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242GT 1979 Group C Race Car

Wow, excellent job! Really neat to see not only a rare Volvo, but an obscure race car restored back to its former glory with a great attention to detail. Great looking car.
 
Another huge day and she fought us to the end but she is done. Final tune and wheel alignment next week and off for a track test the following week.

All day basically spent getting front interior sorted.


Job list completed

1. Fit up windscreen washer container and plumbing
2. Fit up all side/kick panels, door trims
3. Fit up fire extinguisher
4. Fit up foot rests
5. Fit up steering wheel
6. Fit seats
7. Fit race harness and window net
8. Fit centre console
9. Spend over an hour trying to sort out friggen seat belt sensor wiring to stop it from blinking. Finally got it sorted after blowing 4 or 5 fuses in the process.
10 Measure cut and fit plastic liner between door trim and door
11. Fit up door cards including some modified mounts as we cant put the door trays on as they hit the roll bar.
12. Sort overdrive wiring out and fit shifter knob including the screw mod and boot

We got to the final day and we have one item outstanding that is missing from the 4 cars we have to pick from. The passenger side (left) rear light cover that mounts in boot to cover the back of the tail lights. Not one to be found. Go figure! Will have to track one down from a wreckers in the coming weeks.

Any way some shots of the final day. Next shots will be at the track for its shakedown.

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DVS Front Springs installed.


A decent photo taken to compare ride height of old springs verse DVS specials. K dropped in the new springs today as well as the project Mu RC09 brake pads (thanks DVS for the parts)and dropped her on the ground for a quick photo prior to loading up trailer for delivery to the tuner on Tuesday. Have also managed to source the missing left tail light cover and it is on its way next week

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Awesome story and so glad you are resurrecting this great piece of Volvo race history!

That roll cage scares me though. The front down bars should not be bent like that. Those will easily collapse in a big roll over. Also the rear down bars to the fender wells do almost no good. They should be tied into a suspension point or at least a structural frame rail area. If your rules allow you to pass through the rear firewall, attack them to the frame rail at the rear shock point.

Agreed. That's a show-car cage the way it's bent around the dash. I had to look back to see if this car was going on track. I'd want to at least gusset those front down tubes. Needs an FIA bar, door bar up to bend at the top of the windshield.

And if that tow hook is aluminum, those tend to break. I can't tell what it's made of, so merely suggesting that it should be steel.

Should be a really fun car to drive, and it looks great. Keep up the good work!
 
All comments noted. Thanks

Today was tune up day and we decided to have them fit the rear spherical bearing from Kaplhenke too as they have the bush remover. They found a small vacuum leak and issue with fuel accumulator but they have it idling better already and just waiting on the parts to arrive. It is a great feeling being able to take it to an experienced Volvo technician and have it diagnosed correctly and efficiently. Fingers crossed she is back tomorrow running like a top.

Couple of shots on the trailer

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Wheel alignment to go and we should be off to track for a shakedown in approximately 8 days
 
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Agreed. That's a show-car cage the way it's bent around the dash. I had to look back to see if this car was going on track. I'd want to at least gusset those front down tubes. Needs an FIA bar, door bar up to bend at the top of the windshield.
Agreed, I figured this was more of a show car so it probably doesn't matter all that much.
 
Tune up and wheel alignment done. She now runs sweetly. Ended up fitting a brand new fuel pump and accumulator as it was not holding pressure and the pump was at end of its life. Both were the items from one of the donors and were the only 2 items in fuel delivery system not renewed already. Line pressure was just not good enough. They had been sitting unused for around 5 years.

Had to adjust reverse lock out and have pulled the overdrive wiring from the shifter. Overdrive will not be needed for local tracks and we are going to use a switch on dash to operate. Will sort out when we get a spare half an hour well before it will be needed.

Loaded up for a track test next week so fingers crossed we have it all sorted for a decent shake down.

Will put up some photos from track test day
 
Thanks David -

Todays shakedown not as successful as we hoped. Only got 2 laps in and we spent the day chasing an electrical gremlin that was taking out the fuel pumps. The fuel would start to starve until the pumps would stop completely. As well as this the gauges would be jumping around all over the place. Of course it would not do it at home and waited to the track to surface. In the end battery gave out too just to add to the excitement. Good news it does brake and steer and the local Auto Electrician confirmed our Alternator is charging (free of charge thanks). Ran many wiring checks all in the name of getting some runs in to no avail. We managed to leave our spare fuel pump relay at home on the bench some 100kms away so we figured that will be the likely culprit. Just prior to heading home we spotted an extra relay in the fuel pump circuit that we thought was put there by our mechanic but upon checking he said it was already there so he had left it in place. Like everything with a little thinking time on way home my partner in crime had it sorted within 10 minutes of being back home. Previous owner ran a turbo and had inserted another relay in the fuel pump circuit for reasons not known to us which when we looked at factory wring for normally aspirated engine did not need to be there. Removed the relay and plugged wires to standard positions and we had liftoff. Was hoping for some track pics but these couple will have to do.

Start of day before the fun and games had commenced

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If you don't go you might as well look good

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In all the chaos we spotted a couple of small things that we will fix prior to next test so whilst we did not get seat time we were hoping for we have moved one step closer. Race weekend is first weekend in May and we should make it.
 
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In Hindsight we should have done this months ago before commencing reconstruction but hey you live and learn.

We thought we had a cruisy Friday night with a tidy up of a few small issues identified in Shakedown 1 but by the end of the night we were ready to push her in the corner and forget her for a while or burn it as we could not get a handle on the electrical gremlins which surfaced as we dug a little deeper. We called it a night in disgust and retreated. I did a couple of hours research when I got home then dragged out the factory wiring diagram and mapped out each fuse in and out and we made the decision to start at fuse 1 and work down the board. It was a dogs breakfast and I don't know how anything ran at all and it was lucky we had not already had an electrical fire. Too many people have had a go over the last 30 years. Hard to believe there were two fuses with the power feed wires on the power out side. No wonder we were generating some heat on a couple and there was lots of weird stuff happening. What I cant figure is why it did not surface earlier.

I checked my notes against one of our donor cars that still has factory wiring in place and my notes were backed up by observation so hooked in and went through them 1 by 1 and cleaned and checked fuses and holders as I went. Took a good few hours as some past handy work needed to be returned to standard. Powered it back up and checked power to each side of every fuse and all good. Put in a new indicator and fuel pump relay and fired her up. We finally had everything back up and running and full fuel relay functionality. Let it run for a good 20 minutes to make sure we had no issues when everything warmed up. Checked alternator charging and still no go so back to basics on that too. When checking realised we had failed to earth it. Goes to show it was missed by all and sundry for all these months. Fixed that and we now have charge and all lights in dash on start up. Plenty of lessons learned but most important is to just go back to basics when confronted by many issues that make no sense.

PS We have bought a Dave Barton external adjustable regulator for the Alternator so we can dial in a little extra charge. We are going to get our spare reconditioned and fit it up with the new regulator and consign the current one to our spares for away meets.

If work plays ball we will be back to track Wednesday for shakedown mark 2
 
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Today we had shakedown take two and thankfully the only tool we removed from the tow car was the tyre pressure gauge. We did approximately 45 laps in various stints and apart from the old tyres not offering full grip we were extremely happy with outcome. Before our first race meet in early May we will give it a spanner check, put on the reconditioned alternator, fit the new slicks for the old old ones we used to move car around and the shakedown and give it a bath.

If you discount last weeks two slow laps it was the first time the car has been on a race track in nearly 36 years

Sorry pics and video lost in Photobuckets Money grab. Post cleaned up
 
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does the car have a camber plates or stock upper strut mounts? can you provide more info of geometry setup? oh and dat exhaust sound.. double niiice
 
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