I haven't posted in a while, but I'm still riding the ol' brick. In triple digit weather, no AC. Stupid, but committed.
Recently, I was getting pretty tired with some suspension noise over bumps and some general suspension/steering issues. I got tired of fighting the car to drive straight. It won't hold alignment and I suspect this is because most of the suspension is pretty tired. Has new ball joints and tie rods, but the rubbers in the suspension are pretty shot.
I also did some exhaust work about a month or two ago.:
- Deleted the resonator
- Added 2.5 inch exhaust tip
- Removed all clamps and welded exhaust
- New rubber muffler hangers
- Painted the exhaust
I thought the exhaust was making some noise that sounded like loose metal. Some of it was coming from the heat shield on the exhaust pipe upstream of the catalytic converter. Would like install a smaller resonator or glasspack later, but I'd rather build a proper exhaust at that point. The OE tip was also rusted out and goofy-looking. The weight reduction is nice with a cleaner look. Not really much louder, no drone. Exhaust comes off rather easily now. Also inspected the cat and looks really good. Left it alone.
I waited for a sale with IPD, ordered some wagon lowering springs, upper strut reinforcement plates, and a few other parts. I modified the upper spring mount strut bolts and replaced them with longer ones (about 15mm longer) to make up for the IPD strut reinforcement plates and possible strut tower in the future. I believe the wagon lowering springs tend to be stiffer in the rear, and I plan to remove some weight from the front and place it in the rear. Plus, I wanted the car to have a little "rake".
There were so many obstacles with sort of rebuilding the front strut assemblies.
- Brake hoses needed to come off if removing strut tower. I really wanted to clean the assemblies and paint them. Decided to order power bleeder tool.
- Couldn't break the top strut nuts loose, ended up cutting them so I could weld a nut and separate the strut hats from the strut below and bump stop. The old struts had didn't have an insert for torx or allen key, so I couldn't get a good bite on the strut rod. Also made a strut nut tool so I can tighten the top nut on the new struts.
- Strut gland nuts were on really tight and needed a special tool to remove. Large pipe wrench was not getting the job done. Made a tool from one of the cut strut rods and spare 3/4" square-tubing.
- Struts are Bilstein Touring. RockAuto sent me both struts with mismatched boxes and one was missing the strut gland nut which has a smaller ID than the OE strut gland nut. I ended up using the old gland nuts and removing about 1-2mm of material from the ID. Painted the inside for rust protection. They still feel strong enough to be safe.
Front struts were completely shot.
After these issues were fixed, everything was rather downhill.
Replaced brake hoses, bled front brakes, set camber to max allowable, and checked toe with a simple trammel bar.
Shoutout to Dave Barton and davebarton.com. I still use his website to this day for information and help fixing the car. The loud sound from the car was coming from there being a little too much extra clearance on the bottom of the rear shock when I replaced the rear shocks with Bilstein Touring. I found this out by myself with a rubber mallet, but it is interesting he pointed it out a long time ago and I didn't see it. I bought a couple of washers from the local hardware store and shaved a little meat off the bottom of the rear shock. No more play, way less noise over bumps.
Car is stiffer, feels way better. Most of the suspension on this car was pretty beat-up. It holds alignment better, but still some way to go.
I'll drop some pictures soon with the new ride height.
Next, I hope to replace the front control arm bushings, box control arms, and front sway bar bushings.
The outside trim is bugging the hell out of me. Would like to clean it up a bit.
I may need to pop the driver-side door panel open again to see what is up with the locking mechanism, again.
PRNDL stick has some slop, but I have the plastic washers for the shifter.
Would like to change the front engine seals at some point. It leaks, but not too bad.
Thanks to anybody who cared enough to read this far.
I'm happy to still see turbobricks alive.
Volvo 240 gang
Cheers!
