'm still not sure what color it is.
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Good for under the hood, and not bad overall.
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During this time I had found a donor car, it was a kinda rusty '91 245 m47 car. It was LH3.1 so I bought a 2.4 harness and was getting ready to swap over the drivetrain less the engine. Confession: the test drive of this car was the first time I had ever driven a 240 :lol:
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It wasn't overly clean underneath, but I had had the car on the lift in my Dad's garage for a couple of months at this point. I really needed to get wheels back under it so we could at least move it in and out. After all of the work making things look good, I was less than excited that this was the stuff I was going to bolt onto it. But needed to press on, and settle with what I had. After all of this work I was just looking forward to putting things together.

Right before I dug into the '91 a dark horse emerged and changed the direction of the car.
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So at this point it was June and a car showed up in the For Sale section that really got me interested. As I said before I was feeling lackluster about what I had with the red '91. So after a lot of thinking and staring at the computer I decided I really wanted to do more with the car. I put the '91 on a trailer and drove to New Hampshire to meet tbricker odinthewanderer (Matt) and traded him for something that had me a little more excited for my build.

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This '92 245 was Matt's project that was built really nicely. It was also a Texas car originally so the entire thing was dry and clean - this is the type of stuff I wanted. I could now take everything off of this car and move it over to my '79, and it's quite a parts list.

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This drove a lot differently than the red car! It was a nice NA setup with;
- MS2 v3, Kenny built plug and play stuff
- K cam
- KG header, 2.5" exhaust with two magnaflows
- Southern Ways Epsilon 3-piece wheels, 16x8 and 16x7

For suspension:
- Kaplhenke short strut coil overs with double adjustable Koni inserts, 350# Eibach springs (oof stiff, have to see if I can live with it)
- Kaplhenke Camber plates and Quick steer correction
- Boxed/powder coated control arms and trailing arms
- 28/25mm IPD sway bars, Kaplhenke adjustable sway bar links
- Yoshifab upper and lower braces
- Kaplhenke adjustable rear spring perches, 250lb blue coil springs
- Koni single adjustable race shocks
- Adjustable panhard and torque rods, torque rods had heim joints added on the axle side.
- poly everywhere except axle bushing

And the drivetrain:
- Modern driveline T5z trans with a shorter ratio fifth gear (2.95/1.94/1.34/1.00/.80), Mcleod short throw and Hurst shifter.
- John Parker adapter plate, modified clutch fork, and crossmember
- 3.91 modded g80 rear
- RSI lightened flat flywheel
- Clutchnet "red spec" clutch... whatever that means

The car ran and drove really well. I was impressed by how the mods had completely changed the character of the car over the stock '91. Honestly the car was so fun and so nice looking that I felt really bad for getting ready to take it apart, but at this point I was committed to the two door so it's fate was sealed.

In order to get started on the '92 I needed to get the 242 off the lift. But first, in the spirit of doing things backwards I needed to hack up my freshly painted strut towers for the Kaplan struts.
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Now to get the body out of the way I needed a frame jig, so I built this very high tech patent pending design using some 4x4's carriage bolts and caster wheels from some staging. It worked perfect and is also one of my favorite pictures of the car
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Right around this time I also found my engine donor, a '91 745t that had been in the family before. My Dad owned this car in 2007 before it went through some tbrickers; it was the first Volvo I ever drove. It would give me a b230ft, a 15g, and a bunch of stuff for my DD 945. It looks good in this picture but the body wasn't worth saving.
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Back in the garage the '92 went on the lift and things came off of it.
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Golden retriever approved transmission
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We put the front and rear from the '79 back under the gold car so we could keep it a roller. Here it is getting pushed around by the 740, not so cool looking now is it!
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And a long day in the garage later the 242 rolled out on it's own wheels again for the first time in quite a while, looking a good deal better than when it went in.
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Right before I dug into the '91 a dark horse emerged and changed the direction of the car.

I read through the whole thing and then this^ was the last sentence.............Let down!
Guess I was too fast for you. Keep the 245 on the road and rebuild the b21 and detail it as well as you have with the under side and engine bay. Looks great so far!
 
I read through the whole thing and then this^ was the last sentence.............Let down!
Guess I was too fast for you. Keep the 245 on the road and rebuild the b21 and detail it as well as you have with the under side and engine bay. Looks great so far!

yeah, sorry there won't be much original about the car. Although I am keeping all of the DL trim and mirrors so I still have the correct classic look.

This is still back in summer so I'll be updating to catch us up to present.
 
Nice work! Nice find! Nice save!
Please keep the 245 running tho! It looks way too clean!

Thank you! I was glad to find the car and the owner Les was really excited that I was going to make a project out of it. I told him I'd stop by when it was on the road and I hope to do that in the spring.

The 245... I know! After we drove it and washed it we thought about it a bit, but what I really wanted was a 242 and the body was so far along I was all in. Once I pulled everything off the '92 it looked like any other old Volvo parts car and I didn't feel so bad anymore :lol:
 
I really like the wheels, and a quick wipe with Mothers and the lips already looked way better. I'd like to refinish the faces and get the hardware plated.

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I also forgot to mention that the gold '92 had been sitting in Matt's barn for a year before I came up and dragged that one away. So the barn's of New England treated me well in 2013.
 
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You kill too many cars..there is a ton of really good parts in bone yards.

There maybe a lot of cars in bone yards in Texas, but not here.

The 745 was no where near as nice as the pictures. We looked at it months before he bought it for parts as a DD and passed on it. It sat here on TB for weeks if not months before it sold to someone else on TB. They did a ton of work on it, tried to sell it as a car, and finally decided to sell it for parts when Stiggy bought it.

The maroon 245 was traded to Odin for the gold 245, along with a stack of cash, it's now supporting a gentleman's farm in NH.

The only "car" we killed was the gold 245, which was a shame, but the car was gutted of suspension, drivetrain, wiring, brakes and all the fuel and brake line plumbing, so it did the donor thing to the highest degree. After pulling all that off of it, we've sold some body panels. Yet to come from it will be some replacement sheet metal for the windshield corners, power window regulators, and maybe the bumpers. It should be noted that this car also was for sale here on TB for a while, everyone wanted it, no one came up with the cash.

So we traded the life of a 92 245 for a 79 242.
 
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You kill too many cars..there is a ton of really good parts in bone yards.

Your bone yards have 240's with Kaplhenke suspension and T5z transimissions?! :roll:

Very very nice. I really like the under coat removal.

Thanks, it really took longer than I expected. If I hadn't gone for it I probably would have had it driving before winter came in, but now that it's done I'm really glad I went through with it.
 
a motley crew
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august:
Now that the car was on wheels it was easier to work on in my spare time. Being able to roll it in and out of the garage seemed like a luxury.

With the big push to get it rolling out of the way, I took some time to pull things off of the '92 and move them over to the 242. Everything was getting moved, so it was a crash course in 240's. Spent more time cleaning things and stinking of kerosene.
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I had a lot of Rust Bullet left so I gave the tank a coat. I painted the tank and the brake booster with thinned Rustoleum through a Harbor Freight hvlp gun, I was happy with how it came out.
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Put the tank in, along with the fuel pump/filter housing. I had read that I would need to mod the filler neck to get the '92 tank in, but it went in fine for me.
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Ran fuel and brake lines
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Yes, decided to keep the ABS when I moved the brakes over. Not sure if I'll get mixed reactions, but A) my donor car had ABS and B) I like the idea of having working ABS in the car. Would be nice to keep that side of the bay a little cleaner but it's a sacrifice. The bracket for the module had a raised part that matched an indentation in the '92's strut tower. The '79 didn't have that dent, so I had to cut the bracket flat. Otherwise everything else moved right over.

Also swapped over the firewall panels and pedal box from the newer car and ran the harnesses through. Just going to run the LH2.4 harness as is. Eventually if I'm feeling ambitious I'd like to build a harness for the MS and clean up some of the unnecessary wiring.
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I covered the interior firewall and trans tunnel with some low budget sound deadening; Frost King duct insulation from Home Depot. It's foil/foam self adhesive, plenty of car guys online use it and seem to like it. Plus, cheap! Put in the later blower motor with the AC stuff pulled out of it and laid the dash wiring in. I've never had a car apart like this before so this was pretty intimidating, lots of pieces of tape.
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At this point it was Fall and I was ready to put a motor in it. We pulled the b230ft out of the 745 and sent it where it belonged. Et tu, Volvo?
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We pulled the T5/flywheel/clutch off of the '92 and put it on the b230ft. Also moved over the RSI Poly motor mounts, auxiliary shaft, put a timing belt on it and moved over the adjustable cam gear, did oil seals, and put on a Bosch 100amp alt from my wrecked 940. I pulled the intake manifold off of the NA motor which had an adjustable fuel pressure regulator and a yoshifab adapter to a 960 3" throttle body.

At this point I would have loved to strip the block all down, clean it and paint it nice and shiny red. BUT I had the motor and transmission on the hoist in the front of Dad's garage, and he wanted it out. Since I had been thinking I would build another engine and just drive this one until it's ready, we just dropped it in. I can give it a washing in the bay later.
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Now that the engine was out of the way I wanted to seal up the inside of the car since it was sleeping outside. Got to work with a hammer and chisel and exposed the uglies in the floor pans. Luckily nothing was too bad.
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Everything got scraped, cleaned, ground, sanded and coats of Rust Bullet. Then used multiple layers of heavy fiberglass sheet over any bad spots. It cured nice and sturdy and should do the trick for what was there. I added another coat of Rust Bullet of top of the glass after this was taken so it just looks silver.
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with the engine in the car I just started working on wiring. I didn't take any pictures because there wasn't much to show, but since it was my first time it took a while to go through and figure everything out. Moved over the ignition stuff, routed everything and started connecting stuff. Hard part was just trying to remember or figure out where things went, should have taken way more disassembly pictures but it really slows down the pace.

With the wiring in the engine bay pretty figured out it was time to throw a battery on it and power things back up. Plugged in the instrument cluster, hooked up some grounds and clicked the key over, power! Instrument panel lit up, megasquirt had power. I had put 5 gallons of 93 in the tank so we gave it a crank: no start. At this point I didn't even have Tuner Studio but it wasn't hard to figure out that there was no spark. Pushed it back out and started doing my megasquirt homework.

Through some reading and helpful responses from Kenny we were able to figure out the problem. The jumper on the EZK connector had a wire going to the wrong pin and MS wasn't getting the ignition signal.

With that moved to the right spot we tried again, instant success! It started just about right away. I still hadn't downloaded TS for some reason, so this was just on the NA map that was loaded in the ecu. I had moved over 850t orange top injectors so it was running rich and stumbly, BUT it was running. First start was 12/27/13

<object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/6PpQQ4dJNow?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/6PpQQ4dJNow?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

Put the driveshaft in, hooked up the clutch cable and on 12/31/13 it moved under it's own power for the first time in over 12 years. Almost exactly one year since I first saw the car. It was pig rich and wouldn't idle, but I was really excited to see it being a car again. Drove it about a quarter mile and parked it in the greenhouse built this year for storage.

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Now I can drive the car in and out of the garage while I keep going on the big to do list, intercooler, exhaust, tuning, put an interior in it...
 
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There maybe a lot of cars in bone yards in Texas, but not here.

The 745 was no where near as nice as the pictures. We looked at it months before he bought it for parts as a DD and passed on it. It sat here on TB for weeks if not months before it sold to someone else on TB. They did a ton of work on it, tried to sell it as a car, and finally decided to sell it for parts when Stiggy bought it.

The maroon 245 was traded to Odin for the gold 245, along with a stack of cash, it's now supporting a gentleman's farm in NH.

The only "car" we killed was the gold 245, which was a shame, but the car was gutted of suspension, drivetrain, wiring, brakes and all the fuel and brake line plumbing, so it did the donor thing to the highest degree. After pulling all that off of it, we've sold some body panels. Yet to come from it will be some replacement sheet metal for the windshield corners, power window regulators, and maybe the bumpers. It should be noted that this car also was for sale here on TB for a while, everyone wanted it, no one came up with the cash.

So we traded the life of a 92 245 for a 79 242.

Naa, just riding you.. I have scrapped cars i wish i had not. I am ok with such a nice 242 getting built and replaced with a wagon.
I like your work and direction. Clean classic on the looks with lingerie underneath.
IMO original clean cars get way more looks and thumbs up than hacked victims of spoiler happy teenagers.
 
Wow, your Mom must be very understanding to have your Volvo collection in her yard!


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That's where those snow tires went - bet you wish you had them when you were pushing your car thru the snow on Sunday!

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