jamesinc What does it take to put a 960 firewall in a 940?

A hell of a lot of work. (I explored the possibility of swapping my 780's LHD firewall to a RHD one from a 740, but Mister Bear talked me out of it and suggested I wait till the car turned 30 and register it as LHD).

And, it's more than just the firewall that would need to change. The ducting system for the windscreen demister is totally different to 740 /940 - for example, the HVAC pumps air into a body panel cavity below the windscreen which doesn't exist on 740/940/780/ pre-88 760. 760/960 have adjustable height steering columns too, which have a bit of extra funky bracketry under the crash pad. HVAC unit is totally different. Wiring loom = totally different. etc etc

But the telling point will be at the back of the car, where a 960 will have IRS 1 and the 940 will have a live rear axle.

It's worth noting how the US market "940 SE" B230FT sedans (with IRS 1) were actually sold as 960 Turbos in Europe and so the US market cars used the same VIN ID as used on 964s.

So I doubt there's been any firewall change here.

      ramrod Then the body was originally destined to be a 940 and someone transferred all of the 960 equipment into it.

      There's hundreds of hours and a lot of parts to change a 940 body into a 960 body, it's not just the drivetrain. More likely it's a ID swap rebirth than a parts swap.

      The inspector who passed this car originally ought to be hung out to dry. The experiences I've has with an ex-SA 242GT and more recently with the 1800ES tell me how the inspection process has been broken for a long, long time because some of these 'experts' don't appear to have a clue what they're looking at, and then they enter incorrect info into data systems.

      Yeah, it appears to be legal now, but it never should have passed.

      OP, I guess you should be able to get it registered, as it's legally clean but IMHO, ethically tainted. But you're going to be completely in the dark when it comes to replacing parts in the car in the cases were production changes were made at certain chassis numbers - the breakpoints won't apply since the car's true, original ID isn't known.

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        • Post #17

        I personally wouldn’t worry too much about “ethically tainted”, the last time a 940 or 960 was worth the effort of shipping interstate & rebirthing (let alone the ability to do it due to write-off r4cords not being handed around) was kinda 30 years ago. Past the statute of limitations of my carefactor regarding what the person who owned it 7 owners ago did.

        If getting it registered doesn’t cost too much before presenting it for inspection I’d just be doing it.

        Side comment @Major Ledfoot … I went & looked at a grey-imported from Hong Kong 960GLE yonks ago (being sold by the person who bought it new - which wasn’t a good thing when I saw the state of it externally from afar - called him to cancel as I didn’t want to waste his time & mine 🙂), pretty sure it was a 1992; it was B230FT.

          Forg Side comment @Major Ledfoot … I went & looked at a grey-imported from Hong Kong 960GLE yonks ago (being sold by the person who bought it new - which wasn’t a good thing when I saw the state of it externally from afar - called him to cancel as I didn’t want to waste his time & mine 🙂), pretty sure it was a 1992; it was B230FT.

          Yeah, the Pocket Data Book agrees with you; they did fit them to YM 92 960s.

          Image description

          You're also correct about the B280 being a one-year-only thing (from another discussion in Another Place).

          The 'GLE' badge thing, though .... go to a different market, and the same basic car in one place will get a different badge in another.

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            • Post #19
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            Plus @Major Ledfoot the car I looked at had so much exterior pounding (it was close to spherical - the hits were fairly evenly distributed all over) it may very well have had an Australian bootlid fitted (without removing the GLE badge) to replace the original, and the guy advertised it as a GLE ‘cos that’s what’s was on the bootlid when he was selling it.

            That sheet above is interesting, I always assumed they didn’t try selling a B280F 960 in the USA ‘cos they knew it’d fail so they waited ‘til the new whiteblock was available to release the 960 there. But it looks like B6304F was around in that first year … wonder if they just took their time type-certifying the new engine in Oz ‘cos there was so much originally-created-to-protect-the-local-industry paperwork involved in getting a new engine ADR’d?

            ^ AFAIK, Japan and other RHD markets got the B280F, and the first run of straight-6 whiteblocks went to the higher volume EU and USA markets. (Maybe just as well, since lots of the early run of straight-6 whiteblock castings were porous - but the OZ market didn't entirely dodge that bullet. Ah well, that explains what happened to one of the forty-something OZ 960 wagons....)

            Smogging the engine here may have been a factor for later release, or not - most likely it was because VolOZ didn't plan to sell a lot of 960s here, and the B280 sure didn't help that along; as written elsewhere, it was no ball of fire. (I'm still chuckling at your quip about the Spontaneous Combustion properties of early PRVs....)

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            • Post #21

            If it is a numbers job, then it might not be rebirthing a stolen car, it could also be getting something off the WOVR.

            What age the actual car is (not the 944 number), will be a hint to whether this is what happened.
            If it is a pre-update (940 front and Mk1 IRS, rather than S90 front and Mk2 IRS) then I think it’s too old to have ever been put on the WOVR.

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            • Post #22
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            Different states started using the WOVR in different years, apparently NSW was 1999, I think Victoria was before BUT WA and SA were way later.

            Worth being a member just to read the births, deaths & marriages

            They will ask for the VIN as they should.

            Thus you will receive parts for a 940 but as it has a 960 engine and what seems Iike everything else, only the parts that are interchangeable between 940 and 960 will fit but you already know that

            BarelyRunning what @ramrod said. Volvo's own software shows it as a 940/B230 so that's what the dealership would see, I expect.

            Usually safer to order by part number. There are parts where the VIN won't necessarily result in receiving the right part. For example, brake rotors! 7/9 series have a bunch of (I particular) front rotor options, so it pays to start by measuring the diameter of the rotor and using that measurement to work out the correct part number. /tangent

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