Hefty pic update! This kept me busy all Winter. Continuing on with the theme of legitimately trying to improve an old Volvo, (mostly on the inside and underneath), I have reworked the interior.
Summary:
• Total conversion to Black plastics
• Refinish all interior parts, switches etc
• Grey carpet
• Electric windows
• Central locking
• Sound system
• 2 x Velo GPT1 seats
• Retrimmed back seat to match Velo
• White Cluster and GLE gauge pod
• Sound and heat insulation improvements
• Steering wheel
• New seat belts
This is how it was:
Now:
The Dash, Glovebox, Rear shelf and speaker spacers were 'flocked' in BLACK :-)
I used the original rear shelf and reinforced it with MDF:
Letting Sikaflex dry overnight:
Filled and sanded:
Then Flocked:
The door trims and hardware are now 164E courtesy of @Angus242164 who supplied me some nice Orange door trims and inner handles etc which I recoloured into Black.
These style of door trims use screws to help retain the upper portion which I'm not a huge fan of, so I used Christmas tree clips instead:
The main reason for switching door panels is I could fit some 3 way splits with decent woofers into a decent location unlike the 240. The window winder hole is covered by mid and tweeter:
Crossovers are mounted under the seats:
Needed to come up with a fascia for a standard single DIN and Volvo does not make that easy! Ended up cutting the middle out of this later 80's fascia and then making some alloy brackets in the centre control panel which were then Sikaflexed together, very strong and looks okay:
Fabricated some steel seat brackets using Velo Brackets as a base, then had then powder coated. The seat belts are Australian made by APV and off the shelf for a 240. The part number includes these fixed webbing style buckles:
I wanted the dash lights to be better all round. The candle power dash makes any car feel weak. Converted everything to LED, including the cluster using generic style lamp base:
Plastic parts. All the door handle parts are from US and genuine Black. Some other parts were sprayed using VHT vinyl spray after being washed with hot soapy water, wax and grease remover then heated up. I've found here and in the past that doing in this way and spraying very thin coats is very durable and hard to scratch off.
Thanks to @dmc for letting me raid his 265 for it's electric window parts. I used everything, including the wiring and made a custom console harness using the drivers master switch harness. Then used a later model console and modified the upper and lower areas for window switches. It's an okay way to use manual window door trims and simplify wiring. Front switches next to hand brake lever are narrow pre 85ish switches and the rear switches up top are later 240/740/850 style switches.
More colouring. I actually bought a new mirror plastic trim piece from the US in Black and then painted it Black to match all the other Black:
I bought a used GLE gauge pod a while back then reworked some gauges and slotted in new ones, modified to D.Barton specs with some NOS decals (before he got shut down)
It's a time consuming job to pry apart each gauge and not ruin them:
It was a lot of work but having a matching dash setup and interior really helps make the car now, at least from the drivers point of view. Most onlookers just see 'old car':
Fitted a fair amount of new sound deadening where I could and tried to improve some areas where Volvo cheaped out:
Fitted this internal shifter boot from a late 90's Toyota Surf. Fit's great:
It then has another boot over top of that, then the main shifter boot bracket and then the shifter boot over top of all that! (on top of the carpet) It's much quieter now.
The B-Pillar factory sound deadening behind the plastic trims was masking tape :-), ended up making and gluing these plugs into place. Maybe no difference but in my mind:
Made an ABS enclosure for the washer bottle and some of the electrics on the front passenger side too, seals it off nicely:
Have been super happy with the suspension setup, now settled to a nice height. Will post an update on the front setup shortly:
