So I thought I'd start a new thread for this given that it's been so long, photobucket took a dump and things seem to be progressing. It's been far too long since I've posted or even browsed so let's get straight in to it.
I'll try and catch you guys up with the story so far.
I bought this back in 2012 I think after having a ganders at Bryn's 240 turbo before it's revamp into "Strip Club". I think it was less than week after that and I was driving up to Chester to pick mine up.
What arrived was a bone stock GL wagon. The plan was to lower it and eventually fit the engine from my 760 turbo (more on that later).
So we got it lowered and set about trying to find some wheels. 5x108 isn't the best stud pattern in terms of choice or availability so it took some time but after a while I got a call from a friend about an Alfa 166 for sale. He mentioned it had some decent wheels on it. Knowing the 166 was 5x108 and cutting a long story short I ended up buying the wheels but not the car. I probably ended up overpaying but I guess he had to work out how to sell his car now it had no wheels.
It looked alright but the offset was a little weak and through an unfortunate series of events two of them ended up getting bent pretty badly...
In the process of bending the wheels I kinked the LCA, ruined the top mount and pushed the strut top up a few centimeters.
I pulled a corner off a car at Harry Bucklands for £20, found some standard five spokes and all was right with the world again.
After a while I wanted some decent wheels again and tried something a little different. I had some adapters made for 6x139.9 and bought some SSR Lodio Drives.
The adapters didn't really fit and they took a long time to be made. Long enough that I changed my mind anyway. That was an expensive lesson. I decided I wanted something 17 or 18" and quite wide. The easiest way of doing that was with 5x114.3 so I bought some bolt on adapters for $80 from US eBay and kept an eye out for some wheels.
I think it was around this time that I spent 2 hours driving around a field in second gear dragging a mattress behind me with drunken friends clinging on for dear life (don't ask). Second gear didn't like that and whilst driving to Pembrey for a drift event it made some protests. A few days later it gave up completely and lunched the gearbox. I had an M90 sat in the garage but couldn't be bothered to do all the things necessary to fit it (extend the prop, make a crossmember etc). So I got another M47 that was a bit iffy but worked. fitted that but not before the MOT ran out. So it sat there and I messed around with other things, got sensible cars and surprised everyone by telling them "Yeah, I've still got it, it's on the driveway.".
Every so often I'd buy parts for it and maybe fit some but it's sat there ever since then, it's still there now. After a few years I'd amassed quite a few parts and had the building blocks of the car that I wanted when I first bought it. I ended up buying some stuff twice as plans changed or parts turned out to be sub par in terms of fit or function. I'm not really sure in what I order I bought or fitted stuff so I'll just go through things as they come to me.
I replaced the axle to trailing arm bushes as they were proper gone...
I think I used superflex poly bushes. I regret that now. I should have replaced them with standard bushes as the polybushes prevents axle articulation to a degree. There is a company called Kaplhenke Racing that make a giant spherical bearing the replaces the bush. That's what I'll be replacing the polybushes with at some point.
I polybushed the torque rods also and then fitted some adjustable torque rods made by Myranes. I did this after I realised having lowered it so much the axle was now too far back in the arch.
Brilliant build quality and I was planning on buying more of their parts but they seem to have stopped trading from what I can gather. I was planning on getting their adjustable panhard rod but had to find another source. Retro Turbo makes quite a lot of 240 parts so I bought a panhard and LCA spacers.
The quality seems Okay but the fit left a little to be desired. The LCA spacers took a lot of filing to fit. The panhard seems great but the rod end is little cheap. The plan is to extend the panhard mount on the axle so I can fit a straight bar and have it adjustable on the car. I removed the LCA spacers too.
A friend of mine had recently imported an R32 Skyline from Japan and it had turned up with standard front wheels and Work VS-XX's on the rear. He had the pair of works for sale for a while and after a few months I bought them, thinking I'll just hold out for another pair.
Here they are on one side to get and idea.
They're 17x9 ET32(maybe?) with a 30mm adapter. The front was Okay but the rear was far too weak so I put feelers out for another pair either wider or with a better offset. I kept and eye on eBay and driftworks but nothing came up. Even went so far as to email a guy in Japan that's known for sourcing wheels and parts. He told me the chances of finding a pair in the right size weren't great. I gave up actively looking. In the meantime I borrowed some wheels to try and get a better idea of what size I was after.
I think these were 17x9 and 18x10.
I ended wanting a 17/18 stagger. I got annoyed with not having wheels so I ordered some new "fake" wheels of the same basic design as the VS-XX's from JDMDistro in Ireland.
I got a bit crazy with the size and went for 18x10.5 I forget the offset but it was quite low and was really too wide for the car given there was also a 30mm adapter.
The size made it apparent how the much the axle was misaligned having had adjustable arms thrown on and not set up. I got the axle centered as best I could and centered the wheel in the arch as best I could but they were still too big. The arches were "rolled" we used a sledge hammer and a trolley jack after a while but Volvo sure make 'em tough! Three layers of thick steel converge at the rear arch lip. They didn't move a lot. I ended up getting some 20mm adpaters but they need some machining to fit the 240 studs as there's a bit of a radius on them at the base. I wasn't convinced they were going to be enough anyway so I set about raising the rear end. I wanted adjustable spring seats so it could come back down again if needed.
Classic Swede supplied some adjustable seats for a great price and they arrived quickly. They accept the standard spring and also 5" ID springs. Bryn had gifted me some of the parts from his 240 left over from the rebuild. I had to use his old rear springs as the pigtail on my IPD ones was too tight to fit over the screw thread of the new spring seats... They were so low even with the seats wound all the way up that the springs weren't even fully compressed. I can only assume Bryn is a savage.
I ended up having to open up the ends of my old springs using heat, levers and eventually an angle grinder. Leveled the car out and for the first time the car would roll with the new wheels on the rear. Whilst I was at it I fitted some brand new Bilstein dampers.
The front was up next. I'd always had just cut front springs on the front and they dislocated for a past time. I couldn't come up with a solution that I was happy with and I planned on making some coilovers in the future anyway. For the meantime I just fitted the IPD springs I never fitted years ago along with new Bilstein damper inserts. The damper shafts are a little bigger...
Previously I'd fitted some KL Racing lower arms
These were super cheap, HEFTY, and add 25mm of track each side as well as a lot of castor. So much so that the wheels catch on the front of the arch. This is PAS car so the lower ball joint is kicked forward, as per the one on the left in the photo below.
I've got options, either buy ball joints for a non PAS car (as per the right) and see if that moves the wheel back enough or swap the ball joints from side to side. The latter is free so I'm gonna do that first.
I also fitted some TXR Performance v2.0 top mounts and set them up appropriately.
So that's the front end pretty much done.... or it would be if I had remembered to fir the rear LCA bushes. So it's got to come apart all over again.
It sits a little high but it'll come down again in time and at least it rolls for once.
I think we're pretty much up to date, the last thing I got was a new gear stick, current one was sloppy as hell and I couldn't find a company doing bronze bushings for a reasonable price so I went the whole hog and got this. I dislike the standard gear stick as it's so insulated from the gearbox it feels more like a suggestion than a positive action. It's basically a rod with a thick rubber coating and a metal sleeve over the outside. It got all loose and felt like I was gonna pull it apart at any moment. This fixes that as well as shortening the throw.
The outer tube is solid aluminium and there's no play at all. ACM.se supply these but they aren't cheap. The gear stick is attached the box via a cup that's bolted to the back on the gearbox with some rubber bushings, I'm going to see if a friend can make up some nylon or Delrin bushings to replace these to sharpen it up even more.
Next up I'll be sorting the brake lines out and fitting the rest of the braided lines. I've done a front corner already but I used cheap unions and don't like them. Got some decent ones and new copper nickel hard line from Automec to go on.
Hopefully it wont be another 4 and a half years between posts this time.
I'll leave a little teaser for you though...
Peace.
I'll try and catch you guys up with the story so far.
I bought this back in 2012 I think after having a ganders at Bryn's 240 turbo before it's revamp into "Strip Club". I think it was less than week after that and I was driving up to Chester to pick mine up.
What arrived was a bone stock GL wagon. The plan was to lower it and eventually fit the engine from my 760 turbo (more on that later).
So we got it lowered and set about trying to find some wheels. 5x108 isn't the best stud pattern in terms of choice or availability so it took some time but after a while I got a call from a friend about an Alfa 166 for sale. He mentioned it had some decent wheels on it. Knowing the 166 was 5x108 and cutting a long story short I ended up buying the wheels but not the car. I probably ended up overpaying but I guess he had to work out how to sell his car now it had no wheels.
It looked alright but the offset was a little weak and through an unfortunate series of events two of them ended up getting bent pretty badly...
In the process of bending the wheels I kinked the LCA, ruined the top mount and pushed the strut top up a few centimeters.
I pulled a corner off a car at Harry Bucklands for £20, found some standard five spokes and all was right with the world again.
After a while I wanted some decent wheels again and tried something a little different. I had some adapters made for 6x139.9 and bought some SSR Lodio Drives.
The adapters didn't really fit and they took a long time to be made. Long enough that I changed my mind anyway. That was an expensive lesson. I decided I wanted something 17 or 18" and quite wide. The easiest way of doing that was with 5x114.3 so I bought some bolt on adapters for $80 from US eBay and kept an eye out for some wheels.
I think it was around this time that I spent 2 hours driving around a field in second gear dragging a mattress behind me with drunken friends clinging on for dear life (don't ask). Second gear didn't like that and whilst driving to Pembrey for a drift event it made some protests. A few days later it gave up completely and lunched the gearbox. I had an M90 sat in the garage but couldn't be bothered to do all the things necessary to fit it (extend the prop, make a crossmember etc). So I got another M47 that was a bit iffy but worked. fitted that but not before the MOT ran out. So it sat there and I messed around with other things, got sensible cars and surprised everyone by telling them "Yeah, I've still got it, it's on the driveway.".
Every so often I'd buy parts for it and maybe fit some but it's sat there ever since then, it's still there now. After a few years I'd amassed quite a few parts and had the building blocks of the car that I wanted when I first bought it. I ended up buying some stuff twice as plans changed or parts turned out to be sub par in terms of fit or function. I'm not really sure in what I order I bought or fitted stuff so I'll just go through things as they come to me.
I replaced the axle to trailing arm bushes as they were proper gone...
I think I used superflex poly bushes. I regret that now. I should have replaced them with standard bushes as the polybushes prevents axle articulation to a degree. There is a company called Kaplhenke Racing that make a giant spherical bearing the replaces the bush. That's what I'll be replacing the polybushes with at some point.
I polybushed the torque rods also and then fitted some adjustable torque rods made by Myranes. I did this after I realised having lowered it so much the axle was now too far back in the arch.
Brilliant build quality and I was planning on buying more of their parts but they seem to have stopped trading from what I can gather. I was planning on getting their adjustable panhard rod but had to find another source. Retro Turbo makes quite a lot of 240 parts so I bought a panhard and LCA spacers.
The quality seems Okay but the fit left a little to be desired. The LCA spacers took a lot of filing to fit. The panhard seems great but the rod end is little cheap. The plan is to extend the panhard mount on the axle so I can fit a straight bar and have it adjustable on the car. I removed the LCA spacers too.
A friend of mine had recently imported an R32 Skyline from Japan and it had turned up with standard front wheels and Work VS-XX's on the rear. He had the pair of works for sale for a while and after a few months I bought them, thinking I'll just hold out for another pair.
Here they are on one side to get and idea.
They're 17x9 ET32(maybe?) with a 30mm adapter. The front was Okay but the rear was far too weak so I put feelers out for another pair either wider or with a better offset. I kept and eye on eBay and driftworks but nothing came up. Even went so far as to email a guy in Japan that's known for sourcing wheels and parts. He told me the chances of finding a pair in the right size weren't great. I gave up actively looking. In the meantime I borrowed some wheels to try and get a better idea of what size I was after.
I think these were 17x9 and 18x10.
I ended wanting a 17/18 stagger. I got annoyed with not having wheels so I ordered some new "fake" wheels of the same basic design as the VS-XX's from JDMDistro in Ireland.
I got a bit crazy with the size and went for 18x10.5 I forget the offset but it was quite low and was really too wide for the car given there was also a 30mm adapter.
The size made it apparent how the much the axle was misaligned having had adjustable arms thrown on and not set up. I got the axle centered as best I could and centered the wheel in the arch as best I could but they were still too big. The arches were "rolled" we used a sledge hammer and a trolley jack after a while but Volvo sure make 'em tough! Three layers of thick steel converge at the rear arch lip. They didn't move a lot. I ended up getting some 20mm adpaters but they need some machining to fit the 240 studs as there's a bit of a radius on them at the base. I wasn't convinced they were going to be enough anyway so I set about raising the rear end. I wanted adjustable spring seats so it could come back down again if needed.
Classic Swede supplied some adjustable seats for a great price and they arrived quickly. They accept the standard spring and also 5" ID springs. Bryn had gifted me some of the parts from his 240 left over from the rebuild. I had to use his old rear springs as the pigtail on my IPD ones was too tight to fit over the screw thread of the new spring seats... They were so low even with the seats wound all the way up that the springs weren't even fully compressed. I can only assume Bryn is a savage.
I ended up having to open up the ends of my old springs using heat, levers and eventually an angle grinder. Leveled the car out and for the first time the car would roll with the new wheels on the rear. Whilst I was at it I fitted some brand new Bilstein dampers.
The front was up next. I'd always had just cut front springs on the front and they dislocated for a past time. I couldn't come up with a solution that I was happy with and I planned on making some coilovers in the future anyway. For the meantime I just fitted the IPD springs I never fitted years ago along with new Bilstein damper inserts. The damper shafts are a little bigger...
Previously I'd fitted some KL Racing lower arms
These were super cheap, HEFTY, and add 25mm of track each side as well as a lot of castor. So much so that the wheels catch on the front of the arch. This is PAS car so the lower ball joint is kicked forward, as per the one on the left in the photo below.
I've got options, either buy ball joints for a non PAS car (as per the right) and see if that moves the wheel back enough or swap the ball joints from side to side. The latter is free so I'm gonna do that first.
I also fitted some TXR Performance v2.0 top mounts and set them up appropriately.
So that's the front end pretty much done.... or it would be if I had remembered to fir the rear LCA bushes. So it's got to come apart all over again.
It sits a little high but it'll come down again in time and at least it rolls for once.
I think we're pretty much up to date, the last thing I got was a new gear stick, current one was sloppy as hell and I couldn't find a company doing bronze bushings for a reasonable price so I went the whole hog and got this. I dislike the standard gear stick as it's so insulated from the gearbox it feels more like a suggestion than a positive action. It's basically a rod with a thick rubber coating and a metal sleeve over the outside. It got all loose and felt like I was gonna pull it apart at any moment. This fixes that as well as shortening the throw.
The outer tube is solid aluminium and there's no play at all. ACM.se supply these but they aren't cheap. The gear stick is attached the box via a cup that's bolted to the back on the gearbox with some rubber bushings, I'm going to see if a friend can make up some nylon or Delrin bushings to replace these to sharpen it up even more.
Next up I'll be sorting the brake lines out and fitting the rest of the braided lines. I've done a front corner already but I used cheap unions and don't like them. Got some decent ones and new copper nickel hard line from Automec to go on.
Hopefully it wont be another 4 and a half years between posts this time.
I'll leave a little teaser for you though...
Peace.