CHESH740R
lacking enthusiam
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2003
Lets start off with some background, The reason for my Screen Name Chesh740R is due to a certain Black 744 Turbo that i've had now for some 9 years.
My website carries the back story and project thread for the car until now which used to be called Project TURBOR
http://www.chesh.co.uk/744turbo.htm which then leads into
http://www.chesh.co.uk/projectturborprogress.htm
Well I hope that was a lovely little read for you and you enjoyed my fairly basic style website.
So let us now start with Project 750R
With the Redblock dying in the summer of 2006 I was pretty distraught, The engine had gone, rust was killing the chassis that bad that passing MOT inspections would require significant expenditure to bring the body back to straight conditions and I was broke due to a Career change that meant I no longer had the income i was used to, luckily it was summer and I still had a Suzuki Bandit to get me about.
However I was going to need a car sometime soon before winter set in and to get me to a friends wedding. A fellow Tbricker SteveP contacted me and said that he had just found on the most obscure motoring website an advert for a 1988 740Turbo Saloon in Black. (740T's are rare enough but I've only ever known of 4 Black ones in the UK)
I read the advert and called the number and went to see the car straight away and a little bit of haggling knocked a 1/3rd of the asking price and drove it away. (I would have paid the full asking price anyway)
Back home it met its twin
The car had 120,000miles on the clock, and had been reasonably well maintained. The body was straight and very rust free apart from a few small marks underneath. But that was to be expected with 18year old car, it even had a new headliner fitted.......
So very Kitsch eh.
Well I drove the car to the wedding and it performed ok, and i started to strip the old Black shell of all its goodies and put them into storage. All that i transfered straight across to the new one was the lowering springs and the shocks and the Polaris alloys. I then drove the car as is until December 2006 when I made the concious descision to get a Daily Driver that I wouldnt modify to allow me to take my time and work on the 740 without having to get it back together to go to work.
As Luck would have it I got a 1996 940 Sport for a very silly price for Daily Driving duties so the 740 was parked in the corner of the driveway.
Once I'd done the normal new car fettling that the 940 required I could turn my attention back to the 740. Well due to a busy working schedule my attention wasnt returned to it for a whole year!!!! It was not to say, I hadnt spent many bored hours at work planning in my mind what i would do to the car.
I worked out many ideas, despite Kenny's words about 16v's ringing in my ears about outflowing the 8v head, i decided that i would like to stick with the 8v redblock engine.
So my spec was along the lines of a new rebuilt Redblock with a forged bottom end, KG trimmings best 531 head and Camshaft combo, a header and large BB turbo with external WG were on the list. But I was struggling to find the motivation to open my wallet and spend money on building a Redblock again as now quite a few people were really starting to tune the redblocks properly and I enjoyed the Volvo scene as it was very small and unique over here.
Attending the Valkara show on the Tbricks trip to Sweden I toyed with looking more closely at Whiteblock swaps to assertain wether it was the way to go. I came away from the show with one mighty hangover and no desire to do a whiteblock swap.
Then in October 2007, I was rudely awoken to the sound of my mobile phone ringing at 7am. It was fellow Tbricker "TheJoyofSix" aka Rupert on the phone informing me that if i was quick there was a FREE 850 T5 being offered on another Volvo Forum. I quickly PM'd the fellow and called dibs on the car. Thanks to Rupert I was first in Line of a list of 20 People so picking up Tbricker Rogerb and his trailer we set of to Brighton to collect the free T5.
So here it is a 1996 850 T5, Full Service History, 156,919m Fresh tyres, a new 16T turbo 5k miles ago, and a new exhaust.
The car was in Very good mechanical condition, all the engine could have done with was a PCV service and the car would need a MOT to be used on the road. The reason the car was given away was that being a white saloon it was not really that desirable on the 2nd hand market, plus it would have needed possibly 2-300 maybe spent on it to pass an MOT (abs lights flashed on and off) and then a good clean up inside to be saleable, the person didnt want the hassle and just wanted the car gone quickly.
The 850 drove really well and I really liked the noise the engine made, but I couldnt see the point in spending money to put it on the road to replace my perfectly working 940, and of course the 850 drives the wrong set of wheels and i didnt care much for the styling of the interior, it felt very much like an updated version of a 240 interior.
So I liked the engine noise, didnt really care for the interior or the way it put its power down to the road through the front wheels.
Kenny's Word's rung through my head again "a 16v outflows an 8v all to easy" so i thought well a 20v is a step further than the 16v.
So with that, the 850 mass Destruction took place to get the engine out and the shell gone so that the 740 could then get prime driveway space to be pulled apart.
The engine removal didnt go to bad, the sheer lack of space did make me curse, i remember spending several hours sometimes just trying to undo several nuts that were completetly inacessible. Certainly why I wouldnt want to work on one as my main car.
With everything undone, and double checking by reading the haynes book of lies i attached the engine crane and began hoisting, would the engine come out would it hell!!!
At this point Roger arrived and said have you undone the engine mount near the crank pulley. " I said what mount, the Haynes mentions no mount"
So i started to undo the mount, luckily I had kept the engine crane tensioned, so just as i was starting to undo the first bolt, the rubber mount sheared and the engine jumped out the bay.
Roger and Me then spent a few more hours getting drenched in the rain stripping the gearbox off and other parts so we could get the engine mounted up on the engine stand.
Hoooray, no more engine, all other parts that were salvalgable from the 850 were sold off and the proceeds went into the kitty for the 750R build costs.
I then had a massive clearout of my Redblock Volvo Crap in the garage and dumped it in the back of the 850.
The 850 then became the first 6.9cc Redblock rear engined one in exsistance.
Then it was off to the Scrapyard for the remains of the 850
My website carries the back story and project thread for the car until now which used to be called Project TURBOR
http://www.chesh.co.uk/744turbo.htm which then leads into
http://www.chesh.co.uk/projectturborprogress.htm
Well I hope that was a lovely little read for you and you enjoyed my fairly basic style website.
So let us now start with Project 750R
With the Redblock dying in the summer of 2006 I was pretty distraught, The engine had gone, rust was killing the chassis that bad that passing MOT inspections would require significant expenditure to bring the body back to straight conditions and I was broke due to a Career change that meant I no longer had the income i was used to, luckily it was summer and I still had a Suzuki Bandit to get me about.
However I was going to need a car sometime soon before winter set in and to get me to a friends wedding. A fellow Tbricker SteveP contacted me and said that he had just found on the most obscure motoring website an advert for a 1988 740Turbo Saloon in Black. (740T's are rare enough but I've only ever known of 4 Black ones in the UK)
I read the advert and called the number and went to see the car straight away and a little bit of haggling knocked a 1/3rd of the asking price and drove it away. (I would have paid the full asking price anyway)
Back home it met its twin


The car had 120,000miles on the clock, and had been reasonably well maintained. The body was straight and very rust free apart from a few small marks underneath. But that was to be expected with 18year old car, it even had a new headliner fitted.......

So very Kitsch eh.
Well I drove the car to the wedding and it performed ok, and i started to strip the old Black shell of all its goodies and put them into storage. All that i transfered straight across to the new one was the lowering springs and the shocks and the Polaris alloys. I then drove the car as is until December 2006 when I made the concious descision to get a Daily Driver that I wouldnt modify to allow me to take my time and work on the 740 without having to get it back together to go to work.
As Luck would have it I got a 1996 940 Sport for a very silly price for Daily Driving duties so the 740 was parked in the corner of the driveway.

Once I'd done the normal new car fettling that the 940 required I could turn my attention back to the 740. Well due to a busy working schedule my attention wasnt returned to it for a whole year!!!! It was not to say, I hadnt spent many bored hours at work planning in my mind what i would do to the car.
I worked out many ideas, despite Kenny's words about 16v's ringing in my ears about outflowing the 8v head, i decided that i would like to stick with the 8v redblock engine.
So my spec was along the lines of a new rebuilt Redblock with a forged bottom end, KG trimmings best 531 head and Camshaft combo, a header and large BB turbo with external WG were on the list. But I was struggling to find the motivation to open my wallet and spend money on building a Redblock again as now quite a few people were really starting to tune the redblocks properly and I enjoyed the Volvo scene as it was very small and unique over here.
Attending the Valkara show on the Tbricks trip to Sweden I toyed with looking more closely at Whiteblock swaps to assertain wether it was the way to go. I came away from the show with one mighty hangover and no desire to do a whiteblock swap.
Then in October 2007, I was rudely awoken to the sound of my mobile phone ringing at 7am. It was fellow Tbricker "TheJoyofSix" aka Rupert on the phone informing me that if i was quick there was a FREE 850 T5 being offered on another Volvo Forum. I quickly PM'd the fellow and called dibs on the car. Thanks to Rupert I was first in Line of a list of 20 People so picking up Tbricker Rogerb and his trailer we set of to Brighton to collect the free T5.

So here it is a 1996 850 T5, Full Service History, 156,919m Fresh tyres, a new 16T turbo 5k miles ago, and a new exhaust.
The car was in Very good mechanical condition, all the engine could have done with was a PCV service and the car would need a MOT to be used on the road. The reason the car was given away was that being a white saloon it was not really that desirable on the 2nd hand market, plus it would have needed possibly 2-300 maybe spent on it to pass an MOT (abs lights flashed on and off) and then a good clean up inside to be saleable, the person didnt want the hassle and just wanted the car gone quickly.
The 850 drove really well and I really liked the noise the engine made, but I couldnt see the point in spending money to put it on the road to replace my perfectly working 940, and of course the 850 drives the wrong set of wheels and i didnt care much for the styling of the interior, it felt very much like an updated version of a 240 interior.
So I liked the engine noise, didnt really care for the interior or the way it put its power down to the road through the front wheels.
Kenny's Word's rung through my head again "a 16v outflows an 8v all to easy" so i thought well a 20v is a step further than the 16v.
So with that, the 850 mass Destruction took place to get the engine out and the shell gone so that the 740 could then get prime driveway space to be pulled apart.

The engine removal didnt go to bad, the sheer lack of space did make me curse, i remember spending several hours sometimes just trying to undo several nuts that were completetly inacessible. Certainly why I wouldnt want to work on one as my main car.
With everything undone, and double checking by reading the haynes book of lies i attached the engine crane and began hoisting, would the engine come out would it hell!!!
At this point Roger arrived and said have you undone the engine mount near the crank pulley. " I said what mount, the Haynes mentions no mount"
So i started to undo the mount, luckily I had kept the engine crane tensioned, so just as i was starting to undo the first bolt, the rubber mount sheared and the engine jumped out the bay.
Roger and Me then spent a few more hours getting drenched in the rain stripping the gearbox off and other parts so we could get the engine mounted up on the engine stand.

Hoooray, no more engine, all other parts that were salvalgable from the 850 were sold off and the proceeds went into the kitty for the 750R build costs.
I then had a massive clearout of my Redblock Volvo Crap in the garage and dumped it in the back of the 850.
The 850 then became the first 6.9cc Redblock rear engined one in exsistance.

Then it was off to the Scrapyard for the remains of the 850


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