deNs' 1993 940 GL Wagon - "Odin"

deNs · 2020-06-18T02:49:57+00:00

17-02-2018 - Base shellI eventually found a 940 through here, which I bought from James back in Feb last year as a shell, with a bunch of spares. Ideal as a...

deNs

Ex850R
https://ozvolvo.org/discussion/comment/180509#Comment_180509
If you have a "come along" or small winch on a spreader bar made from some RHS with some holes to mount the 'd' shackle you can make it easy.

This - I'm sure there's plenty of easy ways to make one of these though you need the skills and to trust in your handiwork to not drop your engine ;)

The one I got for this is this one, and for the price it was fine. I think it was either identical to or very similar to the ones at supercheap/autobarn but for less $$$. I gave it to my mate when I gave him back his engine crane that gets passed around between mates, as a small thanks for us using it over all these years.. we need to buy him a new one though, that crane has definitely seen better days ?

deNs

27-04-2020 - Exhaust

I had a dump pipe with a flange on it, but I had nothing else in way of an exhaust. I was thinking about potentially making up an exhaust, because my previous experiences with exhaust shops has never been great. I have my own MIG welder and am not complete rubbish at using it, so one option was to weld up my own exhaust.

Then I saw a couple of mentions online of pre-made exhausts by Martelius, who are the current manufacturers of JT-Tuning exhausts. After checking them out as well as pricing up what it would cost to get the parts to build my own and knowing the price of getting a custom made job done, I figured I should send them an email. I asked them if I could get one of their kits for a 940 with two mufflers and a 200CPSI cat, but minus the dump pipe. I think it was conical flange anyway, but they make them for LHD, and I already had a dump that would fit :)

A short while later, this arrived at my door. I got a 1M section to join up with the dump pipe as I had no 3" tubing, and a flex bellow for the end of the dump too.

Not too sure about the blingy tip, but I like having options

Mufflers seem decent, and straight-through rather than offset. I checked out some videos online to make sure it didn't sound like complete shit beforehand, but then again it'll never sound like a quad-rotor or V8 soooooo...

Started chopping up the dump pipe to shorten it so it doesn't hang as low. In hindsight, I should have put a short flexible bellow here, rather than under the car. "Mistakes were made".

An Aliexpress O2 sensor bung! This nice closeup shows the not-so-nice surface on the dump, but meh! I roughly measured the distance that the wideband O2 sensor wanted, and put it in located at basically 12-o-clock in relation to keeping it between 10-2 of vertical.

As you can see, I am no pro.

Gave the zorst a lick of paint, because stealth of course. Mocked it up on the car with my last spare jack stands. Hmm, it seems to sit pretty low eh. I remember the stock one on our UK car hanging really low so this wasn't so bad by comparison. Still, not ideal. If i were making it up (and had a hoist to make that easier) I'd probably try to tuck it up under the car even further. However, time is of the essence here which is why I bought it off-the-shelf.

Getting everything lined up to tack the flex bellow to the dump pipe

It tucks up okay though.

First muffler sitting pretty nicely. On the right of the above image, the clearance is pretty tight between the frame rail which is good, basically the maximium clearance you could have with a 3".

It was at this point I had the thought "hey, where's the other hanger?!". Damn, add that to the list of second-hand parts I'll need to find. Ended up getting one of those from a smashed S90 out the back of BMG in the rain, which thankfully was the same as a 940 wagon. Bless you Volvo for keeping it the same. Until that point I made do with the chicken wire and some spare bolts.

If it seals, it's good enough for me.

With the dump welded up, it's time to give it a clean, a lick of paint, and wrap it up with that damn itchy wrap.

I cut a section off from the straight pipe that I'll use for the tip. Not really my style to be all shiny on what otherwise looks like a stock car.

There were some old weld boogers I noticed in the entrance of the dump pipe. I had the die grinder out already so I did some satisfying smoothing of the dump entrance.

Before

After. That's it for the zorst!

carnut222

Nice! Love the detail!

deNs

25-05-2020 - Expansion Tank mount

What would be hopefully one last trip to BMG to get some miscellaneous parts would prove fruitful. I needed an expansion tank mount and thankfully they had a car in their other lot that had one for me. As a bonus, it was from a white car! They removed it with far more care than the one that was removed, so I got to work installing it.

I marked out where the original spot welds were on the chassis to give me a rough location for where the new one needed to go.

I then gave the surrounding area a quick coat of paint to protect the parts that I wouldn't be able to get to after welding, and covered up the bits I knew I'd need to have as bare metal. I grabbed an old expansion tank from the parts pile and used that for the mockup to get the level correct.

Once I got it tacked in place to the point it wouldn't move, I removed the tank and finished off the welding. As you saw from the exhaust, I am an amateur, at best.

Checking the level of the tank to ensure it matches the level that the car was at, which was checked with a long spirit level between the two strut towers (not shown).

The area was then primed over again before a final top coat. I am no professional spray painter either! ;)

Once given a coat of 2 year old colour-matched paint from Autobarn, it was starting to look not too shabby..

A couple of coats of clear and we're all done!

Ex850R

Too late but rivnuts and flat head bolt coulda done it.

deNs

Ex850R
Too late but rivnuts and flat head bolt coulda done it.

I could've, but I reckon it would've taken the same amount of time as those two spot welds and ended up with the back of the rivnut protruding into the strut area, which I'd prefer to avoid if possible. There was no need to make it removable, hence welding it like factory. As much as I have enjoyed using my new rivnut tool... ;)

Roinik

That 740 GLE head (see Greg's Manheim post re Newcastle) would liven up Odin a bit, even as a future upgrade.

deNs

Roinik
That 740 GLE head (see Greg's Manheim post re Newcastle) would liven up Odin a bit, even as a future upgrade.

This one? Don't think I'm not tempted! ? I'm definitely keeping my eye out for items like that for future upgrades. Main priority at this point is to get it on the road and make it as reliable as possible while making enough power to have some fun. The idea with this car will mainly be for roadtrips and holidaying and as I start to think more about building up the spare engine I'll start collecting parts like that. My wallet still needs to recover from these skandix orders though ?

Edit: whoops, looks like you mean this one! I have considered a 16V head for later down the track and it's come up earlier in the thread, but that depends if it'll work with the clutch master. I definitely like the idea and sound of a B230 with a 16V head, so I'm not ruling it out.

deNs

31-05-2020 - Ignition Module

I glossed over the ignition module when I mentioned the various components initially.

It was a non-bosch branded one, because I had to make *some* sacrifices in the budget for this build, and I did not intend on using the original ignition system forever. What is kind of odd is when clearly the original manufacturer, which made it in *Germany*, is etched off the front. Hmmm..

I knew that the module had an integrated heatsink but before I went to install it, I took it apart to check out the original thermal compound, because in my experience, the stuff that gets installed as standard on things like this are generally not great. Also, it could have been sitting on a shelf for a while, drying out. I spent a lot of my teenage years (and now adulthood) mucking around with computers, overclocking, watercooling, building phase-change refrigeration systems that run on BBQ gas, etc. The point is, I have a lot of (mostly old) thermal compound lying about to use.

That said, this tube of Unick I got in like... probably 2006, had separated somewhat and is basically useless. I quickly decided it was too old and I wouldn't use it.

A much more recent tube of thermal paste, less than a year old, was used instead. Once it was cleaned with some isopropyl, that is. Once clean, lay out a bead of paste onto the heatsink, spread out with an old card, like a membership card from a car club you used to be a member of, and you're done!

Once applied, it was put back together to be installed in the car! This time, I would get to use my Rivnut tool again ? Sadly I don't have any pics of that bit, but just imagine it's the same as the circuit breaker install.

deNs

10-06-2020 - Throttle Cable

This is a pretty small but exciting item for me, because I wasn't sure for a while what I was going to do about it.

The throttle cable in the car had a broken square plastic bit that is used to secure it to the throttle bracket, and as it turned out, apparently that's not an item you can buy off the shelf. Additionally, I wasn't able to find out how to source a RHD throttle cable. Most of the ones I was able to find were LHD items.

At one point when I was at BMG picking up a few bits like the hard intercooler pipes to suit the later intercoolers, I was asking Mark about the plastic piece, and though he had a spare c-clip to mount it to the throttlebody, the bad news was that the throttle cable assembly had to be purchased new as a unit. So as you can see above, I opened my wallet and did the needful. I was really lucky they had one on hand so that's one less thing I needed to worry about.

One one on the right, new one on the left.

Getting the old one out was a challenge, mainly because once again, the haynes manual isn't as helpful as it makes out to be. After that white firewall clip was pushed in strategically from the inside, it was free, and the new one could be installed.

There's not much to show about it being installed, but you can see above the damage that happened to the original cable. It's piece of mind to have a new one on the car since the old one was pretty munted in a few ways.

Major Ledfoot

The inside of my throttle cable melted when I was last on the mainland with the 940T - the wire cable fused to the liner, thanks to heat soak from the turbo and the shop who ran the cable in a strange way around the brake booster. They are a real [female dog] to extract intact at the firewall end, but refitting the replacement isn't any big deal.

deNs

Major Ledfoot
The inside of my throttle cable melted when I was last on the mainland with the 940T - the wire cable fused to the liner, thanks to heat soak from the turbo and the shop who ran the cable in a strange way around the brake booster. They are a real [female dog] to extract intact at the firewall end, but refitting the replacement isn't any big deal.

Can you elaborate how how it was routed in the case where it melted? I don't know what the 'factory' way is for it to be routed, but I have routed the new one as far away from the turbo and dump pipe as possible to avoid the same thing - In my case I've routed it up next to where the coil is mounted (almost straight ahead from where it comes out of the firewall), then around, over the brake master and along the firewall, loosely tying it to the top of the back of the firewall before it goes to the throttlebody.

I'm glad this this wasn't another case of 'refitting is the reverse of removal', because I probably would've ragequit at that point. Not the worst job I had to do on this car, but crawling under the dash getting behind the insulation and not being able to see stuff wasn't fun.

Major Ledfoot

@deNs writes:

Can you elaborate how how it was routed in the case where it melted?

Yeah - it was routed under the brake master cylinder, between the hard brake lines, and then over the top of the engine. The problem was how the cable was routed under the master cylinder heat shield by the shop who changed the brake booster about 18 months before. The problem reared its head when I stopped for a rest break on the side of the Hume during the heatwave earlier this year, and the heat soak from the hot day and hot turbo was just too much for the thing. One thing I certainly didn't need when I already had a raging cold!

The car usually operates in cooler ambients and usually has a chance to cool a bit after motorway driving, but there's not really any cool-down period when you decide to stop in one of those rest areas on the highway; you're going from a 110 limit to nil, instead of 110 and then urban 80 or 60 before stopping.

Your description sounds like how mine has now been rerouted.

deNs

21-06-2020 - Fluids

I did one last Skandix order, which started out with the need for the donut oil cooler and kept adding things as I went through the car trying to identify what I'd need to finish it off. I went as far to get things like door handle trim, a replacement antenna mast, brake parts, clips for the front apron, etc. because I was getting slightly OCD about it and trying to make the most of the now more expensive shipping costs.

Despite being haphazardly placed all together in a box with heavy items, nothing was damaged! Phew.

Decided I would wire in a coolant level sender to the dashboard as a method of cheap insurance.

Interestingly the replacement cooler had slightly shorter barbs, but that didn't matter.

Power steering suction hose wasn't cheap, but I didn't like the alternative option which was to piece one together with elbow pieces and such.

With the donut cooler and power steering hoses installed, it's time for fluids! Starting with the power steering fluid. Had to visit every mob in town to find some Type F!

Bleeding a power steering system was new to me, or at least I haven't done it in a long time. I filled it up, turned the wheel a bunch of times lock-to-lock, continued filling until it stopped going down, and then turned the wheel some more to bleed the bubbles as best I could before the pump gets turned on for the first time.

Picked up this semi-synth 10W-40 for some ludicrously cheap price when there was a special at a repcobarn a while back. Should lube it up nicely for now before I replace it with something better, probably my normal Penrite HPR10. The hose at the bottom of the picture above was some old computer watercooling hoses I used to fill up the gearbox with.

Exciting times filling it up! Nothing spilled out the bottom yet.. so far so good. I especially like how it requires exactly 5L, so you just empty it out, and dump a whole container into it and you're done.

There was a special at skandix on the concentrate, to the point where it was cheaper than some of the stuff I picked up locally. I decided if it was good enough for Volvo, it's good enough for me. What I didn't realise that it was 4L Concentrate at 50% (so 8L total) and the cooling system is about 10L ? Also got some muy expensivo trans oil for the M90. People swear by using the 'right stuff' with these boxes, so I am putting my faith in the interwebs once again. The box takes supposedly 1.85L, so with 2L on hand, I better not spill it!

Don't forget the diff oil! I filled that up with some Penrite 80W-90 mineral gear oil. It's funny how much the smell of old diff oil reminds me of the days I used to go spectate at the Vicdrift days at Winton... Oh such a long time ago.

With the vital fluids in, time to start trying to get this thing to fire up.

deNs

21-06-2020 - Shifter Install

With the gearbox in place and filled, now was the time to install the shifter and get warm fuzzy feelings from being one step closer to finishing things off. I purchased a new reverse light switch which used a different style of connector which was a bit more modern and less likely to have connectivity issues. I purchased a "conversion" kit with my skandix order which was basically a connector with pigtails to work with the new switch. Polarity doesn't matter so just crimped the new leads onto the connector and it was ready to go.

Old switch and connector on the left, new connector on the right

New connector wired in and ready to be installed.

That is of course, until you realise you should have installed this part of the shifter while it was outside of the car. The skandix poly bushing is such a tight fit with the pin that holds it in place, that it has to be 100% in line for it to go through. I literally spent a couple of hours struggling under the car over a couple of nights trying to get it in. Using various levering things to get it lined up and phone camera and mirrors to see if it was lined up:

I was taking photos and using mirrors as I jiggled it around to be able to see how close I was to lining it up. Protip - if you're gonna do this, save yourself the hassle by installing the lower half of the shifter on the gearbox first before putting the whole thing in the car.

The relief when I finally managed to get it in was so good. Now to fit in the new o-ring that goes into the shifter before the pins are reinstalled.

That rubber o-ring gets sandwiched between the ball sticking out of the gearbox and the ball on the end of the shifter linkage. It's the same part number as a k-jet injector seal I think, which I thought was mildly amusing.

After a bit of wrangling to get the pins lined up to the holes, it was in, and time to secure all the boots down for the shifter inside the car and test out that sweet shifting action!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuPRTpuc3V8

It's been 5 years since the last 940 with the M90, so I can't really remember what that one felt like, but this feels good so far. Will get a better idea of what it's like once it's actually moving the car :)

deNs

22-06-2020 - Fuel Pump and Filter

Before I put the main pump and filter into the car, I needed to ensure that the lift pump in the tank actually worked. Once that was done, I wanted to determine if the fuel coming out of the tank looked like it was any good. I put about 20L of 98RON into it as the dash showed that it was pretty low on fuel and could see that the gauge wasn't just busted since it did move when ignition was switched on. The fuel itself, though mixed with my fresh 98, looked pretty good! I also learned during this time that fuel is given an additive dye to determine what type of fuel it is! Apparently 95/98 premium is dyed yellow.

Yes, very fuel-safe canisters and hose in use here. It took some hot-wiring of the main fuel pump relay and fuse to get it to run full-time. After a new fuse with clean contacts and cleaning the relay contacts it was no worries though.

Using the pump and filter assembly from the 1991 car I pulled the engine from, I was pretty confident that it would be good. I'd replace the filter, as well as some of the other bits at the same time.

Upon disassembly of the bracket, trying to get the rubber supports out , I managed to break the knob off the first one. Guess I'll leave the rest on while I clean off the bracket from 30 years of accumulated crud.

I decided I'd replace that little connector piece between the filter and pump as a 'just in case'. Doing these preventative maintenance steps does make for a much lighter wallet, I will admit. Hopefully it'll help with the reliability of the car overall though.

That 11mm fuel hose that connects to the pump on the right is *remarkably* difficult to find. The best I was able to find was a fuel (but not fuel *injection*) hose from a local parts store after asking around for a 7/16" fuel hose. I didn't realise it wasn't fuel injection specifically until I was 2 steps out of the store and saw it was only rated to 2 bar. Too late to return as it was cut off the roll. Lesson learned.

The parts to be replaced!

The new connector piece. the old one will be kept as a spare.

With the new filter all in place, I gave the bracket a clean and a fresh coat of underbody stuff.

Note the zipties to locate the section that I broke the rubber knob off from. D'oh.

With that done, it's ready to go into the car!

I had 3M each of 7.5mm and 9.5mm hose to go on. The 9.5mm hose was not the right size for the hard line to the fuel pump, but I made it fit as it's all I had. The hose is COHLINE-2192 and it's rated for E10, not E85, but I don't plan on running anything but 98 in this car.

Not the final routing, but it's there, and now all plumbed in!

The section mentioned previously. It should be fine until I get a section direct from Volvo or can find some proper high-pressure EFI 11mm or 7/16" hose.

With that done, we're now ready to crank the car over and find out what things need to be fixed to get it running.

carnut222

Given that bit of hose is going between the in-tank pump and the main pump, it shouldn't be seeing very high pressures, so I'd think you'll be fine! I look forward to hearing if the car started up on the first try. I just cranked mine over after doing a full LH2.4 swap into a 79 245 and no start. :( Time to get stuck into troubleshooting and diagnosis.

deNs

@carnut222 I did have that thought, that the line before the main pump might see lower pressures, but it's not a hose that you want splitting under pressure and torching the car, so I decided that slightly stretching the 9.5mm hose over the 11mm OD barb (measured at around 9mm ID) would both not cause a restriction and would potentially be a safer choice of the two. I misread the diagram in VIDA for the hose that I'd need for that section. When I went back and had a look later I magically found that the hose was 11mm, not 9.5mm.

Sucks to hear that it didn't fire up first time. All I can say is that is that the greenbook saved me there, but something like this guide might help you as well. I'll share that story soon for mine, and I won't spoil it but I'll say that it didn't fire up first time either. My situation was unique, most likely because of the combination of hacked up wiring looms, and a combination of different years of wiring harnesses.

deNs

06-07-2020 - First Start

I still have a bit of wiring left to do now to get it to a state that I like it, but what's more important right now than being neat is to get the battery cabling set up so that it can be cranked over. For the positive side I still have to finish off where the distribution block will go, but that will probably be the very final thing that needs to be done. For the negative terminal, I had a stock ground strap but it wasn't in great shape. I decided a few weeks before now to replace both terminals with KnuKonceptz ones as they seemed like a decent design.

I'd leave the factory length starter ~2GA cable for now until I had the lengths figured out for the distribution block.

Now that we have fluids in the car, it's time to check if the oil pump seals I replaced were done correctly. I cranked it without the spark plugs in to make it easier to build some pressure. This would also check that the wiring for the new oil pressure sender was correct. Thankfully, it was all good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsa4FM6rlG8

Now that we can confirm oil pressure, I wanted to make sure the turbo was getting oil through the feed line. After a bit more cranking, it made its way out of the line:

Great! Now we have oil pressure and confirmed feed to the turbo, time to continue putting it together. Leads were run, the coil was connected, and focus shifted to the wiring and fuel side of things.

Sorry for the terrible camera quality - I got the spark plug lead clips in the last skandix order so installed those, the spark plug boots and was ready for a test fire. Don't worry, I removed the tape from the turbo and plumbed it before cranking it:

After a lot of electrical troubleshooting, I found out that the way it's wired isn't even using the Radio Suppression Relay to power the injectors, so after going through and undoing all the wiring I had mistakenly assumed was correct, I got to a point where I had spark, had fuel pump priming, but didn't have 12v to the injectors. I also realised through my troubleshooting process that the main power that supplies 12v for the ECU, amongst other things, was not even hooked up. So after wiring that into my glovebox fusebox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4LAoS4ezdo

Once I wired in the injectors to 12v, the video above was the first try. I had a feeling that was the final piece of the puzzle so luckily caught it on camera. That's why you can hear me laughing in the background - so relieved that it has finally started. I immediately switch it off, since as you can see, there's no cooling system hooked up to it.

You might see it was slightly overfilled initially, but it eventually levelled out just under the Max mark as the last of the air was bled out.

At this point I didn't even realise that I didn't have the main fuel pump working - it started, ran and idled fine on the pump tank alone. Once I realised I had disconnected the fuel pump connector inside the cabin around the shifter, I definitely heard it come on. Damn thing must be the brother of the Bosch 044!

I soon realised that the 954 ECU ran like complete crap, so for now I switched back to the 563 ECU to get it running and to be honest, it's running pretty sweet! I hooked up the cooling system, then started the first initial warmup to bleed the system of air. I also hooked up the exhaust, because I didn't think the neighbours would appreciate the tractor like noises of the B230 idle with just a dump pipe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1d4p0Sl-_M

It seems to rev far nicer than with the dual-mass flywheel. That huge amount of weight removed is definitely going to make it more lively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIDGkEs_Z28

And a final quick video of it warming up for the first time, also showing the system that kind of half-works to send the exhaust gas out of the garage so I don't gas myself. All in all, incredibly relieved to have it start and idle up smoothly for the first time.

deNs

08-07-2020 - Brakes

I didn't know the condition of the brakes on the car, so I decided to refresh all rotors, pads and fluid so I had a baseline. It's just bog standard 940 stuff so nothing special or exciting.. yet. It seems a lot of people upgrade to 940 'jumbo' setup, and though I'm sure it serves the purpose fine here, I'm considering the options for upgrades. Sadly it seems to be a recurring trend that the 740/940 tends to miss out on some of the things like brake adapters in the aftermarket - S60R calipers are a potential option but there's been talks about them not being a 100% safe option. If anyone's got suggestions, I'm all ears.

It turns out the DBA no longer sell the DBA688 fronts for this car, so I went with RDA for the fronts. I'd read a bit about the quality of various brands and there's some questions around the quality of the discs, but I decided to give them a go. Trusting people on the internet for opinions on your brakes is.. sometimes not easy.

The remsa pads in the middle are for the 850. 940 fronts on the left, rears on the right. Such cute, tiny pads.

Right, with the fronts done, time for the rears!

Hmm, the new handbrake shoes might be better, but oddly the old ones actually have *more* meat on them. Either way, with time constraints and a currently working handbrake, I think I'll defer this one until another time.

I've never replaced brake pads that use this kind of configuration, so with some help from our friendly FCPEuro youtube video I smacked out the pins and replaced the pads. I like this system!

Using an old pad shim against the brake piston's face, I used a clamp to push the piston back into the caliper. To make the process easier and less likely to push it back out the master cylinder reservoir, I attached my brake bleeder to catch any fluid that comes out, and bleed it of air once finished. This setup with things ziptied in place on the milk crate worked pretty well for the rears! I'd never found a decent one-man brake bleeder that actually worked before using this - it's not perfect but I've been able to successfully bleed the clutch and brakes easily with it.

Final config is:

Fronts: RDA688 Rotors, Volvo OEM pads

Rear: Zimmermann rotors, Volvo OEM pads

Fluid: Nulon Super Dot 4

The Zimmermann's were from the final skandix order. I couldn't get the fronts as well as I was literally at the weight limit for the order. No biggie.

With that done, the list of items is shrinking considerably. The main thing left on the list before being able to drive it is the front driveshaft. Since I don't have one to match the M90, I'll need to get a new one made up to match up to the original rear half. It was around this time I started calling around to various places to get quotes. I didn't know anything about how to measure up a driveshaft so my options are either to measure, get one made up and hope for the best, or get the car trailered over to Melb to whatever mob will make it.

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