'95 960 goes T5... nah, T6.

[lookforjoe]

Dang! So you never got the M4.4 COP/Ostrich setup to play nice? Or was it the M90 clutch related stuff that finally demotivated you to keep the 5cyl setup on the 945?

 

[narancs]

Dang! So you never got the M4.4 COP/Ostrich setup to play nice? Or was it the M90 clutch related stuff that finally demotivated you to keep the 5cyl setup on the 945?

M4.4/cop was working fine. Probably that was the only part of the car that didn't give me trouble
IIRC i was chasing a lean under wot issue for a while which turned out to be a broken vac line. I remember that being really frustrating because it was hiding under the intake manifold.
And I didn't have the funds to make the car whole. Suspension and brakes needed a lot of attention... just to give it perspective, the whole project (up until sold the engine), including the car itself, cost less than what I spent on turbo and exhaust manifold on the 965. Basically parted out the car because needed the money elsewhere.
My approach with the 965 was different. I'll post updates about that, too.

 

[940 16 valve]

Excited to see this thread back, look forward to seeing the latest project

 

[narancs]

Chapter 3
​

There was this sad looking 965 on local craigslist for quite a while. Automatic, beige interior and wooden steering wheel. None if that excites me. So logically, I bought it.
US import car, supposedly well taken car of. Guy I bought if from had it for 17 years... which is nice but would have been nicer if they actually took care of the car. But I didn't care, I wanted it.
Immediate issues after purchase:

• useless tires, 4 different brand, none in roadworthy condition​
• sagging nivomats... as expected​
• broken taillight lenses​
• leaking AC with the usual leaking vacuum actuator thingy under the dash​
• other 20+ years old volvo problems..​

Stole the winter wheels from my alfa, 5*110 pcs, wobble bolts are my new friends. 8*17 et30 fits the car well to be honest

Found a cheap set of XC90/70 wheels. Tires were OK but wrong size. Stock ride height didn't help either.

Friend of mine was a selling a new set of Advan AD08R tires in 225/40 18 size.

stock ride height still doesn't help

AD08R tires (or most semi slick type tires) are wider then the "pedestrian" tires. They were heavily bulging on the 7" wide rims unfortunately

Somewhere around this point the engine started to have weird misfires on rare occasions at startup which at one point left me stranded with a blown off intake manifold. Whilst fixing it on the spot, tore a fuel line

Fixed it up, drove it around for a while with a misbehaving transmission. No reverse whilst oil is cold (careful planning with parking...) and also no 3rd gear whilst cold.

 

[narancs]

Bought a set of really cheap (paid like $150) BMW style 69 wheels. 18*8,5 ET48. Not the best looking, but kind of digging the concaveness. And fits perfect the Advans.
There were issues:
1. Ride height.
Coilovers are saved from the 940 but takes a bit of fiddling to make them fit. 960 has the 850 style shocks in the front, not the tube style like the 940. So I cut out the lower perches from the 940 knuckle, designed some brackets and asked a friend weld them up properly
Brackets. Have a lifetime supply as the machine shop had a minimum ordering limit..

Finished product

Rears were tricky.
Mounting point on the bottom is way bigger on the 960 than on the 940 so had to think hard how to make it work. Which I did not do, instead bought a set of rear nivo replacement GAZ coilovers from classicswede. Dumb me didn't go for the -40mm option. Don't have pictures about the process, but if you want to keep the spring loaded the ride height is like stock or maybe higher. That's a no go. I ended up buying really stiff helper springs to achieve a somewhat lower ride height. Turned out pretty good to be honest. Not the final version, but good enough for now.

2. Swaybars
Currently running none. I lost the front mounts on the shocks due to the 940 style coilovers. For some reason the rear swaybar was basically touching the rear shocks and made a reaaaaly bad noise. Only on the drive side. Guess it has something to do with the crash damage that I'll find later...

3. fendersss
960s also share the wheel offset with the FWD volvos... running PCD adapters with wide(ish) wheels meant, the BMW wheels barely fit. Also found out that car was hit pretty badly on the pass. side rear and either the bushings are shot or the frame isn't square anymore because on the drive side the rear wheel sticks out more... great. Later I found how bodged the repair was and instantly didn't feel bad about bashing the fenders with a hammer. Fronts were pulled with the right tool. But the rears are multi layer and broke the threads in said tool whilst trying to pull the rear fenders.

Out come the hammer, a'la driftsnlifts. Hammertime
Went a bit to far with the hammering... oh well

Yes, took it to a track day. Before that I had to replace the transmission. Took the opportunity and installed a Transgo shift kit, oil temp for the trans and a proper external transmission cooler with AN10 lines. For some reason I don't have pictures of any of this.
Farewell party for the old transmission. Disappointingly it survived

Oh, the replacement trans had issues, too. Wasn't happy about that just a day before the track day. Got my reverse back which was nice, shifting was fine but constant grinding noise under load was not fine. Sent it anyway, if it dies, it dies.

Anyway, the track day was excellent.

• Tires were excellent
• Brakes were sort of not suited for this type of driving... as expected
• Love volvo cooling systems, not a sign of overheat ever
• Decided that it will not stay auto
• Gained even more hatred for the wooden steering wheel
• Needs seats.. Replaced the driver side one with a leftover from the 940. At least it was not as slippery as the leather chairs and probably half the weight

After the event I decided to do some track worthy upgrades. Did I mention the plan is to make it a track car? Not a dedicated, caged track car but one that is still bearable on the road and feels good on track.
So it went for a makeover which is 2 years in the making... next post is about what happened in these 2 years.

 

[GSWAGON]

bet one of the rear lower arm is bent on the drivers side, wheel is sitting pushed forward in the one pic, I had the same thing on a 96 960 wagon from previous owner. bmw wheels suit it well!

 

[narancs]

bet one of the rear lower arm is bent on the drivers side, wheel is sitting pushed forward in the one pic, I had the same thing on a 96 960 wagon from previous owner. bmw wheels suit it well!

might be. But the floor is visibly crumpled under the rear seats. My bet is still crash damage

 

[GSWAGON]

might be. But the floor is visibly crumpled under the rear seats. My bet is still crash damage

oh dang, sounds like a hard hit

 

[narancs]

Manual swap​

After the trackday I felt unsure about keeping it auto.. it does have a character, but slow as heck. Rather conviniently, friend of mine messaged if I know someone who needs his manual swap from his 740 T5. The deal was sealed, bought his GS653DZ (e60 530d) trans with a welded bellhousing, 850 single mass flywheel, six puck clutch and reinforced pressure plate. His setup was way over 400whp on a built 2.5t, so torque was plenty, too. I figured it will be enough for me. At this stage the plan was to keep it simple and simply manual swap the car, change nothing else...

Made some new clutch line out of AN fittings & lines

Driveshaft modification sounded expensive and mostly rather time consuming, so I opted for adapters. Apparently this is common in racecars... not sure about that....
So I measured and had and adaptor made that fits on a stock BMW guibo on the transmission and accepts volvo auto driveshaft on the other. Length is almost perfect, had to separate the 2 driveshaft halfs a little.

Shifter... I didn't have any stock manual shifter so went on aliexpress and bought one made for a BMW. Was like $20. I'm 100% sure it will be rattling a lot from the ball joint and annoy the hell out of me... but invested a lot to make it work... so it will HAVE to work
Designed a housing for the shifter plate, 3d printed a prototype than had one made out of aluminium

Now all I needed was a linkage, so out of this two:

I made this:

This is how it shifts

Happily put it all back to the car. Even made a new exhaust with what I had laying around from previous builds.. Thiw was a stock headers to a single 3" into stock rear muffler.. Guess it would've been terrible

But found a lot of wiring problems. Disintegrated wiring harness, random butchered fixes. Hated the stock ignition setup the crusty connectors. Probably needed a new MAF, ignition coils, igniters... so decided to go standalone. I was looking at Speeduino for while, because cheap.
Instead I bought a Maxxecu sport with relay box. Wanted to completely separate the engine harness from the twentysomething years old wiring.

And than it hit me... I do have a T6 engine, why not ditch the NA engine and make the car fast..

 

[narancs]

Oh and at one point I polybushed the from arms. What a difference they made!

might installed them upside down. One kind of slipped out of its place. Need to investigate.

 

[okoye]

mine didn't come with the cups

 

[940 16 valve]

I love where this is going! Not that they're easy to find, but will an M47 driveshaft not work with the GS6-53?

 

[narancs]

I love where this is going! Not that they're easy to find, but will an M47 driveshaft not work with the GS6-53?

nope. At least not on e60 version. Flexdisc is 110mm, the older ZF trans and volvo trans are using the 100mm PCDs

 

[244tiCanuck]

Shifter... I didn't have any stock manual shifter so went on aliexpress and bought one made for a BMW. Was like $20. I'm 100% sure it will be rattling a lot from the ball joint and annoy the hell out of me... but invested a lot to make it work... so it will HAVE to work
Designed a housing for the shifter plate, 3d printed a prototype than had one made out of aluminium

Now all I needed was a linkage, so out of this two:

Is that shifter mount something you would produce more of and sell? Or sell the design file? I need one for my 760 with a BMW gearbox.

 

[narancs]

Is that shifter mount something you would produce more of and sell? Or sell the design file? I need one for my 760 with a BMW gearbox.

Nope, and I suggest not to use this kind of short shifter. Its like $20 on aliexpress, simple balljoint desing. I only had the car idling so far and its wobbling around and making noise...

 

[244tiCanuck]

Nope, and I suggest not to use this kind of short shifter. Its like $20 on aliexpress, simple balljoint desing. I only had the car idling so far and its wobbling around and making noise...

Okay, I'm leaning toward just getting a BMW OEM shifter and doing the short shift lever on it.

 

[JW240]

Nice updates, was thinking about what you were up to with Volvo's!

 

[narancs]

Updates, sort of. Not much has happened since the last one. I had some private life issues and the car was my last priority...
Some smaller stuff that happened:
Decided that the wooden steering wheel had to go. A S60 wheel took its place. Direct bolt-on. I will try to retrofit the clock spring and make the cruise control buttons work with the maxxecu.

The stock bumper probably won't fit over the intercooler (more on that later). Saw on garaget.org that the mk1 XC70 mated to the original bumper gives the car a really bulky look. Still in progress. Ran out of talent on this one, might need to find someone to finish it...

Still have the MK1 IRS that I used in the 940, scored a VLSD diff from a 350z, and will try to mate the two together. Not sure, yet. There are now LSD options for the MK1 and MK2 rear ends

Still hating the beige interior, bought some carpet/vinyl spray cans and painted the carpets black. Turned out quite decent, although far from great. But again, #racecar...ish
Don't really have pictures of this... getting lazy with taking pictures..

Tried to source OEM like fabric for the pillars, I really like the plushiness of the material, just not the color. The closest I could get was this fake alcantara fabric. Not bad. Will wrap all the pillars and headliner

Even though the factory seats are still in amazing condition, they are heavy and not supportive. So to save some weight I swapped the rear seats from the 940. The weight difference is substantial. I have the fronts too, just in case, but retrofitted Alfa Romeo GT, non-leather seat(s). They are supportive and light, and due to everyone wanting leather, they were extremely cheap. Making them fit is a challenge, I ended up using the pass-side GT seat console mated to the 940 rails with some custom mounts. I could mount them pretty low. Need to source one more pass-side GT console to make the pass-side seat fit. But the driver's side is there and looks awesome.

Decided that I have what it takes to make a proper exhaust manifold. Later decided that a log manifold is also fine. Than I realized I don't have the skills to even do that and this build deserves something much better. So scrapped this.

Spoiler alert!

At one point I installed a hydro-electric power steering pump (that I used the "original" 960 T5) but took up too much place and I think it was on its last legs. So reverted back to the OEM T6 PS pump and added a BMW PS reservoir. Made a custom bracket for it and the fusebox is "plated" on the inside so it's not just hanging on some plastic.

Started thinking about the brake situation. Unfortunately, I was not really clever about it.. on multiple occasions...
1st try was the usual Alfa Romeo brembo route. Bought a set of fronts that were advertised for 330 discs. Nope, they were the smaller ones for 305 discs. I need the bigger ones. (This happened many years ago, by the time I realized I got scammed it was toooooo late).
Looks like its okay, but it wasn't.

2nd try. Sold the Alfa brembos and bought a set of 4 pot brembos from s500 Mercedes. They are cheap and amazingly close to being bolt on with XC90 336mm disks. However they are not and making adapters seems to be impossible. Maybe enlarging the holes in the hub?? Not really feeling good about that tbh. I realised at this point that yeah, fwd style hubs need the radial mount style calipers...

3rd time the charm, right? Not for me. A set of brembo 17z calipers came up for cheap. 6 pot designed for 330 discs. Perfect. Nope. I forgot about the radial mount part, and these are not radial mount
These are massive. Me for reference. Don't think I can make these fit

I also bought a set of Nissan 370z discs. Hub dimensions are the same, offset, height etc. But 355 in diameter and obviously need to be redrilled for 5x108. I might try to make the 4pots work the bigger disks... or sell all of these and buy a proper set of brakes.....

Just for fun tried on a set of 20" Heicos. Not my style.

 

[940 16 valve]

Nice to see an update on this one! You considering a 350z diff swap?

 

[narancs]

Nice to see an update on this one! You considering a 350z diff swap?

yeah, for two reasons:
1. need longer final gear, the BMW transmission is super short. 350z is 3.55, which is better than the 3.73 I have, but 3.23 would be ideal. I know there is volvo option, but its rare..
2. LSD option. But I realized that bakaxel has options for IRS rear end.

Not priority at the moment