Greg's 79 245GL Barn Find

Silk pursification in progress...

New rear suspension in along with larger GT rear sway bar. Also disassembled the 93 handbrake mechanism, cleaned and lubricated and fitted the black 79 handle cover. Installed and adjusted. Never knew how the handbrake mechanism worked in a 240 so I learned something new today! Got old suspension put in 93 so I can roll it around. Just need to re-fit handbrake mechanism to 93 so we have a way of stopping it when we push the two cars out to swap positions. Coffee break time!

Tassie6er;c-156026 wroteGreg, I assume the springs are Kings? Are they normal height or lowered? I'd be interested in a stance picture when you have it on the ground.

Yep, Kings lower for 240 wagon...I have Kings lower on my 91 240 wagon (also with Bilstein HDs). The Bilsteins have a lot of pressure so it doesn’t sit as low as it would with standard non-gas-pressure shockers. IMHO the front sits a bit high on the 91...will drop a bit when I do the turbo conversion I suppose. I think Ash @AshDVS sells a special slightly lower front spring for the 240s that’s probably a bit better. Here’s a pic of the 91. Will def. post pics of the 79 wagon here when I get it going.

Sorry pic won’t attach, but if you look at my thread on the gold 91 wagon, the first few pics with the Polaris wheels are as it sits on Kings lower springs with Bilstein HDs.
https://ozvolvo.org/discussion/9745/gregs-gold-1991-240gle-wagon-b230ft-to-be

Wayne helped me swap the yellow wagon onto hoist and gold donor sedan next to it, so good to go. Got the fuel tank, fuel and brake line bundle and rear brake hoses installed. Also replaced fuel filter. Found the impact wrench trick worked great to undo the banjo bolts, and fortunately none of the nylon lines split. Whew as I didn’t order that spare to have on hand. Decided to have a look inside the tank at the sender and pump, but then couldn’t be bothered when I tried removing the ring (half-hearted effort LOL!) It ran fine so don’t touch it. At least the sender is a bit easier to get to on wagons so if I need to access later, I’ll do it. Amazingly every hole for every clip etc. is there in the 79 body (identical to the 93 body) with the exception of the main fuel pump wiring pass-through grommet hole. On the 93 the hole is larger and in a different place, so I replicated that on the 79 body. Now on to front suspension swap and re-build.

Got a bit more done today. Realised I hadn’t properly seated the rubber grommet around the fuel fill pipe near the tank where it enters the body. That’s going to be a pain to try and access without dropping the tank again, but might have to if I can’t wriggle around from inside and pull it through. Will sleep on that for a day or a year LOL!

Got front suspension and manual rack pulled from wagon, and front struts pulled from donor sedan. Need to clean up the donor parts then put the new Bilstein HDs and Kings springs in. Hopefully the Billies will fit OK. Worked fine in our 93 wagon (the EV) and our 91 wagon, but I have heard some people having trouble fitting them - possibly on cars that have ABS in the states? I know it’s a tight fit in the tubes, and also hard to get much engagement on the gland nut IIRC. Not looking forward to that! Need to pull the PS rack and pump from the sedan, clean it up and replace the LH inner tie rod. RH seems fine but LH has play. Always seems to be the LH one that wears out - maybe because it’s on the edge of the road and more likely to hit potholes and bumps? My experience anyway!

Debating about whether to replace the upper strut mounts. They don’t have any cracking in the rubber and bearings seem OK. Probably just use them as-is. Will be fitting new ball joints and lower control arm bushes, and sway bar end links. Haven’t decided yet what to do about front sway bar. May pull the ipd one off the EV as it probably doesn’t need a big one with it being more rear biased in weight distribution. That would make it a 25 front and 23 rear on the yellow wagon, which I think would work well.

Also thinking about what to do re: wire harness. Will use front end and dash harness, fuse box and engine harness from the 93, but thinking maybe I’ll keep the existing wagon rear body harness. Reason being the sedan doesn’t have the rear wiper or washer circuits and the rear demist harness will be in the wrong place. However I will need the wires for the diff speed sensor. Will pull it all out and have a look. I noticed the wagon has a separate harness in the dash for the rear wiper/washer circuits on the stalk, so that may make my decision easier (i.e. leaning towards keeping wagon rear body harness). Just need to see how it all integrates in the sedan as I haven’t pulled the carpet or dash out yet...that will be next step after I finish up the suspension work.

Keeps me off the streets! ;)

Ex850R;c-156169 wroteHow many more are being canabalised here?
You could start a production line!
Good story.

NOOO! No production lines. This is insane. I have to cool my jets as my partner says we have too many cars to drive. So true!

Making a bit more slow progress. Got the Bilstein HD strut inserts and Kings springs assembled to the front suspension. Also got the old bushes removed and new ones installed (went with rubber for the lower control arm rear bush and SuperPro poly for front bush). New ball joints. Had to use a clamp arrangement to tighten one of the ball joint nuts as there’s no way to hold the stud while tightening the nut and on that one the prevailing torque of the lock nut was too much for the ball joint to resist. All good and torqued up. Also have some lower strut braces to go on (powder-coated ipd ones I think - courtesy of a mate).




Also was having a look at the 2x M46 transmissions I have. One I bought off Gumtree and must be an earlier one as there’s nothing in the bellhousing to indicate crank sensor position, but the other one is off an 86 parts car I bought years ago - it has the crank sensor shape with just a very thin web of material closing it out - so I may use that bellhousing. I did make up a template for the crank sensor cut-out before I gave away the auto trans, so no big deal but easy enough to pull the bellhousing off and swap and cut out the thin web at the same time, since I want to do the transmission seals.

Vee_Que;c-156427 wroteThe cut out literally taps out with a hammer.

Yep I’ve seen the video. I think it will be easier and neater to use the Dremel with a small cut-off disk, but will see how I go.

There’s me, then there’s my dad. Now I know why I’m a perfectionist! Of course I’m not doing this on my car since it’s more rat rod than show car!

buddyglitch;c-156473 wroteNice Greg, took me while to get a good clamp arrangement when i did my lower ball joints. What a pain! Did you have any issues with the bilsteins at the front?

Hey Tommy. No probs with the Bilsteins - the only thing that some people might complain about is only about half the treads are engaged on the strut gland nut. The nuts are special aluminium ones with a built-in seal. Pretty sure the lack of engagement is due to the late-style strut tubes. These ones just slid straight in which was nice. On my 91 I remember having to clean the inside of the tubes as they had been sprayed with some sort of anti-rust waxy coating which prevented the struts sliding in due to the tight fit. I think I even had to peel off some Bilstein stickers that were on the outside of the tubes. The 93 didn’t have any rust-proofing spray inside the tubes (just galvanised metal I suppose).

The HDs have so much gas pressure that it took nearly all my weight to fully compress (you’re supposed to fully stroke them to circulate the oil/grease before installing I believe)...with that much pressure the car will probably sit 10 mm higher vs. a standard hydraulic non-gas-pressure strut.

Doing a bit of touch-up in the engine bay where brake fluid leaked and removed the paint. Also a pic of the EV in front of the workshop around sunset tonight. Beautiful weather!