Hi All,
So, any interest in my efforts to maintain and improve a 1980’s Volvo estate? If so, read on… nostaligia, tinkering, engine swap, trackdays and other details to follow.
I’ll borrow a bit from the start of my other project thread first, just to start off:
Well, I suppose I should start at the beginning. Way back in the mists of time, in a period known as ‘the eighties’ my parents decided that having children was a good idea and after starting with me, they went on to have three more children, all boys.
Scrolling forwards a little in time to the late eighties, they needed a car that could seat six people and didn’t cost a fortune (if my parents ever had a fortune, raising four boys quickly eroded it) and this being the late eighties the concept of a people carrier was relatively new and not within my parents’ price range. So they did what countless other people did and bought a Volvo estate with two extra seats in the boot area that face backwards. I can still remember the licence plate number of that car, a 1984 Volvo 240 DL (DL is the base model, with no electric windows etc.). Some time later in 1991 they bought a 1988 Volvo 240 GL (electric front windows! Heated front seats! mechanical injection 2.0 engine!) and sold the 1984 car. I helped dad install a new Volvo extra seats kit into the 1988 car and that became the family car. It racked up 320K on the original engine and gearbox although the odometer stopped working a few years back and the real mileage was probably another 10k on that. It survived daily use for years and years, camping trips towing a combi-camp trailer tent to Norway and Cornwall and all four of us boys learnt to drive in it.
Taken out of daily use when my parents bought newer cars, out of a sense of nostalgia it was kept on the road for boys to drive when we visited home, along with the occasional run to pick up something long or heavy that wouldn’t fit in my parents’ much more modern cars. Having driven (as I write I’ve now been driving the car for 22 years), tinkered with and maintained it for years I have got quite fond of it and in 2015 I did what I always wanted to do and swapped in a turbo engine from a Volvo 940… and then all the fun started.
So as a summary, what have I done so far?
1997 Volvo 940 2.3 turbo engine (the 4-cylinder redblock engine that Volvo started producing back in the 70’s was used in 240s, 740s and 940s and was improved over the years – the engine I have is the best version that Volvo built, 2.3 turbo with thicker rods than the earlier engines and oil squirters to spray the backs of the pistons with oil to cool them. As it’s basically the same block externally, it bolted into the 240 bay on the 240 engine mounts and bolted up to the original gearbox. The only slightly complicated part is building a downpipe to fit around the steering column.
15G turbo from a Volvo 850 and MBC set at 15psi
M90 5 speed gearbox (from a 940 – the latest and best gearbox Volvo made for a 4-cylinder redblock engine). I used the original M47 gearbox for a couple of years after the engine swap, but then swapped to this gearbox.
40mm lowering springs
Gaz adjustable dampers
Polybush kit front and rear – fitting a full kit to the rear was, in hindsight, a mistake. Some of the bushes need to be rubber (or expensive spherical bearings are available) to allow the axle to articulate properly whilst cornering. Also I found that the mounting points on the car/axle/trailing arms aren’t quite accurately lined up enough for polybushes (at least on my car) so with all of them fitted the rear suspension felt hard and jittery – I’m pretty sure it was binding. I’ve subsequently changed the rear axle to trailing arm bushes back to rubber which helped a lot, I’m going to change the front trailing arms bushes back to rubber as well, next time I take the suspension apart.
Alfa 156 front seats
Big antiroll bars front and rear – a tuning company called IPD in the USA makes these and they’re well worth the money.
Complete brake overhaul with new master cylinder, calipers, hoses, discs and pads
Cut out and repaired the rear sill ends both sides, along with a few patches on the offside sill.
2.5inch stainless exhaust – the current downpipe I built to suit the flat flange turbo outlet, the rest of the system was built by Demand Engineering in Norfolk.
16 inch wheels from a 940
All of the above I did on my (very understanding!) parents’ drive, as I don’t have access to any workshop space. I also keep the car there as I live in London and even a renting just a parking space is bonkers money.
I’ve taken it to RetroRides Gathering a couple of times, in 2017 and 2018. I took the 1978 245 from my other project thread in 2019 – I subsequently sold that car as two project cars away from home was a bit silly.
I’ve also taken it on a few trackdays, most recently to Silverstone in January – I thought I’d be able to take it to more trackdays this year, but… someone ate a bat and the world changed.
I didn’t want to just copy paste the entire progress thread from a Volvo forum over, but if you want to read the full thread to date, it’s here:
Volvo Forums Build Thread
Having got into old Volvos ‘a bit’ I accidentally bought a similar but older 1978 estate which I had for a couple of years and did a lot work to - I’ve now sold that car but the project thread I made about it is here:
1978 245 - The Impulse Purchase
So… a few pictures, as that’s what everyone wants really, isn’t it?
Back where it all started - a standard 240 Gl, with a NA 2.0 engine with mechanical fuel injection. The stickers on the doors were an inside joke as the car was slow and handled like a barge – I removed them after making it a bit quicker and less barge-like.
Best get on with taking the engine out then (my older half brother owes me approximately 1000 hours labour exchange from lying under the 1970s beetle he used to have…)
New engine stripped down for seals and gaskets
And it’s in! Took a while to get it to start after this – the distributor was timed incorrectly and the wiring for the fuel pump wasn’t quite right, still I learnt a lot about the engine and electrics whilst fault finding. I wrote up an engine swap guide to help others after the frustration of this not starting for months.
Wiring was fun – conversion looms for this engine swap exist now, but didn’t then.
Some suspension rebuild photos
New seats! Made such a difference – the Volvo ones used to be nice enough, but 320K miles later they were pretty worn out.
New wheels! Massive improvement in handling swapping from 185/80 14 to 205/55 16 tyres. The wheels were a standard option for 940s – 240s 740s and 940s have the same bolt circle and offset
Rebuilding the turbo – the one on the car turned out to have a massive crack in the wastegate seat, so a decent secondhand one was found, rebuilt and then fitted.
Swapping to a Volvo 'A' cam from a n/a car for more lift and duration, and checking valve clearances
Looking lonely in the carpark at Retrorides Gathering 2017 – I stayed pretty late
Making a new bracket for the brake hoses, repairing the sill ends and the sills.
The issue with the sills is that Volvo decided to make them vented – the idea being that they wouldn’t rust. What actually happens is leaves and other debris gets in via the vents under the windscreen, which blocks the sill drainage holes and then the sills rust from the inside out. There are access holes in the inner sill, accessible from inside the car, to hoover out the sills – but hardly anyone knows they’re there and the clearing out doesn’t get done as a result.
Swapping from M47 gearbox to M90, a friend volunteered to help
A few trackday photos from January
Caffeine and Machine took a photo which people seemed to like
Swapping to the 15g turbo from an 850 and building a new downpipe to suit – this was made a whole lot easier by visiting a friend with a lift! Massive workshop envy. Volvo stuck with the TD04 turbo family for the later FWD cars, so a later turbo will bolt onto the 940 exhaust manifold, but the outlet for the turbo is different, hence the need to build a downpipe.
The MBC was set at 10psi with the standard 13c turbo, now it’s set at 15psi. The 15g is still a small turbo, but it spools really quickly and it’ll do for now whilst I have other things to repair. Ultimately I’d like about 50bhp more for trackdays, since at the moment it’s ‘quicker than anyone expects’ but I’d prefer it to be ‘quite a lot quicker than anyone expects’.
Finally got round to fitting a wasted spark system last weekend - I've had the bits to do this for a while. Someone worked out how to hack the ecu with a small additional board to provide a spark output, so goodbye distributor and hello ecu controlled spark.
And that’s about it so far. Since I’ve had the car so long I’ve amassed a load of parts to fit and a correspondingly long to-do list, but since I don’t have a place to work on the car in London progress can be a bit sporadic – and pretty much ground to a halt this year, since I haven’t been able to visit my parents very often and certainly haven’t been able to stay over for a night and crack on with the car.
Nothing immediately pressing, but close to the top of the list is some work on the rear arches as the inner arches are crumbling away – unfortunately that probably means I’ll have to repair the chassis rails in that area too. If only I had a workshop to play in over winter...
Cheers
So, any interest in my efforts to maintain and improve a 1980’s Volvo estate? If so, read on… nostaligia, tinkering, engine swap, trackdays and other details to follow.
I’ll borrow a bit from the start of my other project thread first, just to start off:
Well, I suppose I should start at the beginning. Way back in the mists of time, in a period known as ‘the eighties’ my parents decided that having children was a good idea and after starting with me, they went on to have three more children, all boys.
Scrolling forwards a little in time to the late eighties, they needed a car that could seat six people and didn’t cost a fortune (if my parents ever had a fortune, raising four boys quickly eroded it) and this being the late eighties the concept of a people carrier was relatively new and not within my parents’ price range. So they did what countless other people did and bought a Volvo estate with two extra seats in the boot area that face backwards. I can still remember the licence plate number of that car, a 1984 Volvo 240 DL (DL is the base model, with no electric windows etc.). Some time later in 1991 they bought a 1988 Volvo 240 GL (electric front windows! Heated front seats! mechanical injection 2.0 engine!) and sold the 1984 car. I helped dad install a new Volvo extra seats kit into the 1988 car and that became the family car. It racked up 320K on the original engine and gearbox although the odometer stopped working a few years back and the real mileage was probably another 10k on that. It survived daily use for years and years, camping trips towing a combi-camp trailer tent to Norway and Cornwall and all four of us boys learnt to drive in it.
Taken out of daily use when my parents bought newer cars, out of a sense of nostalgia it was kept on the road for boys to drive when we visited home, along with the occasional run to pick up something long or heavy that wouldn’t fit in my parents’ much more modern cars. Having driven (as I write I’ve now been driving the car for 22 years), tinkered with and maintained it for years I have got quite fond of it and in 2015 I did what I always wanted to do and swapped in a turbo engine from a Volvo 940… and then all the fun started.
So as a summary, what have I done so far?
1997 Volvo 940 2.3 turbo engine (the 4-cylinder redblock engine that Volvo started producing back in the 70’s was used in 240s, 740s and 940s and was improved over the years – the engine I have is the best version that Volvo built, 2.3 turbo with thicker rods than the earlier engines and oil squirters to spray the backs of the pistons with oil to cool them. As it’s basically the same block externally, it bolted into the 240 bay on the 240 engine mounts and bolted up to the original gearbox. The only slightly complicated part is building a downpipe to fit around the steering column.
15G turbo from a Volvo 850 and MBC set at 15psi
M90 5 speed gearbox (from a 940 – the latest and best gearbox Volvo made for a 4-cylinder redblock engine). I used the original M47 gearbox for a couple of years after the engine swap, but then swapped to this gearbox.
40mm lowering springs
Gaz adjustable dampers
Polybush kit front and rear – fitting a full kit to the rear was, in hindsight, a mistake. Some of the bushes need to be rubber (or expensive spherical bearings are available) to allow the axle to articulate properly whilst cornering. Also I found that the mounting points on the car/axle/trailing arms aren’t quite accurately lined up enough for polybushes (at least on my car) so with all of them fitted the rear suspension felt hard and jittery – I’m pretty sure it was binding. I’ve subsequently changed the rear axle to trailing arm bushes back to rubber which helped a lot, I’m going to change the front trailing arms bushes back to rubber as well, next time I take the suspension apart.
Alfa 156 front seats
Big antiroll bars front and rear – a tuning company called IPD in the USA makes these and they’re well worth the money.
Complete brake overhaul with new master cylinder, calipers, hoses, discs and pads
Cut out and repaired the rear sill ends both sides, along with a few patches on the offside sill.
2.5inch stainless exhaust – the current downpipe I built to suit the flat flange turbo outlet, the rest of the system was built by Demand Engineering in Norfolk.
16 inch wheels from a 940
All of the above I did on my (very understanding!) parents’ drive, as I don’t have access to any workshop space. I also keep the car there as I live in London and even a renting just a parking space is bonkers money.
I’ve taken it to RetroRides Gathering a couple of times, in 2017 and 2018. I took the 1978 245 from my other project thread in 2019 – I subsequently sold that car as two project cars away from home was a bit silly.
I’ve also taken it on a few trackdays, most recently to Silverstone in January – I thought I’d be able to take it to more trackdays this year, but… someone ate a bat and the world changed.
I didn’t want to just copy paste the entire progress thread from a Volvo forum over, but if you want to read the full thread to date, it’s here:
Volvo Forums Build Thread
Having got into old Volvos ‘a bit’ I accidentally bought a similar but older 1978 estate which I had for a couple of years and did a lot work to - I’ve now sold that car but the project thread I made about it is here:
1978 245 - The Impulse Purchase
So… a few pictures, as that’s what everyone wants really, isn’t it?
Back where it all started - a standard 240 Gl, with a NA 2.0 engine with mechanical fuel injection. The stickers on the doors were an inside joke as the car was slow and handled like a barge – I removed them after making it a bit quicker and less barge-like.
Best get on with taking the engine out then (my older half brother owes me approximately 1000 hours labour exchange from lying under the 1970s beetle he used to have…)
New engine stripped down for seals and gaskets
And it’s in! Took a while to get it to start after this – the distributor was timed incorrectly and the wiring for the fuel pump wasn’t quite right, still I learnt a lot about the engine and electrics whilst fault finding. I wrote up an engine swap guide to help others after the frustration of this not starting for months.
Wiring was fun – conversion looms for this engine swap exist now, but didn’t then.
Some suspension rebuild photos
New seats! Made such a difference – the Volvo ones used to be nice enough, but 320K miles later they were pretty worn out.
New wheels! Massive improvement in handling swapping from 185/80 14 to 205/55 16 tyres. The wheels were a standard option for 940s – 240s 740s and 940s have the same bolt circle and offset
Rebuilding the turbo – the one on the car turned out to have a massive crack in the wastegate seat, so a decent secondhand one was found, rebuilt and then fitted.
Swapping to a Volvo 'A' cam from a n/a car for more lift and duration, and checking valve clearances
Looking lonely in the carpark at Retrorides Gathering 2017 – I stayed pretty late
Making a new bracket for the brake hoses, repairing the sill ends and the sills.
The issue with the sills is that Volvo decided to make them vented – the idea being that they wouldn’t rust. What actually happens is leaves and other debris gets in via the vents under the windscreen, which blocks the sill drainage holes and then the sills rust from the inside out. There are access holes in the inner sill, accessible from inside the car, to hoover out the sills – but hardly anyone knows they’re there and the clearing out doesn’t get done as a result.
Swapping from M47 gearbox to M90, a friend volunteered to help
A few trackday photos from January
Caffeine and Machine took a photo which people seemed to like
Swapping to the 15g turbo from an 850 and building a new downpipe to suit – this was made a whole lot easier by visiting a friend with a lift! Massive workshop envy. Volvo stuck with the TD04 turbo family for the later FWD cars, so a later turbo will bolt onto the 940 exhaust manifold, but the outlet for the turbo is different, hence the need to build a downpipe.
The MBC was set at 10psi with the standard 13c turbo, now it’s set at 15psi. The 15g is still a small turbo, but it spools really quickly and it’ll do for now whilst I have other things to repair. Ultimately I’d like about 50bhp more for trackdays, since at the moment it’s ‘quicker than anyone expects’ but I’d prefer it to be ‘quite a lot quicker than anyone expects’.
Finally got round to fitting a wasted spark system last weekend - I've had the bits to do this for a while. Someone worked out how to hack the ecu with a small additional board to provide a spark output, so goodbye distributor and hello ecu controlled spark.
And that’s about it so far. Since I’ve had the car so long I’ve amassed a load of parts to fit and a correspondingly long to-do list, but since I don’t have a place to work on the car in London progress can be a bit sporadic – and pretty much ground to a halt this year, since I haven’t been able to visit my parents very often and certainly haven’t been able to stay over for a night and crack on with the car.
Nothing immediately pressing, but close to the top of the list is some work on the rear arches as the inner arches are crumbling away – unfortunately that probably means I’ll have to repair the chassis rails in that area too. If only I had a workshop to play in over winter...
Cheers
