Brown 1979 Volvo 245 - off to a new owner...

Haven't ruled it out forever, just for the time being

Liking this build. I remember buying a dog turd brown 244 auto for £77 off ebay when I was drunk one night, it was road legal too! Turned out to be a good solid car, but horrendous on fuel so I sold it soon after.  Can't believe this was 9 years ago now, happy days!

This would look brilliant with cream banded steels and the round headlights instead of the ugly square ones.

B230FT/K in its future?

Haha, never been a fan of the early style square lights. The round ones just make the front of the early 200 series perfect imo.

You could swap the entire loom from a late 240 and then get the ecu and ezk from a 900 series B230FT and there you go plug and play injection turbo Swedish goodness.

If only it was that easy for me putting a B230ET in my 360 lol.

Vote of confidence for squares here. I reckon both work nicely on the 240 but the squares work best with the wipers you've got. This one's a smart old bus even if you leave it as it is.

A phrase echoed throughout Retro Rides land and beyond!!

oh my, no updates since July...

Been ticking along in the background while still being used every day, I've also been finishing my Honda cub and building a bicycle for the wife which have been sharing my largely buoyant enthusiasm

I fitted some poly engine mounts to replace my knackered old Volvo ones. Then I had to replace the replacements as they were ruined, suspected poor manufacturing
These are the new polys after about 3months!!



It had started to use fluids and starting it was getting harder and harder. I took it to TAB for some diagnosis by mantaphil, blown HG was the result so he kept it for a week and made it all betterer.



As you can see it was leaking coolant both out of the block and into the cylinder The oil consumption was suspected to be the sh*tty rocker cover breather I had fitted, so I replaced it with a hose into the filter baseplate, which it turns out isn't ideal either due to the amount it's breathing. Further testing required to see if the bottom end is tired or I just need a better breather solution.

I decided to pull my finger out and get on with some of the cosmetic tidy up. I'd borrowed a loaner bumper while mine was being tarted up, so where better to start. First job after removal of the corroded fluffy ally was a quick coat of silver on the top and bottom



Then some black over the coach bolts for the mounts:



Cut length of rubber strip bought from that there e*ay



Then drill holes in that where the bolt heads are and stick it down with industrial mastik-y stuff left over from a garage door weather strip kit. This was curing last night so no pictures as yet, but I'm pretty happy with the finished article.

I've been amassing suspension bushes slowly and now have a complete front and rear kit minus ARB bushes. The rear will be fitted when the new axle goes in, once it's been tidied and new bushes fitted to it. Which is lucky as I found this nastiness when re-attaching my exhaust:



Latest to-do list looks like this:

- Paint and fit new bushes to axle
- Fit axle, trailing arm front bushes, polybushed non-plopped together torque arms and adjustable polybushed Panhard rod
- Fit front wishbone polybushes and remove 1/2 coil
- Paint spare OSF wing in new colour
- Remove OSF wing, repair rust in bulkhead and fit painted wing
- Paint spare tailgate, replace.

Those are pretty much consecutive due to only having space to refurb one item at a time in the garage. After that it's on to bodywork tidying and paint

I can also fit new stereo, rear speakers and mini-sub somewhere in the mix and hopefully the bulkhead repair will have stopped the driver's footwell water ingress so I can refit the carpets!!

Much to Colonelk and HARDCORE's dismay I've finally settled on some wheels! Not sure when I'll get them, but they're in progress

In an effort to keep this moving and more up to date, have some more:

I want to tuck the bumper in a bit, but had read numerous things about the bumper dampers containing pressurised gas - not so! (at the rear at least)

This is it removed from the bumper



Push this sleeve out of the tube a bit



Get a long extension and a deep 17mm socket down there and it comes apart like so:



The two clean cylinders run inside each other inside the rubber cylinder. A long bolt (shown left) runs down the inside and through a cup inside the long tube preloading the rubber. Idea being that if you have a bump the rubber compresses and the cup moves inside the tube.

I'll shorten the rubber cylinder by 2", and either find a shorter bolt, suitable spacer under the nut or cut the thread further down.

Game on!

In other news, a compression test gave 110, 130, 150 & 130psi. Done wet it was 130, 140, 150 & 130. Nothing to get too upset about for the time being, however I'm putting my back up plan into action.

I was mostly doing this with no prior knowledge, people have done it but no-one has really detailed how. To cut the rubber I ended up using a wood saw, a hacksaw worked ok but it was getting hot so I figured coarser teeth. It worked really well.

After a measurement check I decided that I'd start with 35mm, like so:



The OE bolt is M10x150, I managed to source some stainless M10x120 at everyone's favourite price so this would work well. The bolt clamps the cup against the inner small tube to preload the rubber chunk, so that had to be shortened a corresponding amount:



Apologies for the blur. Here's a comparison before and after:



The second one was much quicker, helped by receiving my own deep sockets instead of driving 20 miles to use one at TAB!

Here's the car before:





And after...





This also shows my DIY refurb on the bumper. I'm not entirely convinced, but I do still have the original rubber which could be reattached minus the inner steel strip. TBD





While the bumper was off, I took a few snaps to compare to a 145's booty.





And a bumper less 145 for reference



I think it would be pretty easy to panel this in smoothly, one for the future!

I have markbognor to thank for some motivation, when he posted this image I had a man moment, then thought "I need to pull my finger out":



This is also bang on the money!