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4.6 32V 240 Wagon

Please comment on the width of the glass gasket. Did it cover the original paint marks?

The rubber gaskets come in various widths. Without input you will get 5/8" which is always not enough to cover the paint issues. Order 3/4" and you will be happier.

The guy told me the windshield actually showed up with this gasket already installed on it, and it is 1" width. I was pretty surprised to find it with this gasket from the glass shop's vendor. It covers most parts of the paint but not everything, which you can see in the picture with the ruler vs the others I've already posted. The 1.25" width would be perfect, but my car is very far from perfect so this is good enough for me.

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I had told the glass guy that and he just shook his head, "yeah". Of course I got the 5/8 trim. It was way too hot to even get pissed but I was pissed the next day after seeing it. I didn't even want to bother dealing with the business again. It was my fault, I left briefly to run an errand. Looks good enough. Next time I'll give them hell, well if the next business screws up.

I worked with Toalson Glass here in Columbia, MO and I can't recommend them enough. I sent them links to some of the popular web pages on this topic and the guy was receptive to all of it. He has been doing this long enough to understand a "butyl conversion" and what that entails. He went ahead and ordered both a -90 windshield with some gaskets to try out and a 91-93 windshield. We were originally going to use the -90 windshield and get the correct width gasket on it, but I guess it takes his vendors quite awhile to ship out these gaskets. It was about two weeks of on/off talking just waiting for the right parts to come in. They sent him the wrong gasket, of course, but the next day the 91-93 windshield showed up and it had this 1" gasket already installed. So I went for it and here we are.
 
You can see the passenger side corners in post 216. In my opinion the gasket is doing a better job covering the corners than the straights. Here's the driver side corners:

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Now its time to supercharge it!

I contemplated dropping a 4.6 32V out of an aviator into my 940 when i did my swap. But i had a rolled explorer with some SBF go fast parts, built trans, etc.

I put 100K in 2 years on that V8 swap and 50K of it turbocharged. I should have never sold the car. Yours looks good. I told myself i was not going to V8 swap the new 940 i just got. This makes me wanna pull the trigger. Then again its all TESTPOINT's fault. I followed his swap thread first!
 
Same here!

I'm still wowed by your execution of the AC and the fact that you were able to cram it in there with that massive engine! Nice work. That car must be a dream to drive.
 
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I continue to love this thread more and more. Great work with everything you've done so far.

Thanks!

Same here!

I'm still wowed by your execution of the AC, and the fact that you were able to cram it in there with that massive engine! Nice work. That car must be a dream to drive.

Thanks! I'm wowed by it too...lol. It is still working great.

Now its time to supercharge it!

I contemplated dropping a 4.6 32V out of an aviator into my 940 when i did my swap. But i had a rolled explorer with some SBF go fast parts, built trans, etc.

I put 100K in 2 years on that V8 swap and 50K of it turbocharged. I should have never sold the car. Yours looks good. I told myself i was not going to V8 swap the new 940 i just got. This makes me wanna pull the trigger. Then again its all TESTPOINT's fault. I followed his swap thread first!

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be supercharging it. I'm satisfied with the current power level and that would be disposable income I'd rather put elsewhere. Definitely an "easy" thing to do with these engines though. Oh, and yeah, swap your new 940 :)

I also want to recognize Testpoint again for his build and how he documented it. Definitely motivated me to make this happen, along with the guy from Iceland who built his over 10 years ago now.

That's a lot of miles! I'm working on doing the same thing. Despite the pandemic, my wife and I took a risk and drove the Volvo out west to visit my brother in San Francisco. We stopped in Colorado and Utah along the way and got some great car pictures. Total miles for the trip was about 4700. Time for an oil change!

Here it is near the top of Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, the highest elevation continuous highway in the country.

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We checked out Antelope Island outside of Salt Lake City. I highly recommend it. Absolutely incredible views in a very unique landscape.

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This one I wasn't expecting. I was very excited to take I80 through the salt flats, but I didn't know that there's a rest stop along the way with an entrance to the flats. Lots of other people had their cars out there and were just hanging out. I didn't go fast or do any drifting on the flats, but it was an amazing thing to experience especially as the sun set.

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Of course, it wouldn't be a project car road trip from the midwest to the bay area without getting a picture in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

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The only problem the car had on the entire trip was a brief cooling issue. On the very last hill of the drive before our hotel on the way back, the engine temperature shot up to about 235?F. Long story short, I realized the radiator fan was not running. I jiggled the power connector to the fan and it roared back to life and the issue never came back. Other than that, flawless. A/C did very well in the hot desert sun.
 
Now its time to supercharge it!

I contemplated dropping a 4.6 32V out of an aviator into my 940 when i did my swap. But i had a rolled explorer with some SBF go fast parts, built trans, etc.

I put 100K in 2 years on that V8 swap and 50K of it turbocharged. I should have never sold the car. Yours looks good. I told myself i was not going to V8 swap the new 940 i just got. This makes me wanna pull the trigger. Then again its all TESTPOINT's fault. I followed his swap thread first!

I say, do whatever makes you happy! It is your car afterall.
 
Thanks!

I have a question related to my steering rack. This car had its steering rack replaced in 2015, 55,000 miles ago, with a unit from rockauto (Atsco 8983). It appears the rack's input shaft has developed some play in it. Does anyone know if this can be fixed easily or am I looking at a new rack? Here's a video of what I'm seeing:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EGMA8jWYnQmEGYT16
 
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Excellent update, glad to see it's serving road trip duties well. I hope to be doing this sometime in the next decade with mine :-P

Bonneville is an amazing place - that's rad that you were able to experience the salt. Homer was there recently too and said it was super hard packed and didn't stick to his undercarriage at all (or the car's...) but when I was last there in 2013 it was sticky and got all over everything.

Hope you enjoyed our great state even though we're all gonna die soon, seemingly.
 
Excellent update, glad to see it's serving road trip duties well. I hope to be doing this sometime in the next decade with mine :-P

Bonneville is an amazing place - that's rad that you were able to experience the salt. Homer was there recently too and said it was super hard packed and didn't stick to his undercarriage at all (or the car's...) but when I was last there in 2013 it was sticky and got all over everything.

Hope you enjoyed our great state even though we're all gonna die soon, seemingly.

I have faith yours will be up and running within the next decade. Your build and Sander's are builds I'm really looking forward to seeing finished! And yes, California is great. I hope to get out there again once the world is a little less scary with this virus.


Some news about me - I am no longer in Missouri. I am now in central Pennsylvania.

When we were moving out of Missouri, our friends wanted our old couch. We tried loading it into their Jeep Commander but it wouldn't fit. So I had to deliver it for them...

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Moving !!!!

I guess your brick was able to handle the load. RIGHT !!!! lol
Best of luck in your voyage to a new horizon
take care !!!!
DZ
 
"300k Update"

Yesterday was a big day for this wagon's chassis - it crossed the 300k mile mark. The swap now has 22k miles on it, engine/trans have 136k.

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I've been waiting until this moment to post an update on the car since there really hasn't been much happening with it. It has been my daily driver and designated weekend distance vehicle while our BMW E91 has been enslaved by Progressive Snapshot. Also haven't been driving it much in general due to the pandemic and working completely from home.

Since the move in August I've really been enjoying the hills of central Pennsylvania. I'll list all the stuff that's been done to the car since.

First thing I did was I FINALLY got the coolant temp gauge on the cluster working. I had been using my phone with a bluetooth OBDII adapter this entire time to read the coolant temp. I actually used an original Volvo sender since I had one on hand, and modified an adapter to have the correct thread. Next I ran the wire from the Volvo harness to the sender and grounded it to the chassis. The temp gauge was reading quite hot at operating temp so I added a resistor to the circuit. I tried a few values before finding one that put operating temp near the middle on the gauge. The sender is plumbed to the coolant hose that always has coolant flowing regardless of whether the thermostat is open or not.

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Next thing I did was realize that I have a bent axle shaft which was causing high vibrations in braking. Had to buy an entire axle on FB Marketplace just to get a new shaft.

I also had a new driveshaft fabricated for the car. The 3.5" diameter shortened aluminum shaft that originated from the donor Mark VIII was interfering with the tunnel over big humps in the road or hard acceleration. I had a brand new 2.75" diameter steel driveshaft fabricated and so far it hasn't had any interference. Here's old vs new:

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Now that I'm in a hilly area, it made me modify the tune on the car so that the trans torque converter doesn't lock until the car exceeds 45mph. Before I did that, if I wanted to go up a hill at 35mph, it would try to do it in 4th gear with the converter locked, turning about 1200rpm. And it would be reluctant to downshift. So no more of that.

Another thing I did was replace the steering rack. Some of you may remember that the input shaft on my original rack had some play in it, presumably due to the exhaust manifold riding on the steering shaft in right turns. I thought that this was causing some play in the steering so I replaced the entire rack with a rebuilt one from RockAuto. While I was doing this, I shifted the rack over like I should have done in the first place by drilling new holes in the crossmember and changing the tie rod ends as much as I could. This got rid of the manifold/shaft interference, but the play was still there. I can't figure out where the play in the steering is coming from. It's just something I live with at this point, not a huge deal.

And last but not least I replaced the driver side rear quarter trim, some of you may have noticed it was missing the black plastic portion and only had the chrome left. I got a used replacement from a FB marketplace seller.

I've really only had two issues with the car. One of them is that it would randomly feel like it was cutting fuel while cruising and sometimes it would stall after coming to a stop. One time this happened at a busy left turn light and it was very reluctant to start back up. Turns out, the chip I have in the PCM for the tune had become slightly unseated, so unplugging it and plugging it back in completely solved that issue. The second is an ongoing one, and that is a leaky hydroboost unit. It's a small and slow leak, but it does drop over the exhaust manifold (stinky) and leaves spots in the driveway (nasty). I'm not looking forward to fixing that since it is going to be quite painful and difficult removing the booster due to the way I made it fit. It's leaking because it's a junk yard part with original seals, so let this be a lesson to all of you: Just spend the money and buy the new or remanufactured part. Especially if it involves fluids.

But, at the end of the day, the car has been more or less dead reliable. Here's some pictures of it being more or less dead reliable:

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Outside of Rothrock State Park in PA

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Camping in Mosquito Lake Sate Park in Ohio

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Camping outside of Ithaca, NY

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Getting absolutely hammered with snow at home

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At Black Moshannon State Park in PA

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And here it is yesterday outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I had never been to Philly before so I decided to check it out since I was buying a pair of speakers nearby.

So that's about it. I have no plans for this car other than to drive it until it's no longer practical for me. I'll update this every once in awhile as things happen.
 
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Congrats on the milestone and on what continues to be an extremely impressive execution on this build and putting it to real-world use. Inspirational! Especially considering so much of it involved uncharted territory unlike the 5.0L/LS swaps that everyone else settles for.

Now that I'm in a hilly area, it made me modify the tune on the car so that the trans torque converter doesn't lock until the car exceeds 45mph. Before I did that, if I wanted to go up a hill at 35mph, it would try to do it in 4th gear with the converter locked, turning about 1200rpm. And it would be reluctant to downshift. So no more of that.

My Triton powered Ford pickups have always done this too. I think it's part of Ford's tuning strategy to squeeze out as much MPG as these are capable of, but it's annoying. Unless I lock out OD, my current 5.4L rig wants to shift into OD and lock the converter as early as it can under part throttle acceleration, even if it takes revs down below 1500. Then climbing a hill at part throttle it will hold OD/lockup all the way down to barely over 1000 rpm, then finally once it has lost enough speed or you stab the throttle a little further, it will unlock and downshift all at the same time, spiking the revs over 2500. Maybe good for MPG, but it's irritating behavior. It would be nice if it were more progressive, unlock the converter first while holding OD, THEN downshift if more leverage were still needed. Your change to keep the TC open until 45mph makes sense. I wonder also if there's ever been a successful implementation of a manual TC lockup defeat switch that you could use from behind the wheel like the OD defeat. Having the two both be available would make it easier to manage trans behavior in rolling hills, that's where I too find this issue to be most intrusive.

...This got rid of the manifold/shaft interference, but the play was still there. I can't figure out where the play in the steering is coming from. It's just something I live with at this point, not a huge deal.

Play at the steering wheel rim? What kind of condition are the steering shaft U-joints in? I have had to rebuild the shaft on a couple of my high mile cars when those have worn out.
 
Thanks! Yeah, definitely an MPG thing with the trans behavior. Was never an issue the 9 years I had a Mark VIII in flat Michigan and flat Mid Missouri, but out here sacrificing the MPG for some actual throttle response and not feeling like I'm about to blow up my drivetrain when going uphill at a lower speed is worth it.

Play at the steering wheel rim? What kind of condition are the steering shaft U-joints in? I have had to rebuild the shaft on a couple of my high mile cars when those have worn out.

Both joints replaced with new. I think it could have something to do with the column or the weld-on fitting I'm using to attach it to the column. Everything is tight as far as I can tell, but it is so damn hard to see or even feel what's going on in the linkage beyond all the engine!! I'll try tackling it again at the next oil change this spring or summer.
 
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