'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.

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 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

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

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

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.

That is the size of the 600x300 ones with end tanks included - it would probably work ok with the 76mm core but the 100mm core was too thick really. I only decided to get a massive one as my compression ratio is pretty high. Alex is correct in that taller ones are the go, I just wanted mine hidden!

Hi All,

This post is pretty picture heavy, but is mainly about miscellaneous odd jobs I've done on the car over the past two days - and I guess we could call it the fifth installment, although I haven't made much tangible progress.

Roof Rack:
I bought this 245 rack off EBay a while ago for really cheap - paid more in fuel getting there than I did for the rack! It was galvanised and had rust and only one of 9 wooden slats remained. I wanted to refurbish it eventually but got scared off when it was going to cost $600+ to chrome the metal parts of the rack!
I went to Bunnings and it was going to be super expensive to buy the correct shape dowel for the roof rack slats (like over $150) and they wouldn't have even been the exact right shape (I needed 32mm x 11mm and they had 30mm x 10mm) so they would've been a loose fit.

My solution to this was to paint the steel and mill up the timber myself from a big beam.

4.8m long beam of structural hardwood from bunnings ($40):

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With the help of my father I cut 9 x 1.8m lengths of 11mm x 32mm timber from the big beam:

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we then ran them through the router with a 6mm radius on top and a 3mm radius on the bottom:

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A bunch of sanding:

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Gloss varnish with 20% thinners through the spray gun:

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Removing rust:

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Sanded and primed:

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Epoxy metalsheild aluminium paint with 20% thinners.

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It was at this stage I mucked up. I had used the whole tin of paint and it felt dry to touch. I took them all down from hanging and the paint was still wet so they now have fingerprints all over them! Super bummed but not bummed enough to start over.

Used heatshrink over tape. Might last a while:

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Assembled with all stainless steel fasteners and replaced the traditional washer-lockwasher-nut with just washer-nyloc nut. Looks pretty mint from far away enough not to see the prints in the paint!

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Wheel Spacers.
Not much to it, installed 30mm hub-centric adaptor style spacers to 115nm

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may rub on the guards over speed bumps...Anyone rolled 240 guards? Apparently it's hard?!

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Intercooler Final Mount:

mounted the horns and made a kind of cradle for the IC to rest in. It is this shape \___/ and the intercooler bolts to the bottom and the sides bolt to the chassis rails using existing bolts.

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Spark Wiring:
Wired up the coils. Not really confident in this wiring as I think I should've made a separate ground for each coil rather than splicing them in.

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For anyone interested, each coil has a positive power source, ground to body/engine, sensor ground and signal wire. MS3X has a signal wire for each coil, and a sensor ground on the MS3. The positive is fused (maybe 10 amps?) and then the ground is self explanatory.

@A_Volvo_Driver Shifter:

I have no idea if this will work but I'll let you know!
Idea is to extend the bottom part of the shifter below the ball so as to change the top throw vs bottom movement ratio. Most people are super dodgey and just extend the shaft but this makes the linkage bend down on an angle and can hit the top of the gearbox/has a bad load path. This way is different and should maintain horizontal linkage/has more room for even shorter shifts.

Mark it out:

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Cut Cut:

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Spot weld level and square:

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I brought out the gasless mig for this as spot welding is quicker with migs, even though I can't get my settings dialed. I don't know if it is me or the welder or if this is normal for gassless wire. Probably me.

Make some braces out of 3mm mild.

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Do some dodgey welds and convince yourself that this part takes no load so it doesn't matter:

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Measure amount raised:

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Mark shifter:

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Cut shifter and use a section of similar sized bolt shaft of the same length that the bucket thingo was raised.
Cut shifter far away from ball so welding doesn't munt it and cover it while welding.

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Hope for the best:

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Also give it a lick of your favorite flat black rattle can so it doesn't rust


DSM CAS:

Find top dead centre:

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Install with half of crank sensor window to the right of the sensor on the trigger disc

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Battery Relocation:

Used bicycle tube over the cable and ran it under the car, and heavy duty nylon reinforced hydraulic hose where I cable tied it where the brake/fuel lines were clamped:

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Flywheel and Pressure Plate:

Torqued down flywheel using 450,000km old bolts.

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Couldn't get the stupid clutch alignment tool to work so I took the $32 bit of plastic back to Supercheap.

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Tried to centre it by hand and then torqued down pressure plate bolts. Will it be an issue if the clutch is 99% central and not dead on?

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That brings us to the end of the fifth post!

I still need to do the following:

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

Other non - vital things to do are as follows:
- Rear sway bar mod
- Final fit and wire of Alfa seats

Cheers,
Sam

Yeah I will be doing the exhaust today, welding up some lobster back bends because 3" stainless mandrels are super pricey! Good to know about the clutch also, cheers!

Might have to work something out with you with the guard roller when I am down in Melbourne next,

Cheers,
Sam.

About a week ago I bought 7 metres of 3" stainless thick wall seamless tube from a metal recyclers for scrap value ($70) so it would be a shame not to use it. Do you think a 2.5" mild steel dump to cat and then stock exhaust from there would be too much restriction? Because that is looking pretty tempting right now due to time constraints!

Thanks for the comments guys!

Hey Duncan, I bought a 450,000km 244 that had been used as a paddock basher and had a branch fallen on top of it for the gearbox and pedal box...I wouldn't say I wrecked a good car for it!'

Unfortunately the slave cylinder leaks abit of fluid and the reservoir has cracked so not sure how that will be fixed yet!

Cheers,
Sam