Bad Decision Works Volvo's

[Barracuda_82]

you do good work and thanks for allthe pics

Great car. Was wondering where you got the sandwich plate for you oil filter. I'm needing one with the oil temp port on the side like yours.

Thanks guys

If I remember correctly, the sandwich plate is this one: https://www.speeding.nu/p/motorstyr...tillbehor/hurricane-sandwich-adapter-an8.html

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Yesterday I fixed one problem I had been postponing for a long time: fixing the fuel leaks in the fuel tank cap. This sounds bad, but it's not that bad. Aluminium welding is not my strong suit at all, and I had the suspicion that there was a pinhole somewhere, combined with a hose that didn't fully seal on the filler neck. This resulted in a very minor leak, only when filling the car at the gas station. So I had to drive around with a towel and wipe off the drops that ended up on the tank.

Turned out there was indeed one pinhole, but the main culprit was the filler neck. The hose has steel wire in it and that made it so that it did not seal properly. Then I machined a very thin ring to create an extra "rib" on the filler neck and welded that on. I tested this by pressurising the filler neck using some hockeypucks, my compressor and some soap and it worked

 

[Barracuda_82]

Last saturday I fixed some last small issues to get the car ready for tonights trackday(evening). I moved the license plate, since there now is a big gaping hole in the middle of the bumper to let air in for the oilcooler. Also painted the inside of the bumper black, so it looks a little better:

Also I finally hooked up the emergency pull cord for the electrical system. With a fancy brass washer:

Also painted the strutbrace and the mounts in the car's color. There is some more cleaning up to be done in the engine bay, but it's good enough as it is now and I'll save a paintjob untill next winter when i'm going to swap in the T6.

Then yesterday I worked not on my own 240, but on Peter Björcks twin turbo V10 project. He posted that he's going to try to get the car ready for Street Week 2024 in Sweden and since I live close to him I offered my help.

For those who don't know who Peter is; he's the guy with the Lamborghini powered 245 that went viral on the internets:

I took the V10 engine and the gearbox out of the R8 frame to get it ready for paint. Also spent some time with a file on all the cut tubes and other parts that had work done to deburr it and make it smooth and ready for paint:

The rear R8 suspension I removed from the frame went home with me and in the coming days I'm going to finetune the drivers side that Peter already made (left in the photo) and then copy it to the other side. Also it needs some special bushings and adapters to be machined:

 

[TurboDutch]

Ha olde beunhaas, jij ook hier! lekker bezig

 

[GTJordan]

I rarely watch youtube videos, but I have been watching all of his episodes. Hope it gets done by street week!

Jordan

 

[Barracuda_82]

I rarely watch youtube videos, but I have been watching all of his episodes. Hope it gets done by street week!

I am going to try to help as much as possible to make it happen

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Yesterday I was al set and ready to go to the track:

But a few miles from home I put some fuel in the car and noticed another fuel leak. The O-ring between the fuel tank cap and the tank had shifted, so I moved it to the correct place and that fixed it, but then I noticed a very very tiny crack in the aluminium. This is where I welded shut a previous fucking when machining the cap. With the heat and stress I put in the cap last week when fixing the other leak, this one cracked.

When it comes to fuel I do not take any risks (the leak i had before only occured when fueling the car, never when driving) so I decided to turn around and go home again.

I am not sure how i'm going to fix this issue now... I decided a long time ago to make my own fuelcell to save some money, and it did, but it took my so much work to get it right that it was not worth the savings. But that's just how it goes I guess. I have two options:

1. Ditch the current setup completely and replace it with a ready-to-go, off the shelve solution. Which is hella expensive and puts a dent in the T6 swap budget
2. Completely re-do the current fuel tank cap without welding aluminium and only using o-rings, gaskets and bolts to put it together

Currently I am leaning towards option two. I have all the tools and material to make it, so that will cost me nothing. And i feel like i'm 99% there. The setup works flawless in providing fuel, but I keep having issues with the welding, so if I can scrap that it should be solid. Then I have something that has some value in selling, when I finally decide to upgrade to a "real" tank some day in the future.

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Since I now had a free night, I could start working on Björck's parts. I started with the tierods. Peter did not have the threaded weldable insert for the original R8 tierod ends, but luckily I have a set of LH and RH M14x1.5 fine pitch thread taps, so i could quickly machine an insert.

 

[Barracuda_82]

Last few days i've been working on Peters suspension parts and the support arms are finished now:

With one of the threaded inserts I accidentally went way to hot when welding, and melted the wall. It's a M18 insert, so the walls (outside is 22mm) are relatively thin. I haven't got a M18x1.5 tap, so i tried fixing it with a dremel, but that didn't work.

So I drove to a friend, 1 hour away, to use his M18 tap:

While that was going on I also started on the aluminium adapters used to adapt the R8 uprights to the heimjoints:

Messing up the M18 insert made me realise that it's time to re-organize my workshop. Might sound like a dumb excuse, but the setup of my weldingtable/workbench was such that there was no proper room for my TIG footpedal, it got stuck behind a toolcabinet a bit and therefor melted the wall of the insert.

I had been thinking about rotating the workbench 90º for a while, and now was the time. This allowed me to move the toolcabinet from underneath to right next to the workbench. The compressor could then move to under the workbench. Since it's a lot smaller than the toolcabinet it would not be in the way when sitting/welding at the workbench.

 

[Barracuda_82]

I have finished the arms for peter's R8 suspension. I didn't have all the threaded inserts and the right TIG rods to weld the Docal R8 tubes, so I went to his workshop to finish it on his welder. He gave me some pointers on how to improve my welds and I was super happy with this feedback. Downside of working alone always and learning from Youtube and just winging it is that nobody tells you you could improve something. Except when you post in FB groups for welders, then it will never be good what you make.

On to my own car. I had some fuel issues, so I decided to take on the fuel system once again. This is the "temporary setup" i was running, which worked fine, but i kept having sealing issues on the homemade cap on the red tank.

I decided I am going to make a new cap that has no welds, only threaded or flanged connections. And while i'm at it i'm going to recess the whole fuelsystem and cover it, so it's fireproof. I'm going to build a big aluminium box with a window and a filler port on top.

First step is to remove all the unnecessary Volvo steel:

The battery will be moved to a box right behind the driver seat and the fueltank will be rotated 90º, recessed about 20cm (8") and moved to the right for better weight distribution:

The fuel system box will be supported by two 30mm rollcage bars between the original chassis rails:

Sadly this means that the center exit exhaust needs to go, because it will be way too low if it needs to go underneath the new fuelsystem. So I got a new (smaller) muffler and figured that with a few new exhaust pipe pieces it should fit between the axle and the tank and exit right behind the rear wheel:

 

[Barracuda_82]

I have routed the new exhaust and tacked up the parts:

It clears the wheel by about 5cm or 2. Judging by the amount of rubber on the rear screen I don't think it will be an issue on the hot exhaust. It will probably burn off before it can become so much that it could cause a fire or something. I'll keep an eye out at the next trackday and if it becomes an issue I'll just create a quick heatshield.

It looks kinda okay like this. Good enough for a temp solution. As soon as I will swap in the T6 next winter I'll route the exhaust out the front fender without any mufflers or anything. Easy does it.

 

[InTheWhite2]

Nice build! Following this.

 

[Barracuda_82]

It has been a long time since i posted something, due to being very busy working on Peter Björcks car and work and other life stuff going on. But now the calm appears to be returning.

After some iterations I have finished building the rear suspension on the car.

It fits the 15x10 nascar steelies and the wheels rotate freely:

In the last week i've been to his workshop three times to help finish the car. Last friday, a day before the races started, the car started to lok like a car:

I also made mounting points for a tow hitch on the car (needed to haul parts during Street Week) and a quick hitch:

Now that write this it is the second day in the drag & drive event Street Week here in Sweden, but the car is still in the workshop. Everything was as much finished to be drivable, but at the last point there appeared to be gearbox computer issues which prevented the gearbox from working.

It's sad to work so hard on a car and don't make it due to a (probably simple) computer or wiring issue, but that's just how real life builds are. it does not always end happily like on TV.

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Back on my own car I decided to ditch the whole custom fueltank/pumps setup and go with a ready-made tank with intank pumps. I did some calculations and the number of AN fittings I would need to make the old system work with the new PTFE fuel hose was almost as expensive as selling the old system and buying all off-the-shelve parts:

The only thing I decided to make myself are the clamps for the fuel hoses. One feed and one return line per clamp:

After the prototype above I spent a few hours machining a lot more:

I started laying the fuel hose from the engine side. The only rubber hose is now this part from the last AN fitting to the original B6284s fuel rails. When I am going to swap the T6 engine I only need to adapt the fuelrails to use AN fittings and create short AN lines between them:

Under the car the line runs on the original location. I did not need as much clamps as i thought on beforehand, because the hose is quite rigid and holds shape quite well. I can always add more if needed.

 

[Barracuda_82]

Both feed and return lines are now connected to the fuel rails:

After running the lines I started finishing the trunk floor and fueltank install. First cleaning all the panels and parts on the car that will need welding:

The tank has a "pocket" on the bottom for the outlets when using the tank with external fuelpumps. I want to recess the tank, so it sits as low as possible:

This way i can still utilise these outlets if needed in the future. Would be nice to have some kind of valve to drain the tank if needed. But that's for future me.

The fuel cell sits nice and low now:

 

[Barracuda_82]

A little update in the form of two videos. This is how the adventure with Peter Björcks midvo ended:

And this is the latest state of my own car:

 

[Barracuda_82]

It has been a while since I posted an update, but here we go.

The racecar is finished now and it did well on the track:

Only downside is that the MKM topmounts bent, but after contacting Markus it turns out that I installed them wrong. All three discs should be under/inside the struttower. I fixed this later.

After this I purchased a frame machine so I can finally start the Tjorven mailtruck project:

I cut the black S60 T5 in half, threw away the rear and got the engine to run with a slimmed down wire harness:

After that I stripped the mailtruck down further (removed windows, dashboard, etc) and cut that in half too:

The rear part is getting some mods and a system to (easily) mount it on the frame and attach to the front of the car. In the end you will only see a small seam and some latches. Hopefully.

Both parts are now on the frame machine in the orientation they need to be in. Later this week I will be picking up another S60 (non-turbo) to harvest the front suspension and subframe from, so I can build the front end. Then I can determine seating position, steering wheel and all other vital "non negotiable" positions and start building a frame from that. That should be relatively straight forward. Just connect the dots.

Also I figured out that both the frame machine AND the racecar fit in the workshop. It's super tight tho, but it's doable. If I need more space on the mailtruck I roll the 240 outside and rotate the frame machine on it's wheels so I have plenty access to all sides.

 

[brendon_ak]

Mailtruck project looks super cool!

LOL your door card on the race car is hilarious!

 

[Barracuda_82]

I got a new S60 to tear apart for parts for the mailtruck:

I'm going to use the front subframe, suspension, brakes, steering, etc. as front of the mailtruck. The rest is going to the scrapyard.

 

[NJGreenBudd]

Awesome race wagon! This is the kind of work I hope to be doing soon, the roll cage and suspension parts look good. Keep it up.

How much bigger is the Volvo scene in Sweden? Like does everyone there in the Motherland love them like TB does?

 

[Barracuda_82]

That's a hard question to answer for a nerd like me, without having numbers, hahaha. But my feeling says people are kinda born with a soft spot for Volvo's over here

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Yesterday i've finally removed the engine from the new S60 that will be used for the front suspension and steering:

And i've done some preliminary measurements and it looks like it's all going to fit in the mailtruck front as I imagined it. The only thing that might be an issue is the position of the steering rack. It's quite far back and this will potentially make the angle for the steering column too steep. But I need to mock everything up on the frame machine te be able to tell for sure.

 

[dl242gt]

Great to see the truck project zooming along. It's going to need wheelie bars.

 

[Barracuda_82]

Great to see the truck project zooming along. It's going to need wheelie bars.

I don't think it will really need them, but it would be awesome to have a dorky truck like this with some wheelie bars sticking out the back

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Yesterday I had little time to spend in the workshop, but I managed to remove the front subframe and all the components.

Next I'll remove the wheels and struts, so I can lift it on the frame machine. And then clean the floor. Amazing how much dirt keeps coming of the car every time you touch it.

 

[adomz]

Nice Werk!