'Sven' the big, bad, yellow 245

perko

I wasn't even looking for a car at first, until my brother showed me an ad for an '84 245, running, manual and pretty cheap.
Went out to have a look and it turns out it was owned by a swedish ski instructor named bjorn...i think it was fate

Got it home and emptied all the crap out of the boot and gave it a proper check over, everything was there, and all worked, if a little rough in places. Only major downside was the driveshaft centre bearing and a cracked power steering belt, replaced both and right as rain.

Had a couple of neat things done such as the driving lights and the bash guards, as well as a new stereo, though a pretty dodgy looking speaker set-up.

here's the stuff from the boot:

This was almost a year ago now, after doing that I started saving up to make it a properly quick car, all the while it was my super duper daily drive, took it down to the snow and up to byron bay as well and never once let me down.

This wasn't to last however, as those i was trying to buy parts from will know, i crashed it in early january, taking out the bumper, drivers side quarter and all the driving lights and destroying a steering rack.

A new (silver) quarter thanks to james, late model steering rack and a now gutted bumper went on and im once again back on the road.
King lows and b4's are ordered and should be arriving tomorrow, ill post some new pics once they turn up.

Plan from here is to go turbo, a wrecker near me has (or had) a b23et from a 760 turbo, probably going to pick that up and chuck it in, then work on things like proper ecu's, w58 box, lsd, etc.

Rob

I want that Blue Volvo for life bag....

Ben

I want the moke!

perko

there's a few more mokes hiding in the shed too...

Ben

Nice! If you wanted to post them... hint hint

perko

Alright, got the kings and bilsteins in over the long weekend, pretty easy job and a night and day difference to the handling, looks heaps better when the front and back are the same height too.

Then this happened:

It turns out that mid corner bumps, too much throttle and 30 year old suspension design don't combine too well, and despite claims of others, armco is in fact tougher than a volvo.

Managed to pull everything off this morning, grabbed my handy green book chassis measurements and checked everything was still straight so now time for another new guard, and lights, plus a few more things this time.

Todays progress:

I will endeavour to keep you guys updated on how things progress

Rob

:-O

AshDVS

Next upgrade: Driver training.

Looks like a fair hit @perko
Glad you're ok though. Cutting the inner guard off and welding a new piece in place isnt hard, though it's probably best to purchase a whole shell and get everything you need and remove it from the other shell as you need it.

Best of luck with this repair.

perko

AshDVS;23106 wroteNext upgrade: Driver training.

haha, very true, i've got away with too many silly things in cars over the years so I probably had it coming, at least it just injured my wallet and pride

perko

alright, haven't updated here in a little bit so here's a quick rundown:
body repair pretty much done, a few new panels are on, looking a bit shitty at the moment but oh well

this was before i stuck the bumper on but you get the idea, the late bonnet doesn't look so crash hot with the early scuttle, and i don't have a matching late grille so it's running without for the minute, since i also picked up this

a '77 with a good front end which will be donating some parts to the cause

I pulled off the bonnet over the weekend and found a little bit of surface rust so got it sanded back and ready for paint, i'll post a pic or two once that's done.

the new car also has the lower control arm braces which are also awaiting paint and will be going on fairly soon
next is to either find the group a style grille that works with the rectangle lights or fab something up, haven't decided which yet.

turbo plans are still on temporary hold, though once i have the new bits on i can start crossing things off my shopping list and getting everything ready to do that, with uni and life getting in the way the aim is to have that done by november now

A_Volvo_Driver

I love the 242GT grille with the round headlights combo :)

AshDVS

The lower control arm braces will make a bigger difference than you may think too.
Bonnet is an '86 onwards one, are you going to stay with it or fit a pre '86 one to fit with the cowl panel?

perko

@A_Volvo_Driver yeah, not so sure i like the round light fronts on the wagons though, plus the grille is already promised to someone

Good to know @AshDVS, i figured they'd make some sort of difference, got them fitted this morning, took a little jiggling as the bolt holes at the control arm are bigger on my car than on the 77, fixed that with some nice wide spacers so we'll see how that turns out.

Also as regards bonnets, here's some progress of the paint:

And then got it on this morning:

Fit isn't perfect but need to either modify the early headlight mounts or straighten the ones i have as well as finish off the work on the front corner before it'll look much better.

Can now also get round to finding or making a group a style grille to tie it all together, should have the front end not looking quite so rubbish

240Joe

Nice job with the paint. Will you be spraying it all yellow in the end?

Have you tried screwing in the front rubber feet under the bonnet to get it to sit down lower?

perko

The paints not that great if you actually look closely, just a single (not very thick cause i ran out of paint) coat of grey over some primer, but in the end it's the underneath of a bonnet and just needs to stop the rust.

For colour, would be nice to have the whole car the same colour but there are too many little niggles with this body for it to really be worth fixing them all and doing it properly, i feel like trying to match 30 year old faded yellow will just end up with equally obvious mismatching so will probably hold on that for the moment. The eventual plan is to find a straight wagon, strip and paint that properly then transfer any goodies on the car at that point onto it, this can be the test hack for the moment and probably turn into a track car once that happens.

Last pic is with the rubber feet screwed all the way in, i tried without them and there was no difference in the height, just more wobble room, it seems like the hinges aren't sitting low enough either, so I'm not quite sure what to do with that.

perko

12 months on and time for a small update and some news.

Not much has been done in way of mods since my last post, managed to find a correct grille to go with the bonnet and swapped in a pair of slightly less saggy chairs from the parts car which went to the great scrap man in the sky later on.

Preparations continued for the commencement of dose, with all the setbacks i have come to expect with this car.
First my motorbike shat the bed, which left me searching for parts for that rather than buying nice twirly volvo things, after that the clutch slave, lines and steering rack all decided to not work in the space of 2 weeks. After all of this, I was back into uni for another semester and once again had to put plans on hold.

This is now in the past however, and I should be picking up a complete b230ft with everything I need over the weekend, after which I need to sort out the wiring and then hopefully a straightish swap between the two engines and back on the road. While I know it won't be that simple, hopefully this time it will be with a minimum of wanting to set fire to the stupid thing.

Ghettobird

Booost?

perko

Ghettobird;52569 wroteBooost?

yes there will be some...

perko

so we're getting closer, a running b230ft from an '88 740T thanks to @Bennigee, it is the somewhat less bad 'K' casting which from memory has redesigned bearings but still the little 9mm rods.

The sticker cracks me up

Anyway, turbo has minimal shaft play and everything else checks out so will do a few service things such as valve clearance before if goes back in.
Annoying side note is that the intermediate shaft hasn't been machined to run the block mount dizzy I bought, however that should be a case of pulling the one out of the current motor while doing the swap.

This weekends job will be to try and degrease everything and get it nice and ready to work on, as well as cleaning the oil cooler and intercooler.
Once that's done I can try sort out the wiring, I'll be using the lh2.2 computers and wiring from the donor car, and hoping to just eliminate the engine side from my wiring and add in as little as possible to get it running.
Final step will be getting an exhaust made, which will probably involve an interesting drive 10 minutes down the road to the local exhaust shop with pretty much an open dump pipe so should be a bit of fun.

Last little pic of a trip away last weekend, pulled a trailer and all my crap happily at 'exactly the legal limit' for a couple of hours on the highway, while the best heater in the universe kept me toasty warm, gotta love the thing.

Anthony

Enjoyed the read, and great you persisted in getting the 245 on the road again after the bingle. That's the beauty of an older Volvo, their fixable.