April 2021 - Tasmania
After a decent amount of time away from the car, but with a small checklist of things to fix up, I got to work as we had to catch a ferry over to the holiday isle, Tassie! Has been almost 10 years since I went over with a car, so was pretty excited to go down and not have a crappy rental or wicked camper to drive while we're over there this time.
First stop of course is to take it for a shakedown run to Ikea for some swedish meatballs in my swedish meatball (We didn't eat meatballs, I had a cinnamon scroll with coffee, in case you were wondering). This was the first time my wife had seen the car finished so I was a little nervous about its reliability..
Also spent some time catching up with friends and going for a few nice drives in it, to shake it down some more of course :)
Feeling better about the car, but of course always with one ear listening for the slightest thing that might be wrong..
That was back in Feb, but when we came back in late March, I decided I should sort out a few things that we need to have for the car, long-term. Things like air conditioning! I ended up sourcing some aircon bits from a N/A 1993 sedan that @iceton1975 kindly let me yank out on a sunny weekday afternoon. Also got a spare tyre/wheel as I didn't have one for this car!
With that done, I now had all the bits necessary to put a r134a system back into the car, including a brand new accumulator/dryer unit and a new Nissens condenser. That'll be a job for another time though, as time was running out to get ready for Tassie!
Also while running around that week it clicked over to this magical number! I didn't have the forethought to line up the trip meter with it as well.
My wife got me a bunch of things from those SwedishMetal blokes for my birthday a couple of years ago. I like both kinds of swedish metal, the musical kind and the Volvo kind ? Still need to put the window banner somewhere.. perhaps on the rear.
The chipped LH2.4 954 ECU and chipped 148 EZK were installed during that week and run in through about a tank's worth of petrol (was a busy week) and seems to be running well.
Time to get onto the ferry to Tasmania!
Holy crap it was a rough crossing. I had no idea an enormous ferry could move around like that!
I won't post up all our holiday photos, but just a few highlights with the car :) First stop was Stanley, a town on the north-west coast. This holiday would mostly be in the north to north/west part of Tassie as we've often not spent much time through here besides stopping at the occasional town.
The big mound in the background of the second photo below is the Nut, which is the core of an extinct freakin' volcano! We got the chairlift up and walked around it. Nice view :)
Among the many drives we did, we did some of the Tarkine wilderness drive - the C218 loop (on the right of the map) and then went back up north afterward.
Was a pretty great way to spend some time enjoying the wilderness with some of the walks you could stop and go on around there.
We spent some time relaxing at a cabin in Cradle Mountain as sort of a treat to ourselves. When leaving however I noticed that the exhaust had once again fallen off the hangers, so I spent a little while on the first wet morning of the whole trip, on the ground of the carpark at Cradle mountain, trying to put the exhaust back on its flimsy hangers. I believe it was when I went over one of the million speed humps in tassie that it got knocked off. Part of the exhaust near the cat just hangs low and was getting bumped on big speedhumps ?
I'm going to repurpose the original Volvo OEM muffler hangers onto the JT Tuning exhaust because the ones they came with are complete rubbish. I plan to replace all the slip joints with V-Band clamps too, but that's for another day.
Eventually we made our way towards Launceston, and with a few weeks warning we dropped in on @Major Ledfoot and spent an afternoon talking about projects, all things redblock, circuit racing, and comparing white turbo 940 wagons. Also got to see his awesome 780, which is great to see in person! Thanks for the cuppa and the chat! Awesome hospitality.
Eventually though we'd have to make our way back to the mainland and back to everyday life. The ferry back was even more rough than the one going over! I don't think I'd be a very good fisherman.
For the first time in the thread's history, this is now up to date! I still have a decent list of things I want to do next with the car. The following is straight copy/paste from my list of things to do, though it's probably missing some stuff:
Install Aircon and get it chargedFix exhaust hangers so it doesn't keep falling off rubbersInstall 3in exhaust resonator after cat and dynamat to reduce bad drone at cruising speedOEM Heat shield for Brake master/booster and DIY for Oil pressure sensor areaTurbo oil feed hose protection from rubbing on lower rad hose (old protection melted, have fireproof sleeve on its way)Check all coolant hose clamps - minor coolant leak from somewhereWire up coolant level switch (derp)11mm Fuel hose replacement for main fuel pump feedReplace main fuel pump wiring with fresh heavy gauge wiring and new plugsGeneral bolt check in engine bay - vibration from mounts is causing some loose bolts I thinkFix and paint rust patches in paintInstall sik subwoofa m8Replace 700 series front seats with more comfortable reclinables.. maybe just stock 940 seats?New tyres and *maybe* a new set of wheels, dunno yet.. but I have ideas.Consider better suspension than the bouncy spring/shock set up - have plans here.
Then perhaps down the line I can consider fun things like an LSD of some sort :D Right now though it's in the early stages after finishing it where it needs small things to be fixed.
Thanks for reading ✌️
