Time for a very important update. My car is now manual! I have to say that it is a different, and much nicer, car to drive, of course it's still not fast but it is way more fun.
Considering my skill level, or lack thereof, the manual conversion wasn't too bad: I had the actual gearbox swapped over by a mechanic (the auto box died and I just needed the car back on the road). However I swapped the pedals over myself, as well as the firewall plate that the clutch cylinder bolts into. Most people seem to think that that's the hardest part of the whole job - to be honest, it wasn't so much difficult as it was fiddly and annoying.
The gearbox (an M46) and a few other parts came out of a donor car; I also bought many other new and second hand parts including an LH2.4 flywheel and a new clutch.
Some photos of swapping the pedals over:
And, here's the end result:
(I still have to do the wiring for the OD and reverse lights which is why the shifter boot isn't secured down yet)
I've also done various other things since my last update, many of which I'll probably forget to include.
-New steering wheel: I fitted one from an 87/88 model which is slightly smaller and thicker
-Painted and replaced driver's side door handle and door hinge (door hinge is very hard as the door needs to be lined up afterwards!)
-New stereo
-New front speakers (the 5.25" grilles that were on there were falling apart, so I fitted some Volvo 4" ones):
-Fitted LED back lighting on my gauges (white LEDs, but make blue light in the gauges)
-Fitted clear side indicators, and some unnecessary stickers
And finally, a cool modification to the electric windows. For the passenger and rear window switches, I replaced them with ones from a Volvo 960, which fit perfectly but are illuminated. For the driver's one, I replaced the switches with those from an 850 (although I probably could have used 960 here too). They are illuminated, and the driver's window now has an auto down function. I had to cut the wiring for both the 240 and 850 window switches and work out which wire I had to join with which (as the colours aren't the same) - I recorded this information so if anyone wants to do a similar mod let me know and I'll post which colours of wires need to be joined.
