Johnno's Big Red Box '88 240GL

Johnno_ · 2024-04-13T03:27:01+00:00

So I'm pretty happy with my 2002 V40 2.0T after a two year long gradual tidy up. The wife wouldn't sit in it when I first bought it and now she is quite happ...

Johnno_

Big Red has an identity crisis. De-badged by the previous owner, who was thoughtful enough to leave them in the glovebox for the next owner. I'd prefer to have them on, not a big fan of the de-badged look.

Got some good quality 3M double sided tape, some orange goo remover and a hobby knife set.

One thing that struck me is how well made these stainless steel emblems are crafted. Real pride in the badge, top quality stainless steel, the 38 year old black paint seems to have lasted without major loss . The result is that they still present very well after almost 4 decades. Remarkable.

Small details in some quality well-thought-out engineering still surprise me with this car.

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Gave them all a good squirt of orange goo remover and let them sit for an hour.

Four badges, four different sorts of double sided adhesive. Side markers were both crusty and hard. One had the double side tape popping off in sections. The second one had to be scraped off like a burnt piece of Toast.

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Big VOLVO logo emblem was still flexible and peeled off quite easily. The stainless was bright and shiny underneath.

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240GL was a problem child. The foam only came off in really tiny bits. So I hit it with a pinstripe remover wheel.

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The adhesive on "240GL" was some sort of top secret, military strength bonding agent.

Here is what I tried.

Orange Goo Remover

Pin stripe remover wheel mounted on a big-ass AEG drill.

Acetone

Methylated Spirits

Turps

Petrol

Naptha

It smashed 2 x nylon scourers

I ended up even trying a small butane torch. The adhesive just laughed at my efforts. Seriously, seriously top grade adhesive.

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I thought. If its not coming off after all that….it's never coming off. Gave them all a good water and detergent clean and some acetone for surface prep. Set about cutting the 3M double sided tape to fit.

Took a couple of hours as it was pretty fiddly. I did not cut my fingers in the process which was surprising.

Side emblems were just a coupe of lengths of tape….easy.

240GL was a thin length of tape and lots of small thin bits….harder.

Big VOLVO was a couple of lengths of tape which was then carefully cut from the front. Lots of pressure and a cutting board needed for this method……harder still. However by the end I was getting pretty good at it.

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Peeling multiple sections of tape off with the knife tip was fiddly too. But I soon had them ready.

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There's a slight "shadow" where the old emblems were placed. Areas that had not been oxidised or washed in the past 38 years. It's difficult to see due to the polish but they are very faintly ghosted on the duco & sit a little higher.

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Side emblems are hiding some holes for GLE side indicators? Not sure. Anyway, the previous owner put a couple of orange reflectors over the holes.

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Some wax and grease remover to clean off the surface and carefully place the side markers over the previous "ghosts".

Just noticing the changes from above picture. New front fender trim moulding , new driver door trim moulding, new windscreen, fitted bumper moulding, a Volvo emblem and a the red duco has a lot more "pop".

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Cleaned and prepped the rear emblem areas with wax & grease remover and carefully placed the emblems over the previous "ghosts".

Big Red is officially now a Volvo 240GL again!

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jamesinc

I restored some badges a couple years back if you're interested. They clean up very nicely https://ozvolvo.org/d/11162-11162/97

Johnno_

jamesinc they turned out very nice. I never knew the earlier ones were different. Momo is cool!

Mine will need a bit of metal polish and some small black touch ups, that's about it. They were in pretty good shape. I'd had them sitting around for awhile so it was good to get them back on.

Johnno_

Rear wiper motors seem to be in short supply on the planet. Fortunately Berry had a 240 wagon just arrive. Had a short, very funny chat with Mark and paid for the unit.

Two days later.

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Bloody hell front wiper motor…… not the rear. A quick call to Mark and he was sending the rear. It's always a good indicator of a business how they react when things go wrong. No dramas at all. He was great.

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Return to sender.

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Two more days later . Yes!

Complete with a fairly solid ball of butyl. Lets get that solid lump off and get this sucker in!

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Johnno_

Mounted up the rear wiper motor on rear of the bracket. It's counter-intuitive to me, as I'm thinking the rear tailgate cavity is quite narrow and there's no way that motor & bracket is going to fit. But it does.

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Fitted it in the tailgate hole, after shifting the linkage out of the way. It went in a lot easier than it came out.

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Scavenged some molinex connectors for the loom from the old wiper. I'd thrown the other butyl contaminated ones out previously.

Bolted the motor frame on the tailgate, one of the bolts earths the rear demister and wiper.

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Then the fun began. I'd marked what I thought was "zero position" on the previous motor at 11 o'clock. Popped on the linkage and windscreen wiper. Lifted the windscreen arm up and it was rotating. The power supply, loom and the second hand wiper stalk were all good!

My guess is its been some years since a working tailgate wiper motor has been on this car.

However it was rotating from roughly 8 o'clock to 11-12 o'clock. I then sort of realised then that the old motor had probably seized at 11 o'clock.

So after much testing, head scratching and reasoning, I discovered zero position was actually all the way right at 3 o'clock. The linkage arms should be vertical. The problem was, at three o'clock, there was little possibility of fitting the nut on the small arm with the linkage sitting on top.

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So I split the motor's small arm from the linkage again and the battery went flat and the rain set in… it was pouring and starting to get dark. I was confused.

So I pulled out the battery and threw it on charge, slept on it and tackled it this morning.

Johnno_

Didn't get many photos this morning of how i worked it out but it went sort of like this.

Screw on the small arm at 3'clock when motor is in zero position
Run the wiper briefly, switch off the ignition a few times until the small arm is at around 6 to 9 o'clock . This gives you enough space to press in the small arm ball onto the linkage with a pair of multigrips with a fair bit of force.
Start he car again, turn the wiper on and off. Motor will be zeroed.
Screw in the wiper arm loosely to its home position.
Make some fine adjustments with the position of the wiper arm.

Fiddly but worth it in the end. Even when I though I had it correct, it was finishing at 2 o'clock.

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Finally bedded it down and screwed it on tight an hour ago.

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Checked it running with the washer and it it all seems really good. I'm grateful to have rear wiper & washer at last!

Johnno_

Next job hook up the tailgate central locking. Car originally had the hook but was missing the Klamma (clamp). I've had the clamp now a while from GCP but been waiting for the wiper to be set up as it sits within the wiper bracket.

In short…..while the wiper was out……no central locking.

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Two 8mm screws holding in the unit to the wiper motor frame. Plug electrical wires into the loom.

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A bit more head scratching to work how it all links together. Finally figured it out.

Photo of me with no idea……

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Photo of the hooked up remote control after consulting the parts manual.

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And now the tailgate central lock is working.

So the tailgate is pretty well done. The only thing that was working when I bought it was the rear struts, the lock (sometimes), rear seal, third brake light (sometimes) and the glass letting in some light. Fixed the following

Latch and lock adjustment
Interior latch adjustment.
Rear wiper motor
Rear washer jet
Central locking
Rear de-mister
Rear number plate lights. These were just working but the female connectors crumbled away when I removed the old loom.
Tailgate looms
Cargo Bay light
Cargo bay light switch
Third brake light cover
Third brake light now operates 100%

Rather happy to have it functioning as a Volvo wagon again.

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Johnno_

Got a chance for some real world testing on a fresh Western Sydney morning. Stoked!

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Roinik

Love the chopped fingers. Is there a turbo in the future plans?

Johnno_

Roinik Maybe. But the 400,000km motor would probably need attention first. She's got a bit of piston slap & sounds very agricultural when cold.

Marty & Moog at Mighty Car Mods were partially the reason for the V40 2.0T in front. I was looking for a COVID project car, turbo and cheap. Bought one of Cheryl's Big Boxes last year with the chopped air freshener. I've got a lot to thank those two young guys for, giving me a little bit of inspiration to go and try the tools on some cars.

ramrod

If the car has the original 1988 engine (see the right side of the block and head for 88 stamping, may need cleaning first)

And no K stamping on the opposite side of the block and no K label on the decal on the cam belt cover, it is an early 1988 model which missed out on the thicker (13mm) connecting rods and will only take so much boost before the rods are stressed too far.

K bottom ends with 13mm rods from late 1988 onward are a lot more safe to boost up and won’t mind higher than standard boost level and rpm at that higher boost pressure

Major Ledfoot

ramrod And no K stamping on the opposite side of the block and no K label on the decal on the cam belt cover, it is an early 1988 model which missed out on the thicker (13mm) connecting rods

Errr, not quite. The 'K' cast on the side of the block, etc, indicates it uses the larger main bearings and has a rear trust bearing. It doesn't indicate the rod thickness.

Insofar as having the weak 9mm conrods go, Volvo never specified the breakpoint serial number at which 'K' blocks went from 9mm rods to 13 mm rods - the parts book says "a few engines" and nothing more. The rod journal diameter didn't change on B230s, so the weak centre thrust bearing engines have the same rod journal diameter as the rear trust bearing engines. Funny thing - the conrod part number didn't change when they went from 9mm to 13 mm. One day, all you could get were 13 mm rods like the weak ones never existed.

The only way to be certain which rods you have is by measurement and inspection. Oddly enough, I pulled down an early B234 engine which had 9mm rods.

Johnno_

ramrod it's a February '88 Australian build so the motor is more likely an '87. Anyway, turbos are a fair way off yet. I'll have to go through all the seals and gaskets and do a bit of research. I don't want to go too silly, just a little bit of "oomph".

Went to Picton Cars and Coffee this morning. Big Red held it's own.

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Last time I went in April, a week after I bought it. It still had the auction lot number on the windscreen. I had it hidden away in the corner with some MCM cloth tape sealing the windscreen, sealing the rear tail light and holding on various bits of trim.

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Roinik

Just don't argue with John Vanlandingam about that. He'll claim that by machining those B230E cranks to take a #5 thrust bearing and strengthening the rods, they are better than the K onwards B230F cranks. The smaller journals have less friction and can utilise lighter pistons.

ramrod

Maybe so, but doing that work seems like a waste when you can already have it done for free with a later model engine

If you’re not looking for a lot of turbo boost and high rev high stress driving, the early engine would be just fine.

ramrod

Thank you Bob for the correction, I always thought K meant updated rods too.

Using the above detail if you had a 1988-1989 engine, the only way to know for sure whether it has thicker rods would be to physically measure them with the oil pan removed

I think by 1990 they were all updated

Anthony

Really impressed with your writeup on the red beauty and all the parts you’ve inspected and fixed. Proud owner for sure.

Another one for your list, i noted you swapped in another wiper motor and wondered why it went.
If not done already, its wise to refurb the two widescreen wiper shafts by removing, re- greasing, maybe a seal or two. Then watch them whirl like new.

Great work.
Anthony

Johnno_

Thanks Anthony. I like getting well engineered things back in spec. I actually get paid to do it in my regular job working on big bits of German kit, get them humming and sitting back and relaxing. I've owned 5 Benzes over the years. Buy low mileage examples that have depreciated considerably, service them on time with the best fluids and replace things with OEM parts as they wear out. And I'm finding Volvos are a bit like Benzes, they still seem to work when they're broken.

The rear wiper linkage had been bound by a number plate screw. It was too long and jammed the linkage tightly in place…..burning out the previous motor.

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I'll add the front wiper shaft maintenance to the to-do list. The fronts slowed down a little with all that rain so it might pay to pull what I can out and go through them thoroughly.

Johnno_

In the meantime I've replaced a couple of tired, starting to rust wipers with fresher examples including the nut cover.

Before…..

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After.

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Johnno_

Been a month. Busted sewer pipe has meant money meant for Volvos has gone to Mr. Plumber. 50 year old clay pipes don't like tree roots. Oh, and it's been RAINING, lots and lots of rain and most of my stuff is done in the drive way.

Couple of small things.

Newer light switch.

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Some replacement under dash trim clips. I replaced 3 in all, some were missing others were the wrong sort.

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Newer faux speaker cover.

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Ordered some spark plugs this morning from Volvo Penrith and had a bit of a chat with Ben Dunn who looks after the parts there. His second car was a 240 wagon and he loved it. They are pretty good there, have Aussie stocked parts by the afternoon.

Took some glamour shots behind the Orchard Hills Rural Fire Brigade Hall on the way home. The field was still a bit boggy but managed not to sink it down to the axles, although traction was lost a couple of times in the mud. The duco is still beading after the hybrid ceramic/wax treatment. It's desperately in need of a wash but with all that rain, not much point.

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And a quick shot with her younger sister at home. It's funny. I always thought the 240s were "big" and the V40 was "small" but there's not much between them.

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