I bought this from @paul0075 a couple of years ago. He'd looked after it and done a solid Stage Zero but it had caused him some grief and offloaded it cheaply.
It is (IMHO) the best spec of first gen x40 - manual Phase 1.5 T4 wagon with non-metallic paint and charcoal interior, in Super Tourer spec (which is basically some ugly 16" wheels, fake carbon fibre replacing fake woodtrim and black headlight surrounds, mostly). A Phase 2 T4 manual wagon might be superior but I have literally never seen one for sale.
That said, I am not delusional about this one. It has over 300,000km on it and appears to have had bird poo or tree sap sit on the paint and eat into it.
Since then, it has been out 'spare car' - used for tip runs, loaned to mates, towing the bike trailer, etc. It even survived 6 months with my dad, which few mortal cars are capable of.
While it has been 100% reliable for me, it has always been one of those slightly niggly cars. Very much one of those cars that is not the first choice for a long trip but also the car you'd take if you need to get there...
I've maintained it, but absolutely not babied it. In my ownership, the main mods have been to fit some Evo6 front Bilsteins, fit some Phase 2 NA wheels (because they are less ugly than the SuperTourer wheels and had good Michelin Pilot Sport tyres on them), and remove the cargo-space-destroying rear shock tower brace. It also did the typical x40 coil pack connector thing to a mate when he borrowed it last Summer, but the usual fix of crimping down the bullet connectors has sorted that.
With El Wifeo's Mazda hail repairs taking twice as long as the hire car period, she was going to have to drive it for a few weeks - seemed like the obvious time to clear up some niggles.
First up was the front control arm bushes. I have been unable to get the wheel alignment right for months, and there was a weird rubbery creaking noise on speed humps. New 'castor correction' urethane bushes weren't much money and massively improved the steering - and the previously elusive alignment took about ten minutes to get right.
Having spare arms meant that I could fit the new bushes before pulling the car apart.
This last photo shows the front swaybar disconnected - there’s no mount on the Evo strut bodies. The other side has a bracket to hold the swaybar to the body and stop it drooping down.
The urethane bushes are oddly, simultaneously harsher and more comfortable - you feel the bumps more directly, but the lack of wallow/shimmy afterward is nicer IMHO.
For as long as I've owned it, there's been a shudder/clunk when letting the clutch out that I assumed was due to the clutch/dual mass flywheel being worn. It made the car quite difficult to drive in a lot of ways - just as the clutch starts gripping, it takes up abruptly and wants to stall the car. And when you give it the berries, there's an unpleasant clunk as you let the clutch back out on gear changes.
Because I am lazy, I had been ignoring it... but recently, at full throttle it began to make the same 'dugga dugga' noise that the silver S40 made when the engine mounts were dead. Turns out that the gearbox mounts were tired and the clunk was the whole motor and box shifting.
I found the best mounts from the parts pile and filled them with sikaflex and let it dry for a week. When I went to fit them, I discovered the rubber mounts to the body were squashed down too. So I used some spare, less-squashed rubbers. I also trimmed down the crush tubes to preload the rubbers more.
OzVolvo photo order... Use your imagination.
Magic! The shudder has gone, and it is far easier and more comfortable to drive.
Should have done both of these things years ago...
And then El Wifeo has been driving the Merc anyhow... :)
Next time I am motivated, I will fit the matching Evo6 rear Bilsteins. They need the lower mounting points changed from a fork to an eye.
Somewhere after that, there might be a larger exhaust. I am pretty sure that the cat converter is dying as the power delivery is pretty flat in the midrange.
