Mike K's '79 242 Barn Car Revival

Lord_Athlon said:

Momo ghibli-3.
Momo Mazda Eunos
Momo Cobra

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Those are nice options, SAAB used to have an option wheel that looked just like those (they all pretty much look the same to me). Definitely period correct, little more subtle than the proto or Nardi.

Only downside is they may be harder to find, I like the Cobra quite a bit though. OG R wheels are sweet, but for the price they go for and the condition most are in it just doesn't add up for me.

Pretty excited about these, they came up in for sale at just the right time



Bonus pic, door handle!

Stiggy Pop said:

Trying to pick a steering wheel... Nardi Classic? Momo Prototipo? Black spokes or silver? These are life's important decisions

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Round, black, horn pad, says Volvo.

Confucius say - Make car go, then get fancy steering wheel.

My car's rolling on a set of 205/55/16's and I wish I had 50 series easily available up here. Funny what things are regional. Some 195/50/16's would be perfect. Unobtainium up here.

amerbritcan said:

My car's rolling on a set of 205/55/16's and I wish I had 50 series easily available up here. Funny what things are regional. Some 195/50/16's would be perfect. Unobtainium up here.

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That is strange, TireRack doesn't cross the border? Had no idea. If you ever want to pay a fortune I'll order some for ya and you can ship them up.

Bought some black interior pieces on Tuesday, not sure what's going in the car yet but I have the option.

The Commonwealth was kind enough to charge me $430 to register a $400 car . But I now have plates and insurance so can theoretically start driving the car up and down the road a bit. I've started working with Kenny to make that happen - hoping I can get the injectors and cam in this weekend.

Trunk is all glassed up and sealed, spent some time on the chassis harness and have working tail lights and marker lights again. Will get the headlights going this weekend, slap the commando's back on it, and it should look like it actually belongs on the road. Swap the door guts, sound deadening, slap an interior in it go go go.

Stiggy Pop said:

Those are nice options, SAAB used to have an option wheel that looked just like those (they all pretty much look the same to me). Definitely period correct, little more subtle than the proto or Nardi.

Only downside is they may be harder to find, I like the Cobra quite a bit though. OG R wheels are sweet, but for the price they go for and the condition most are in it just doesn't add up for me.

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I agree. Thats why I got the Ghibli-3. Its hands down my favorite wheel. Factory Ferrari wheel in many of their cars, honda used it in a few, bmw used it in their M cars.

I found an SPG Cavallino in the junkyard once.

The car, like, actually runs now courtesy of Kenny. Had a nice smooth idle for the first time ever. Put plates on it and drove it up and down the road a bit. After some noises went away (rusty brakes) I was able to actually give it some throttle. Even taking it easy I can tell the turbo is going to have a big hit. After a year and a half finally making some turbo noises put a huge smile on my face.

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Awesome! Love this car, especially the color!!!

Nice progress!

Getting close!! Amazing job, you're going to have a blast in it, trust me.

Sounds mean! Looking forward to seeing this finished.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! Really appreciate it after all of the work. The car made it's first (albeit brief) trip onto the main road yesterday, got up to around 60mph in 4th and it feels good overall. Some clunks going on I'll check next time it's in the air. With no interior and no sound deadening mostly all I can hear is things buzzing and all of the sand on the road destroying everything I worked on last spring . I think the fastest car I've owned was a ~200whp SAAB, so I can already tell this is going to be a whole different animal.

Hank Scorpio said:

Getting close!! Amazing job, you're going to have a blast in it, trust me.

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This is nice to hear, trust me! More than once I have thought about the fact that I've spent all of this time and effort working on a car I've never driven. I think my total Volvo 240 driven miles are <150, with most of that being driving 100 miles home in my original donor car. So somewhere in the back of my head has been "what if you don't even like the thing!?". It only took one real test drive to say ok, I'm sick of working on the thing... let's drive.

But just in case there is any doubt that Volvo runs deep around here... Dad was making some room to move the gold car shell out of the greenhouse, after cutting some small trees down he was kicking leaves around and unearthed a nice little piece of archaelogy - some kind of flat hood grill that has been laying buried for what I'm sure can be measured in decades! It is actually pretty much intact minus the spears and a crack on the upper left slat.

Good sounding car....I too like the color, I think white is perhaps the best color for a 242!

Mueller said:

Good sounding car....I too like the color, I think white is perhaps the best color for a 242!

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Will you like it less if I told you it was tan?

I still don't know what color the car is. It has definitely been repainted, but it's a match to the original color of the car. My build plate has no paint code on it, so I've just got some kind of tan color no one has correctly identified (I think I covered this in one of the early posts).

Stiggy Pop said:

Will you like it less if I told you it was tan?

I still don't know what color the car is. It has definitely been repainted, but it's a match to the original color of the car. My build plate has no paint code on it, so I've just got some kind of tan color no one has correctly identified (I think I covered this in one of the early posts).

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Too funny....I guess it must be the lighting in your garage!

I still like the car!

Great progress!

Mueller said:

Too funny....I guess it must be the lighting in your garage!

I still like the car!

Great progress!

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Thanks! It's not just you, when I first posted asking what color it was I think I got at least 4 or 5 "white" responses. It is a very light tan, much less yellow than Mojave Beige, much less pink than Artesia Beige.

Been trying to pick up the pace a bit lately, working on the tune with Kenny has really made me want to drive the car. It has plates and insurance now, so I'm the only one holding it up!

One thing that has been on the list - second bolts in the crossmember. I had not read about it so it came as a surprise when I held the modified crossmember from the '92 up to the '79 and said "hey... this isn't the same". As I learned they changed the frame rails at some point, so that the later crossmember sat back in a spot where my frame started to slope and had no holes. Since I only figured this out after I painted I didn't want to grind things up and weld a nut in, so I kind of put it off and figured i would have to drill a clearance hole in the floors so I could put a bolt and nut on it.

Senior and I were up at Paul Curran's shop borrowing a fender rolling tool (thanks again Paul!) and looking at his gorgeous Bertone when he had a suggestion that sounded like a better answer - rivnuts. I'd heard of them but never used them, Dad has used them at work but hadn't thought of them. We got some 3/8" steel rivnuts and the tool to install them and it ended up working out really well... once we figured out how to use the tool properly.

Here's the spot on the '79 framerail with smaller pilot holes where the rear bolts end up landing.


Because of the slope at that spot I thought I may have to do some shimming, but the rivnut ended up spacing it out nicely on it's own, so once they were squeezed in there in it went.


I also had a captive nut break off where my passenger side lower chassis brace connected, so grabbed one more for that spot as well. Really pleased with the solution, bolts torque up fine and now I can avoid welding and messing up the body work or having to take my interior apart every time I want to drop the crossmember in the future.

Also got a chance to throw the ID1000's in. Not much to say, they dropped in in 15 minutes, fit right, no leaks - certainly nice and modern compared to the clunky old orange tops. Loaded a new tune from Kenny and they fired up. Even rich it's the smoothest idle I've had on the car yet. I actually think it's idling smoother than my DD regina 940. Little bit of color in the bay doesn't hurt I suppose.


I also bought an Aeromotive 340 pump and sending unit modified for -6 fittings, so I can put the ID's to good use. I want to clean up my fuel rail area with the ugly FPR layout, all new lines and a Nathan rail would be lovely, just not sure I want to spend the money on it right now.

A random pic of the car enjoying some sunshine


I ordered ~50 square feet of Raammat sound deadening so I can make progress on the interior. Planning on shooting for ~50% coverage in key areas with the Raamat for resonance, then 100% coverage with the foam/foil insulation for general sound. Not going to be a Mercedes, but hoping this will at least make the car a little more civilized.

I should really get bumpers and grill back on so that it's a little less conscpicuous out on the road. I just can't decide what to do with the bumpers. After seeing my Dad's '83 I really want skinny's but haven't found any. I'm no big fan of commando's like some are, but also not sure the '92 bumpers are really going to look right. The commando's aren't exactly in great shape either, and they would need to be painted black to look presentable imo (rear is also cracked on the bottom). Guess I'll pull the two front bumpers out and hold them up to the car and see how things are looking. What does the peanut gallery think?

Getting some trans fluid flung around the tunnel from the tail shaft, which is disapointing since I put a new seal in when the trans went in the car. Also have some front end play, some of which seems to actually be coming from the Kaplhenke strut mounts which was a surprise given the miles on them. All things that can be worked out as I start shaking the car out more.

Still haven't gotten over that the car starts and idles now, just makes me all happy every time!

I really want to get the interior together, so I needed to finish getting it ready. Since I had scraped most of the factory sound deadening material away I wanted to replace and improve it. At first I was looking at going the "cheap" route and getting the Peel & Seal asphalt roof flashing. From the sounds of it it's the same thing as asphalt based auto materials like FatMat rattle trap etc. I got turned off the idea by reports of the smell it makes, and from reading tests where more expensive butyl based mats were getting better results at 25% coverage vs. 100% with peel and seal style.

I ended up using Raammat which is 60mil butyl and 4mil foil. I used just under 40sq ft between the cabin and the trunk (it comes in 11x23" sheets). It took a few hours to cut and apply pieces, but I was really impressed with the results. Really easy to apply, just wiped things down with alcohol and stuck it on. Better like it because it's never coming off.

Full coverage isn't really necessary, so I was just trying to put pieces in key spots. I was doing a lot of knocking on the door and listening for rattley or drummy spots. I still had the factory stuff on the outer door skins so i just put some big tiles around them.



I also picked this tip up which I thought made a big difference in the "knocking on things and closing the door" test. I rolled up some pieces of butyl rope and shoved them in between the impact beam and the outer door skins at a few points on the door.





I scraped off the tar paper from the parcel shelf and covered the entire thing to cut off as much noise from the trunk as possible.



And some in the trunk.



I can't recommend it enough. For the money the payoff was huge. The difference in closing the doors was pretty amazing for just sticking a few pieces around. I think it's going to make a big difference in making the car livable. I have a few sheets left so I can put some on the roof when I have the headliner out.

Raammat sells a closed cell foam product, but I thought this was an area I could save money on. So I went back to the Frost King duct insulation foam. The cost and weight of this is negligible so I just covered everything.





I left the doors and quarters open for now, I'd like to cover both in some kind of plastic like the vapor barrier on the later cars when I'm ready. Even without upholstery the difference was rewarding. No more exhaust rattle or buzzing inside the car, road noise is way quieter. I think it should be pretty quiet once it's all buttoned up.

I took a longer drive once I was done, good couple miles through the hills. I had a bit of a false start when it died about a half mile from the house. It didn't take long to think hmm I haven't put gas in since those 4 gallons in December . With some fuel in the tank it was a good ride. Motivating to really be driving. Can't wait to get things worked out and really put my foot down in it.

Waiting on the gas man. out in the wild!

Updates?
Really I just wanted to be post number 100.
Congrats on how the car is turning out!