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  • 'Minty' The 240 Wagon

Hey all,
This marks the first post in what should be long and fruitful build thread.

About a year ago I sold a project that I had been working on for the 18 months prior (a 1ggte engine swapped 1976 Ra23 Toyota Celica) and as is the case with many unfinished - and often finished projects, I sold it for far less than what I had invested in it. But it was a learning experience that opened up many doors, even if it was more than I could handle in the gap year that I had taken before moving to Melbourne to begin Uni.

Whilst working on tthe Celica (extensive bodywork, swapping the w55 gearbox for a Lexus 6 speed, using GTR twin turbos Wolf 3d ems, Hilux brake conversion etc etc etc) my good friend and next door neighbor who is what you could call a Volvo enthusiast (owning a 262c Bertone, 760 turbo, 440 turbo, amongst other cars) let me drive his 760 sedan here and there. I should mention at this stage that the 760 has a 1jz-gte/R154 engine conversion.

It was through driving this car that I began to appreciate RWD Volvos - they are understated, practical, reliable, stable at high speed and, very well made compared to the Japanese cars I had been working on previously. I also enjoyed the 'sleeper' element of this car, as it was a blast to drive.

Fast forward 6 months and I was at Uni in Melbourne. I had no real need for a car, but I was bored on the weekends and had some spare change burning a hole in my pocket. At this stage all the engineering students I was studying with drove 318is E30s and for a time I was considering buying one. But for what they gained in handling they lacked practicality, individuality and sleeperness. I then went through a stage of appreciating 450slc mercs, but on a uni budget i couldn't really afford to run a 4.5L V8. And so I settled on the humble 240 Wagon - it ticked all the boxes and so far has been reliable and relatively cheap to run.

I found this 1991 auto white 240gl on Gumtree that had done 285,000km. That Friday and 12 hours on the overnight XPT later we were in Sydney. I ended up paying south of 3k for it with 6 months rego.

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My friend and I drove it back to Albury. It was at this stage we realised that the O/D solenoid wasn't working. Needless to say, at 2900rpm, 80kmph, no radio and a malfunctioning indicator stalk it was a long drive. Exactly how long the drive was, we will never know, as we also realised that the odometer did not work. And hadn't done for a while according to RTA as it had been at 285,000 for the past few years RWC inspections. We also ate a huge packet of Minties, hence the name - and she kind of looks like a minty.
Anyway, we got it to Albury by that night and immediately put it up on the hoist in an abandoned garage we had access to.

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And changed the oil, filter and tried to locate the source of the knocking in the front LHS strut tower.

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I then drove it to Melbourne and visited a few pick-a-parts hunting for O/D solenoids - by this time I was pretty fed up of revving high at 80kmph. I pulled a few but none worked - and I couldn't find where my original one was (It was literally nowhere to be found) so I just dremelled the hydraulic solenoid.

I went to Berrys and met Mark there and picked up a spare wheel.
And then bought a few other bits off him;

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She sits pretty high with the 15" 780 Bertone wheels...

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This brings me up to about the start of 2015, and at this point I should probably make my intentions with Minty clear to you all.

- Turbocharge existing 13mm rod B230 with minimal internal modifications.
- Manual conversion with m46
- Run it on Megasquirt with dsm cas, sequential fuel, sequential spark (ls1 coils) etc etc etc
- electric waterpump, thermofan and electric holden astra power steering pump
- Flathood conversion.

All whilst this is happening I will be building a 1uz turbo engine / T56 tremec in a stand to drop in when things get more serious. This is why I don't want to do too many internal mods to the B230. But you never know, if the B230 feels good under boost I may stick with it.

Anyway, this brings us up to NYE of 2014, but stay tuned for the next post in which i will write about king springs, Megasquirt MS3x v3.57, buying a parts car, 531 heads and more. Oh and in future posts I will have questions and so on so any input is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Sam
Hey all,

With 2015 came a few updates on Minty. This began by going to the Pick-a-Parts (I think I'm addicted to these places) and picking up some parts out of a Saab 9000 Aero (that interestingly also has a 2.3 litre engine - but turbocharged, and 16 valve) what's curious is that this engine is also coined the B234 by Saab, and makes north of 200hp in stock form. Unfortunately there is not too much compatibility with this engine and our redblock counterparts despite them sharing a displacement and country of origin as the Saab engines have different bore sizes, timing chains and so on. Anyway I took the injectors and Turbocharger off this car, and with a little sandblasting;

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It was about this time that a 1985 244 manual came up on gumtree about 45 minutes drive away from me in Albury. About 2 hours drive later in my friends GQ Patrol (with a 5 litre commodore v8 conversion and a 5 inch lift) towing a car trailer we made it to the property in woop woop. It was dark by this time and you know what they say about buying cars at night. So we winched it out of the barn and bought it.

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The story was that they were planning on restoring it but never got around to it, and a branch hit the roof.

Interestingly I also got RBT'd by a policeman on the way out there, but it goes to show you how much nicer country police people tend to be - as on my license I probably shouldn't have been driving a V8, much less towing a car on a trailer - but because I wasn't drinking or speeding he understood what I was doing and just had a chat to us about whether to run 33" or 35" tyres on his Cruiser.Top Bloke.

But I digress. So from the 244 I swapped a bunch of interior bits as well as chrome headlight trim and non - rusted buckets. I also plan on running from the 244;
- the A cam that came factory on this kjet B230e in my +t conversion in the wagon.
- the manual gearbox, flywheel, clutch, tailshaft and pedal assembly from the 244.
- the exhaust that looks to be aftermarket.
- the carpet because mine is munted.
- anything else that is better in the 244 than it is in the wagon.

Long story short, should be worth the $300 I payed for the car.

One issue i faced is that the 1985 kjet system did not use the 60 tooth flywheel that my 240 would have had had it been born a manual and as a result I bought the well known Yoshifab DSM CAS adaptor and hi-res trigger disc. This is how I will take my crank position, cam position and rpm for Megasquirt.
Because I was using the dizzy hole in my block for the CAS sensor, I bought a set of LS1 coils to use for ignition.

yoshifab.com/store/billet-redblock-dsm-cas-adapter.html

All this talk about engine management brings me to Megasquirt. Basically I bought the MS3x V3.57 as it seemed like the most versatile and having worked with Motec ems abit at uni I appreciated the functions possible on the MS3x, as well as the fact that overall there was less mucking around with expansions and so on especially if I wanted to run a boosted 1UZ fully sequentially at some stage in future. For this to work on the B230 I needed to gather a few sensors and do abit of wiring and that should be happening in the next few weeks.

diyautotune.com/catalog/megasquirtiii-ems-system-with-ms3x-expansion-v357-assembled-p-435.html

In the interior a friend and I wired up an Alpine head unit as I was tired of going everywhere with a makita 18v worksite radio strapped in the passenger seat. It was a little pricey but It was the simplest looking quality head unit I could find. There is absolutely nothing I hate more on this earth than the 6 colour changing chrome ricey fusion/clarion head units in old cars - or any cars for that matter.

Whilst mucking around in the interior I had read about people swapping in Alfa seats into 240s. So i pulled a set of Alfa Romeo seats out of a 159 at the pick-a-parts. Perhaps a mistake in hindsight as they are electric and not lightweight but they are comfy and made by Momo;

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Whilst at a pick-a-parts recently looking for a 940 interior to swap into my friends 1jz 760 I happened to look at the 940s engine and noticed "531" cast into the head. So we drove over to Supercheap and bought the longest 1/2" breaker bar there and a socket. So off came the head. There weren't any cracks in it and tbh i felt a little guilty leaving the squirter block all open like that but you cant save them all, I bought the head and left the cam inside (which happened to be a VX3 cam) and so the bloke only charged me for the head ~$90.

The plan is at this stage to use the 531 Head with the "A" cam from the 244 parts car. But I have been looking into using slightly larger valves in it, but nothing set in stone (or should we say seated in alumunium) yet in that regard.

In other news, 10 internet points if you can tell me what Volvo this is that I saw the other day without googleing it! They even look to have swapped in a Defender interior;

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Also unrelated, A few engineering kids and I went parts and bought this Lada Niva to hoon in on an engineering camp that we had recently:

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They were all from eastern block countries so it was a good laugh deciphering the cyrillic instructions and freaking out the seller with Russian phrases about the Lada. But unfortunately the clutch had no love for us, but it will get fixed soon. For now the "Salada" sits next to the "Beastle" back home in Albury.

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But enough distractions! My friend and I installed the King Springs lowering springs in the wagon, and i was really lucky to find the 245 roof rack on Ebay with the help of some members here.
Also incidentally the spring change got rid of the noise in the front LHS strut tower which was really nice.

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You may notice that some of the black window vinyl is missing on Minty now, that is in part thanks to a 'Caramel Wheel' that you can buy - takes it off really well, unless it's paint, which in my case for the rear window, it was.

In other news we also installed a snorkel on the aforementioned 5 litre v8 GQ Patrol...

Before;
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After;
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and then did some work on the 1J 760;
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This brings us to the end of the second post and up to about March in real time. Had some major wheelspiration at the GRM open day;

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As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next post on Holset turbos, flathood parts and MS sensors. Hopefully the next one stays a bit more on topic!

Cheers,
Sam.
Nice! Looks good. Let me know if your interested in selling the 780 wheels.
That Red Bull thing is actually a Defender, with a Sugga-esque body on it. If you look at a rego sticker on one it says LR Defender on it (I saw one close enough I could check) the other give away is the 5 stud wheels with a PCD that is very similar to a LR...
Cool project with lots of interesting mods. Keen to see how the MS install goes.
Oh goody. Someone doing something im doing but clearly knows more about it than me so i can copy.....notebook ready!
9 days later
The Alfa seats look awesome! I considered doing the same but stumbled across some 850R seats for a good price shortly after, Im yet to weld up some brackets for them

Did you wire them up so you could use the electric controls?

Keen to see it again in the flesh!
8 days later
Thanks for the kind words guys! I will most likely write another installment in the next few days.
@Ghettobird with the seats I have had them in and out of the car abit - welded up adapters from stock seat rails to Alfa seat rails but they were dodgey so now I'm working on adapters from Alfa seat rails to stock mounting points. Trying to get them to sit as low as possible. Luckily all the controls are self contained to a computer under the seat which I was able to supply with 12vdc and they function normally. In fact the only way I was able to get at the bolts on the rails at the wreckers was to do this with a makita impact driver battery!

Just as a mini installment;

Yesterday I made an adapter for a variable resistor style TPS off a Saab 900 to replace the Volvo on/off style TPS.

240 Throttle Body;
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Original on/off switch;
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Saab Variable Resistor;
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Doesn't fit - different range of movement required therefore has to be offset and can't fit the input D shaft;
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Dodgey adaptor made from 1.2mm mild; (unfortunately when I'm in Albury I have lots of space and time to work but no metalwork facilities like I do in Melbourne, where I have no time or space but access to tig, mills and lathes and so on.)
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Fit Up;
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Should work with the 2.5" to 3" 90 degree silicone for intercooler plumbing;
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Cheers,
Sam
I think they are the same as the 850 ones. Why not cut down the shaft and put it on an adaptor plate?
I planned on cutting down the shaft but didn't for two reasons;
- I could put the old one back on if this whole thing doesn't work
- it needs to be offset at an angle and it was going to interfere with the TB.

It was just the one I had available at the time so that's what I used.

Cheers,
Sam
Looking good Sam, I like me a white 245.

That empty factory with the lift looks pretty lonely. I would have put the lift in the middle to make it feel more full lol
Hoists off to one side mean more actual working room.

Hi All,
Thanks Scott! And true Alex, although it does look strange in an empty building.

I guess this could be the third formal installment in this build thread.
From March up until now things have been really quiet as I have been busy with non-volvo activities - uni exams and Formula SAE mostly. But some small things have been accomplished.

Since buying the car I have been quite keen on the look of early 'first generation' flat hood single round fascias. Admittedly doing this conversion on an >85 car is pretty involved but should make for a good side project.

Since I pretty much want to turn my car into a tamer, more sleeper version of this;

speedhunters.com/2013/07/intercontimental-missile-volvo-v8-wagon-of-fun/

I figured I'd need the following from a pre 1980 car:
- flat hood
- grille
- front guards
- lights/surrounds
- headlight support panel

Thanks to this forum and it's members I now have all the parts but headlights/surrounds - and at Imlachs there was an early 264 that I removed a bunch of chrome trim from (Mad Max, "GLORIOUS CHROME!" style) so this will be a project for this summer break at the end of the year!

Besides this I have been haunting the pickaparts and collecting required sensors for MS, mainly from Saabs as I have a liking of them, they are set up logically and they pretty exclusively use Bosch sensors.

Oh and I also bought another turbo with the 1UZ in mind - A billet wheeled HX52 off a Volvo truck engine (d12c if you were wondering Alex) out of perhaps a FH12 truck. Holsets are hectic in that although they are mostly used on big diesels they maintain functionality on smaller petrol engines and have quite an efficient style of turbine and compressor due to the lower exhaust velocity of a diesel apparently. This results in them being able to match and often outspool/outflow many of their ball bearing Garrett/performance brand counterparts whilst using journal bearings. As well as being designed for use at 30+ psi for millions of kms on truck engines. But this sort of makes sense in a way when one considers the amount of research $$ that companies such as BW and Holset would spend on its turbos compared to smaller performance houses.

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Also I may end up using this on the redblock for lols if I can find an 11cm^2 turbine housing for it as it may spool! But more on that later.

I screwed up abit with the 531 head that I bought the other day aswell - when we were taking it off the donor 940 one of the exhaust studs sheared off inside the head. I don't think it was human error so much as it just being super tight and having gone through one too many thermal cycles. So I drilled it out abit and used an easy-out to try to remove it, but sheared off the easy-out inside the stud. The issue now is that the easy out is harder than any of my HSS drill bits and I do not have carbide bits in Albury. I managed to drill into the easy-out abit with a decent drill bit (blunting it in the process) and then used a screw to try to remove the easy-out.

Anyway, if you ever wanted to know what a sheared off screw inside a sheared off easy-out inside a sheared off exhaust stud looks like, here it is!

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That pretty much brings us up to speed with present day (July) and so over the next 6 days that I have off I am going to try to Megasquirt, +t and manualise my 240. It is a fair bit to do in a short time period so there will likely be some pretty ghetto fixes and late nights but here's to hoping it can be done!

In the past couple of days I have:
- modded the throttle body for a sensor as seen above
- removed the 244 m46 gearbox, pedal box and driveshaft
- wired up the Saab Turbo 320cc high impedance injectors I am using (I will need bigger injectors at some stage but just using these for now as they are easy and 14 ohm - this means I don't need a resistor pack and can run them sequentially from MS using just the loom!)

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For anyone interested the green connector is a fused power wire that goes to all the injectors. The other blue connector has a wire to each injector that goes directly to MS. This is because I plan on running the injectors fully sequentially rather than in batch fire. The way this works is that MS basically just grounds each one of the wires depending on which cylinder it wants to supply fuel to. the length of time MS grounds the wire is the injectors duty cycle - so MS will pulse width modulate the injectors depending on load (TP sensor) and airflow (MAP sensor, IAT sensor, 02 sensor) all the way up the rpm range (RPM sensor). Atleast that is my understanding of it.

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- made a mount for the LS coils I am using:

I will mount them on the firewall on abit of strap that will be bolted to the strutbrace mounts.
All the steel used is overkill but it was all I had laying around.

trimmed a bit of 100x50x3mm box section;

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roughed it out on the strap using threaded rod and ali spacers.

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all square

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At this point let me excuse my dodgey welding as I am using the stick welder i learnt to weld on and it takes abit of getting used to after using the tig for the past 6 months. My mig is out of gas and I can't seem to get the settings right for gasless wire not to look gronky. So arc welding it is for the moment.

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Fits up ok but will have to widen one hole slightly. More pics to come when its on the car. Will not break/10.

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I still need to do the following:
- Mount intercooler
- Mount DSM CAS adaptor
- Intercooler plumbing
- Turbo J-pipe
- Oil+water lines
- Exhaust
- Wire Loom
- Mount Saab fuel rail
- Offer up M46
- Fit Pedal box
- Relocate battery
- Tune MS

Other non - vital things to do are as follows:
- Finish reconditioning roof rack
- Short shifter mod
- Rear sway bar mod
- Final fit and wire of Alfa seats.

Wish me luck people!
And stay tuned for daily updates on progress/lack of.

Here is my inspiration for the next couple of days!

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Cheers,
Sam
good luck. But 6 days? That will be a hard slog to get it done right, I would have loved to have helped down here...
Yes it will be a squeeze but we can hope!
Thanks for the offer and I will most likely take you up on it when I am in Melbourne and trying to install the 531 head and A cam!
Cheers Alex,

Sam
I do need to correct you on the turbos, most die around 900,000km in regular use..

How'd the ms install going?
Hey Alex, hmmm I'll be doing well to get half that out of the engine! And slowly but surely the MS is getting there!

This is pretty much the fourth installment in this thread and covers what I've done in the past two days.

I started by (perhaps too enthusiastically) removing the intake side wiring on the engine. I then removed the battery tray and relocated the battery as shown below:

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As you can see I relocated the battery to the rear drivers side pocket behind the rear wheel. This should hopefully even out weight distribution a little with the spare tyre that is in the passenger side compartment. I am a little concerned with the proximity of the battery to the fuel filler neck but I will fasten it better in due course.
The wire is 0 gauge and it is double insulated (bought it from a welding supply shop - 50mm^2 copper. I used some massive crimp on ends to attach it to the battery.

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I have also used heatshrink on the connectors and have run it through nylon reinforced hose where there was a grommet at the bottom of the pocket. The positive will then travel under the car to a splitter in the engine bay - perhaps mounted to the firewall?
The negative grounds to the chassis as is shown below:

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on some massive 22mm bolt that goes into the main chassis rail...this is perhaps for the rear bumper struts.

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anyway, this is pretty much all there is to it, I'll run a ground to the starter also if it has trouble cranking but 0 gauge says it should be fine!

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I then did some intercooler plumbing and mounting as can be seen below:

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I had to cut more than what I wanted to cut out of the headlight supports but there was really no way around it that I could find short of buying a smaller intercooler (this one measures up at 730x300x100 with 3" in and out iirc)

I enlarged the existing holes to 3"....I wonder how long it will take for it to wear through the tape and silicone?

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Looks pretty mint and sneaky from the front;

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I then did some plumbing with 3" stainless and stainless t-bolt clamps;

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Then I started working on the hot side...

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stock Volvo manifold with a J pipe. It will be horrible for flow but it'll do for now until I make a manifold. Just using mild steel 2.5" mandrels.

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it will be dodgey af and I will need to have some sort of support for the turbo on it but considering my neighbour gave me the mandrels and I cut the flanges out of some 8mm plate I had it should work for a grand total of $0.

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Anyway that is roughly where I am at now... (money shot!)

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Please note the Saab fuel rail and injectors look hectic, the injectors fit in the holes and the o-rings appear to seal but because of the fractionally different spacing on the rail some of the injectors lean a little bit towards the front or back of the car. I'll try and get a better pic of it but does anyone know if this will be a problem? If they seal ok then I guess it will just be the spray direction that will be impacted?

That brings us to the end of the fourth post!

I still need to do the following:

- Mount DSM CAS adaptor
- Oil+water lines
- Exhaust
- Wire Loom
- Offer up M46
- Fit Pedal box
- Tune MS

Other non - vital things to do are as follows:
- Finish reconditioning roof rack
- Short shifter mod
- Rear sway bar mod
- Final fit and wire of Alfa seats

Cheers,
Sam
wait, why are you using a j pipe on a turbo manifold!?
There is no room for a turbo there once I have my clutch in, and my turbo is a different flange type to the flange on the manifold. Also brake lines run too close to it. That's why 240's didn't come turbo in RHD cars.
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