Nightmare Cannonball Body Swap

[Rushin]

To even out the balance of nice, well thought out builds, I thought I'd share what I'm working on. Prepare to cringe, and prepare for pain.

A few weeks ago I finally decided to fix my windshield leak on my lifted silver 1990 wagon, the puddle is getting bigger on the floormats and it started to be a steady stream while driving on the rain and constantly soaked my fusebox.

I got the windshield off and found that the previous shop that did the windshield didn't tell me there was rust forming (back when it would have been fixable) and stuffed paper towel in a few of the smaller holes, making them much bigger holes now. I don't have access to a welder or metal forming tools any more so this totaled it. It may have been a really ratty car but it's gotten me through a lot of different life events and I have some great memories with it, so it was pretty sad.

After some thought I figured I wanted it to live on, so I began looking for a car or a body to swap everything over. My friend had a dark blue 1991 shell that had some rocker rot but was in much better shape than the silver one, so he dropped it off.

The interior is there but there is absolutely nothing else on this thing, aside from the gas tank, which was junk.

This is where it gets stupid. I just bought a house in March. As part of the insurance agreement, I need to take care of some tree limbs hanging over the house, garage, and driveway. This was supposed to be done on the 16th of April, but I spent some time in the hospital and didn't get to make it happen. After getting the shell set up in my driveway, I realized that the tree service can't actually get to the tree anymore, and can't cut anything down unless I want a flat Volvo. So now instead of taking my time moving everything over, I have to do it as fast as possible to get the silver shell out of the driveway and the new car at least on suspension if not under its own power. My driveway goes out to a very small alley so after the shell was there, it isn't going anywhere until it's done. So now I'm racing my insurance company's patience as well as the tree service.
Shooting for short, and gross. I have and will do more awful things for the sake of time. Spray paint will be used, 30 year old hoses will be installed.

I start with pulling the front face. This has never had its engine out, so the tack welds on the upper support were still intact, adding more time onto this job. The left headlight bucket is welded to the lower support for some reason, so it came out as one big chunk.

Yanked the engine out pretty quick after that. I somehow was able to get the heater core hoses off without much trouble so they'll get thrown on there again.

Thankfully the engine ran great and the trans was perfect. I'm pretending the rear main seal leak isn't there, and I'll throw it in more for another 300k.

After this the tank had to come out. The new car had an OE tank and pump and was just about rotted through. I pulled the filler neck at the same time, it might just be me but I have a hell of a time reconnecting the neck if I drop a tank, so I just take both. It's only a few years old so it's in really good shape. I nailed it with rust converter and found some green spray paint to coat it. While I'm in a rush, this is still a really good time to mitigate the rot that claims all midwest cars, especially with nothing on the underside of the new car. I have rust converter and a billion cans of half-used spraypaint.

 

[Rushin]

I also got the core support and engine bay hit with rust converter to catch the small dings and welds that were just beginning to show surface rust. I ran out of green, and had no black/blue so I had to switch to brown. I had a can of clearcoat that I splooged on there too, I figure I can tell myself that I'll repaint the engine bay, but we all know that that's a lie.

I started on the front suspension. The struts came out fairly easily, and I left the calipers on there to make the move easier. I wanted to leave as much of the front brake lines on the engine crossmember as I could to make moving easier. One of the strut towers on the new car was nudge a little out of whack so I had to slightly massage it, and hog out the third hole a bit with my drill. No big deal, surely that wont haunt me later.

I got the a-arms out and found both rear bushings to be loose. I just slapped a washer under the nut and ran her home. Nice and tight

The fuel filter and pump on the new car are also OE or close to it (volvo branded filter) but currently the silver car has all rubber feed and return lines because they rotted out or were torn years ago.

The fuel pump and filter are quite crusty but the vibration isolators look like they've been replaced at least once and all of the straps are there and not rotted away.

I had to cut the fuel pump strap bolt and retap a bunch of holes but got it all moved over.
I need the fuel feed line from the filter to the engine so I don't have to use my rubber line. Thankfully this one seems to be in decent shape, aside from a small cut in the line near the engine side. Learning from previous bouts of 8mm formed-line suffering, I had just the thing.

While waiting for my undercoat to harden, I decided to finish dropping the subframe. It seemed easiest to leave the octopus, brake lines, and steering rack on it. I wirewheeled what I felt like reaching and got rust converter on it and will probably find an awful color to paint it.

Tomorrow I'll be getting the fuel lines in with my pump and filter from the silver car. With any luck I can sink in the crossmember too and get the front suspension all up on it.

 

[Rushin]

I had silver!!

I got the fuel system all put together today and in the car. The fuel pump worked when it came out so I'm hoping it still will. I had to reuse my crush washers and steal the bridge line from the other pump set.

Got it in the car, now I have both fuel lines secured and plumbed so I'm ready to throw the tank in.

I took a quick break to get my pistons in my other engine and check the clearance.

I actually had clearance that was in spec this time, so I tightened everything up. I'm waiting on an oil squirter bolt before I go too much farther, and my head needs to be checked.

Since this gave the crossmember time to dry, I figure it was time to install it. I realized that the blue car didn't have a steering doingus for some reason, so I had to steal it from the silver car.

I leave the steering column u-joint and just take the doingus, thinking I'd make my life easier. It was a bitch to take out, and for some god forsaken fucking reason volvo changed their u-joint pattern like every year, so I have to take the u-joint from my old steering column as well. This took a long time.

Next, master cylinder and brake lines.

I have the brake line brackets that work pretty well, but they were only on the car for a couple years and came apart very hard. One side has the bolts completely seized in the housing, I don't think I could remove it without breaking it. So I just slopped on 3 pounds of anti-seize.

Got the bad boys all hooked up, front brake lines are done.

Next was the suspension. I had to get a jack under the tie rod so it would stop spinning. The rest wasn't too bad and thankfully went in to place without much drama. I have to jack up the strut in order to get the tie rod in the knuckle, thanks to the lift.

The tires bring the car up higher than my jack stands will go, so it helps with engine install. With the engine out it sits okay, but once the engine goes in, I'm going to need to do some serious massaging of the fenders.

Tomorrow I'm shooting for gas tank and rear end pull/install. There's a seized line on the rear end size so it's going to be super fun to put in. With any luck I'll have this thing pissing brake fluid and leaking gas all over my driveway by the end of the week.

 

[Rushin]

Today was a little busier for me, so I didn't get as much done as I wanted. I was really shooting for a partial engine install but it just didn't happen. I started with some easy stuff to warm myself up. The glovebox in the new car was in much worse shape, so I pulled the box from my old one. It was full of water so I had to let it sit overnight to dry before I swapped it.

The lock cylinder on the new car's glovebox surprisingly was still matched to the ignition key, so I swapped that over as well.

Then I got on to tackling the rear suspension. It was completely bolted into the old car, and I hadn't touched it yet other than connecting the brake lines. The lift makes this part really tough, my jack doesn't come up far enough to get the tires off the ground without jacking it up from the pumpkin, which obviously makes things tough when I'm taking the entire assembly. I had to take off the tires, then max out my jack stands to get enough droop to start working.

After a shockingly small amount of time, I was able to get the assembly out. I tried to leave it together as much as possible. I had to steal the mounts for the torque rods as well since that wasn't on the new car either. I still wasn't able to get the body up far enough to slide this whole deal out the back, so I had to drop it down onto the car dollies and edge it out through the driver's side wheel well.

I took a quick break to tend to my mirepoix which was coming along beautifully. It isn't the weather for it but I had some chicken bones and wanted to make chicken soup. It came out pretty decent, throwing the onion skins and celery bits in there did wonders for the flavor.

The speed sensor wiring on the new car was in typical shape, the sheathing was almost completely gone and the wires were super corroded. I also got it caught in my angle grinder while I was wire wheeling a few rusty spots so it needed to go. Once again, bafflingly, the plug for the speed sensor was different. I think at some point Volvo decided that some parts were too compatible and needed to fuck me over, specifically. I spliced in the new plug to the good harness.

I start to get the new car jacked up and prepped for the rear end to go in. I haven't had a vent line on my axle for a while, which makes for a pretty expensive offroading excursion if I hit a puddle large enough. I managed to find some vacuum line to splice into the broken hard line, and an oetiker clamp to keep the line on the axle. This was a really big thing for me, which should demonstrate how much I neglect this car usually.

This stupid line was still seized. I don't know how, it's a copper line but I just could not get the bastard to spin, which is a problem, because on the other side of the soft line, the other nut doesn't spin either.

The only nut that spins on the whole circuit was the nut at the caliper, so I pulled the whole line off, so I could spin the line onto the soft line, then put it back on the axle. This was really stupid. Normally I would just make a new line, but time and budget dictates otherwise. I had to reuse a nut I got off with vise grips, for fuck's sake.

I took another quick break to get a topcoat on my floor in the spare room. The wood is maple and in great shape, but the losers that owned this home before splattered paint all over it, so it had to be sanded bare and re-stained again. It's coming along nicely. I wont ever be able to get all of the landlord white off of the trim, so I'll just be sanding down the big lumps and color matching to whatever the wall color will be. I'm thinking a nice blue.

Now that everything was ready, I threw the rear end in. It was way easier than I expected, and I didn't have to do any coaxing with a pry bay to get it to sit right. In a little over an hour, everything was bolted up and torqued down tight, with the brake lines back in. I don't have parking brake hardware, so the cables will probably get zip-tied to the axle for now.

Gas tank was even easier, it blew me away. Maybe I'm just channeling Robert Spinner but it took me five minutes to get it in, no fuss at all. Filler neck cooperated perfectly. The longest part was getting the feed and return lines on the tank, I had to reuse some pretty crusty hose clamps with stripped heads, which made it pretty painful.

I only had a swallow of DOT 4, so now that everything's hooked up, tomorrow I'll grab some brake fluid and hopefully get the engine in. I let the silver car idle for about 18 hours to run it completely out of gas, so I'll need a gas can too to fill it up and test everything. It never goes this way, but I'm hoping I don't have any unmanageable leaks, or at the very least that I can get this thing moving by tomorrow. I still have to fix the door handles and pull my wagonmeister fuse panel, but that can wait until the engine goes in.

 

[sbabbs]

Good job, I still gotta take the tank out of the gold 88 wagon and put it in my 84 242. I will pull it with the filler also.

 

[Rushin]

Good job, I still gotta take the tank out of the gold 88 wagon and put it in my 84 242. I will pull it with the filler also.

Thanks and good luck, hopefully it goes as well as mine did. I had to replace my filler neck on my green wagon and learned the hard way that it really doesn't like to go into the tank right after you drop the tank without the neck. The new style rubber gasket that goes around the neck and into the body of the car (not at the filler cap, the second one) is also much worse to put in. This neck just had a rubber cone that gets smashed up in there.

I have a spare filler neck if you end up needing one. Partsgeek also sells a new tank for a reasonable price and the fitment is good, though the finish leaves a lot to be desired. I think you'd lose it in about 5 years if you didn't coat the hell out of it.

 

[Crustacean Wagon]

Loving this. Slapping shit together under any means necessary hits

 

[Rushin]

I didn't get nearly as much as I wanted to get done. It started pouring buckets out of nowhere for just long enough to completely soak me while I rushed my tools inside and covered the silver car, which took the fight out of me for a while. My friend then came by in the early afternoon and we ended up playing Dystopian Wars instead.

And this little bastard was chewing on my box spring all night.

Still, I'm closer than I was! Progress has been made.

I didn't have exhaust hangers on the other car so I took these little crusty bastards.

I needed to move the shifter over to the other car. The wiring looks like someone had gotten to it before me. Those crimp connectors suck but they look like they've been done right so I'll leave them alone.

Shifter came out. It was full of water so I had to let it dry to a little bit. I hit it with some graphite to hopefully stop it from rusting up. The shifter light wiring is in poor shape, I didn't feel like fixing it so I just pulled it off. My overdrive wire was completely rotted away too, I did replace that one. I'm hoping to have working overdrive on this one so I don't have to keep swapping between bypassed and non-bypassed overdrive units for towing.

I get it in the new car and have a hell of a time threading the bolts. I probably should have tapped the holes or something. I completely forget to put the little dick that goes to the transmission back on before I tighten the bolts down, and have to take them all out to install the dick. The front left bolt snaps off. Fug

3 bolts is enough.

I put off installing the engine for even more time and start to take some interior bits off of the silver wagon. I want the radio and the harness, the gauge cluster, and wiper and turn signal stalks. I've done the temp faker bypass on this cluster, so if I have issues with the new car, I'll have something on standby.

I got the radio and most of what I wanted out. I still have the door handles and lock assembly to grab but I'm almost done taking parts off of this thing. I snagged my wagonmeister fuse box as well, I'll wait to install that until after I get the engine running to cut down on no-start areas.

I finally lift the engine up. The amount of hoist I need to get it in with the lift is pretty insane.

I then dawdle and this point and it starts to get dark. I get the heater core lines on and the engine mostly in.

I only have six jack stands, and two are supporting the rear axle in the new car, and the other 4 are holding up the old silver shell. I ran out of lift on my jack and needed to boost it up, but didn't have anything to hold the trans in place with. I really needed a jack stand.

So I pushed the silver car off the stands and onto the ground.

This is where I stop. It's too dark to continue, I'll get the engine fully installed most likely on Monday. I have a gaming table I'm working on tomorrow and on Sunday I'm helping some friends move. A little over my hit time but not terribly far off. If I can squeak some time out on the weekend I'll go for it.

 

[Rushin]

Hello 240 cucks

I got some stuff done today, but of course it decided to rain so I had to cut it shorter than I would have liked. Over the weekend I did a little more work on my gaming table and it's coming along beautifully. It's birch plywood with birch edge banding and pine legs with risers to bring it up to a comfortable height to play. I just got the stain on it, over the next couple of weeks I'll be varnishing and sanding it, and hopefully getting it into my basement soon. It's a huge upgrade over the one I had that was made from wood stolen from the hardware store.

It's glass smooth now. I'm looking forward to replacing my card table.


I looked again at the aftermath of my blind nerd rage and thankfully found it wouldn't be too hard to get the old shell up on dollies. It collapsed nicely on the stands.

It's refreshing to not have to sweat where I'm jacking this thing up. Hearing the rust crunch under the jack was more satisfying than alarming.

Up on dollies. This is leaving Thursday, thank fuck. Almost everything is off the shell that I'll need aside from a few door handle and lock bits.

My friend gave me a sticker that I think perfectly encapsulates this build. I slapped it on the hood so I could rep my colors and you know what the FUCK I'm about

Enough fooling around. Wake up samurai, we have a volvo to ruin.

The engine was kind of in. I had to move around the shifter dick, and I wanted to fix the overdrive wiring before stuff got buttoned down. The wiring to the solenoid was in decent shape aside from the last 8 inches near the bullet connector. I know you can't see it in the picture but you'll have to believe me. My 240p Kodak Charmera did.

I just went with some nice spade terminals so in the unlikely event of this thing ever coming out again, I can cut down on clipping wires. I'll have to zip tie it to something.

After some light prybar-ing, the engine is in! All of the lines are on and hooked up, wires are routed, grounds are tight. I have to crank down the fuel feed line, but this is progress! We're gaming now lads and ladies

I did a quick test crank to make sure I don't have a no-crank, no-start failure before I go too much further. It cranks which is a good sign.

I then go to hook up the shifter, and the linkage is nowhere to be found. Did I crush it? Did it drop off?

NOPE! There it is!! Right up the trans tunnel, against the firewall... I probably flipped it up to keep it out of the way during install and just forgot about it. Fucken awesome.

I'll deal with that later. I wanted to get everything else hooked up that wouldn't be an adventure or exercise in frustration first.

Inside the cabin I get the ECU hooked up and the fuel box in. The ECU worked in my last car but it sounds suspiciously like a capacitor has broken off and is rattling around inside the housing. If it runs I'll leave it. I'd prefer not to have to open her up. However, 1991 must have been a BIG fucking year for some dipshit at Volvo because the body harness wiring is pretty different. Fuck. 11 pins on the new car's harness, 9 pins with a completely different connector on the old one. Fuck me dude, I'm going to scream. I'll have to chop the body harness on the old car and move it over. I really hate doing stuff like that. Even though this one is most likely going to get crushed, I don't like ruining good parts for someone else that may end up using it.

It then started raining pretty steadily. Tomorrow I'll be doing some wiring and fixing the shifter linkage, I guess. If the weather actually cooperates I'll get the brakes bled and the rear fenders rolled, and start getting the front clip put on. I'm getting closer! I would have had time for almost everything today but since I don't have space in my garage currently, I'm a slave to the weather. Tune in next time. This upcoming session is going to be a fiddly one.

 

[Crustacean Wagon]

Productive day king

 

[Rushin]

Long post ahead. Got a LOT done today but it still have some stuff to go.

I began with some housekeeping/parts pulling. The wiper motor on the new car sounds crunchy as hell. I can't imagine it's going to make it long. I can probably rebuild it but I'd rather have a known good motor on standby.

I then went through the extremely unfun task of rewiring that 11 pin plug to 9 pins to fit my harness. I matched colors, but I have a stray blue-yellow on the harness side, and a pink/white and two reds on the body side.

I had to buy a gas can to fill up my tank again. I turn the safety can into a danger can and fill her up.

I turn the key a few times to prime the fuel system to clear out all of the air, and then start on the front face. I lift the hood and move it over with the hinges on it. This took some doing to line up, I think this car's had a little crash as it was really tough to get the hood even close to square, even with adjusting the hood bolts and the bottom hinge bolts.

I also zip tie the battery down and tighten the leads so I don't forget later.

 

[Rushin]

Of course, owing to volvo's intelligent design, the bolts for the headlight buckets are made out of cheese and rust if you look at them funny. I could only get one headlight/marker light off in one piece and had to burn out the other side to prep for a new headlight assembly.

The left fender has been slightly smooshed, some coaxing with a hammer and needle nose pliers gets it back into mostly square, so I can run the bolts in through 3 (!!!) layers of sheet metal into the headlight bucket.

I had to drill a few rivets and use a larger rivet on the left hand side as someone had hogged out the hole, but the lower core support goes in without too much fuss.

It's looking like a car now!

For some godforsaken reason, a tweaker chopped the harness for the marker lights. I see this a lot. No fucking clue why, it takes 3 seconds to unplug it, and you have to get in there to get your ground anyhow. Shit baffles me. I clipped them from the old car and got them spliced.

I get the upper core support on, it's a little tweaked from me reefing on it to break the pinch welds. For extra stability I use the slip-on nuts like the headlight buckets have and run it down using some extra bolts I saved from breaking down previous cars.

The hood latch cable is REALLY long so it took a bit of doing to get it to actually open the hood. Better too long than too short for sure. It opens nicely now and closes without much trouble.

At this point, I smell fuel. For a split second I think "yes! good, there is fuel and it is making it's way to the engine" forgetting that in fact, if you smell fuel outside the car, it is also outside the car with you. I get underneath and find a sizable puddle underneath the fuel pump and filter, exactly where I don't fucking want it. I think I'm just a whiner, but I'm really nonplussed with the fuel pump and filter design that 240s have. It's delicate, rusts instantly, and a pain to get it all situated.

I pull it down, and fuel is POURING out of the bridge connection on the fuel pump side. Not great. This is the bridge I pulled off of the new car, and it looked pretty decent so I was surprised.

Thank Vishnu, I just hadn't tightened it down enough. I snug up the connection and test for leaks, and we're bone dry. 30 year old crush washers and lines seem to be holding. Top of the tank is dry too so I get the cover plate on her and button it up.

Back to the front end. Headlight goes in, with lots of anti-seize to make sure I'm not buying another one when it has to come off again. Quick test and the marker and headlight both work, which is nice. The other side will have to wait.

At this point, I don't have any fuel leaks, the power steering seems to be holding, and the radiator and trans cooler are in and hooked up. I'm ready to start her for this first time!

Fuck. No spark. I think the chances of it being from that harness I had to rewire is very, very high. Fuel pump comes on, cranks strong, but nothing. I'll have to look through some diagrams tomorrow and make sure I'm getting power everywhere. It also smells a little mousy, so hopefully there's no funny business behind the dash. Since it's free, I fire the parts cannon a little bit and replace the power stage with the one from the old car. It's a low bar, the new car's power stage has been exposed to the elements for a few years so I was hoping it was just corroded. Nope. Tomorrow I'll try a new EZK and ECU just to solve the easy stuff, then I'll have to start looking at pinouts and making sure I'm getting power where I need to. If anyone sees anything outright wildly wrong with the wiring I did on that white plug, call it out. It would not surprise me.

I took a quick break to fix the shifter linkage, thankfully it wasn't bound up, and I got it flipped around easily. I replaced the jesus clip on the trans side with a nicer dowel clip from the wiper motor I pulled.

 

[Rushin]

I want to get the tires on so this thing can also move if not under it's own power, so I get out my fender roller to massage things into place so I can at least get the wheels on. The tires are large enough that it simply does not fit without doing this. I'll be using a pipe in the fenders later to get proper clearance.

While I do this, it's a good time to bleed the rear brakes. I've always had great luck just gravity bleeding, so I prayed to Vishnu, Krishna, Jesus, and Jesus II that these crusty ass bleeders would open. I steel myself on the right side and bust out my vice grips since the hex is already hogged out.

It opens up wonderfully. I move onto the other side. I wasn't nearly as fucking lucky. A half hour with kroil, heat, and gentle coaxing gets me a broken bleeder. Thankfully it's rusty enough that it isn't leaking fluid everywhere and making a mess, but this wont do.


These pieces of shit literally never work, but I figured I'd try an EZ-out. In my entire career as a professional mechanic, and a backyard hooligan, I have never, ever, not even once had one of these fucking things work. I have a set and all they do is break off inside whatever I'm trying to get out, leaving a hardened steel dick in there to make drilling even more difficult.

It snaps off in 3 seconds. I don't know why I still have these things. Thankfully, I had a caliper in my stash to slap on. The pads I just transferred over, there's about 1mm of pad on the inboard side, but I'll use them until they start screaming. Of course the fucking line to the caliper was steel and frozen to the line (steel brake lines should be illegal and the penalty should be re-circumcision for using them) so I had to very carefully break it loose and spin the caliper off and do the reverse with the new one. The line twisted a bit but doesn't look like it's leaking so it should be okay. I'll have to stand on the brakes once I bleed the fronts to make sure it wont burst.

While the brakes bleed, I get the driveshaft in. I remember having more trouble getting the center support to stay where I put it last time I did this, but there wasn't much to write home about. I had a center support bracket that I sandblasted last year and painted gold because it's what I had. Bling!

I forget to grease the back shaft so I take it out again.


LISTEN UP LIBRUL

Brakes are bled by this point, so I finish the fender massage and get the tires on. Oh yeah, that's close.

I "secure" the brake lines and parking brake cables so I can stop crawling under the car for a little while. I love how clean it looks, I guess I have a passion for cable management.

Last bit I need from the silver shell is the door stuff. The handles on the new car open hard and the left passenger handle doesn't open at all.

The handles all work on the silver car because I'm a smart and hardworking boy. I also want a few bits and bobs that are tough to find unless someone has a donor shell with a decent interior lying around, which is getting less common. I get the cards pulled off.

Someone went gorilla mode on the car's lock switch so that'll have to be replaced too. I'd bet my life savings ($48) that the wires are rotted out on it anyhow.

Yep, it's fucked. This is trash now. The one in the silver car is marginally better but not by much. I have a spare, and I'll spend some time doing some rewiring and fixing the contacts. This failure is always so puzzling to me as most of the wiring in the 90s 240s hangs on pretty well, but I've never had a lock switch pulled where the insulation wasn't completely destroyed.

Sure enough, all of the new car's door handles are missing bolts, and the left passenger side handle is completely broken. These bolts back out and people just keep reefing on the door until it breaks and wont open. This is also really confusing as it takes 10 minutes to get the door card off. I have a bag of these bolts since this is how they are in every car I buy, and loctite them in.

All of the handles work now! I spray some graphite lube on all of the window linkages since they're pretty sluggish and it wakes them right up. The driver's window goes from not closing at all to being downright sprightly by volvo standards. For a car that hasn't been paid attention to, the door cards are in great shape. Probably owing to someone not cranking them off every 15 minutes to change the color.

I'll hit them with some clear coat to help preserve the cardboard before I pop them back in. The passenger mirror has no glass to speak of, so I steal the silver car's mirrors to replace it. I'll probably still keep the housing in case I have a rare broken housing, good glass moment.

I think the silver car is finally ready to be towed away. That's happening soon so I don't have to fret now, and can turn my attention to getting the car running and finishing up the interior at my leisure. Really hoping I can get it to fire tomorrow but if not, I can at least push it places. Here's a quick shoot of the haul from the silver car. The rest of the parts and interior my friend will use, plus a few extra things I threw in there for him.

Until tomorrow! Getting closer now, but I'm finally in a spot where the tree people can do their thing after the silver shell goes, which is nice. Tomorrow will be getting the door cards back on, bleeding the front brakes, and troubleshooting this stupid thing.

 

[Rushin]

Short post today. Weather was crummy and cold, it rained most of the day. Probably will do the same tomorrow so I wont get much done. Now that it rolls my timeline has expanded quite a bit so I don't have to rush. I went a took a look at some diagrams on Dave's site to see what went wrong with that white plug.

D'oh! Yep, that'll do it. Those 2 wires need 12v of power, the fusible link isn't used in 1991, and my donor car is a 1990. I need to run two wires from the battery to the two red ones.

I have no idea where the wires for the fusible link went, so I just stack new wires on top of the growing pile. The gauge is pretty similar, even if the color is wrong.

I didn't want to make a hole in the harness plug, so I used the ABS plug since this car came without it.

Since it's coming straight from the battery I added fuses to each of the wires as an added precaution. They're supposed to be 25A but I only had 20. I don't think it'll get close enough to blow.

I crank it aaaand... nothing. Still wont start. Damn, I was really hoping that was it. The blue-yellow wire is for momentary ECU power at cranking, so I wouldn't be surprised if that needs to be wired up as well, but the new car's harness doesn't have a blue-yellow wire like all the diagrams say it does. There's pink-white but touching the blue yellow and that one together while cranking do nothing.

I'm getting voltage at fuse 5, good battery voltage, and voltage to the coil with wire continuity from the power stage to the coil. Coil resistance is also good, as a sanity check.

At this point it's chilly and I'm hungry and need a shower. I'll keep looking tomorrow and checking wires. My friend is picking up the shell tomorrow so he might be able to give me some insight into what's going on. I pull the plugs just to make sure I'm getting fuel. I can hear the fuel pumps coming on but these look a little drier than I would have expected. They don't reek but they smell of gas at least.

When I installed another engine on a different project, I had a brand-new crank sensor I put in, that tested good on resistance values and waveform, but was bad. I chased the problem for months before I replaced it out of desperation and got it started. I'm thinking on that install I may have bumped it on the trans tunnel or something like that and tweaked it enough to break it without any physical damage? Maybe the same happened with this car. Taking my supposition into account, I tried to be extra careful but who knows, I'm doing this alone and can't see every angle. This sensor is new and was running fine in the other car, but it's a possibility. I'll probably just pick one up since they're good to have on hand anyhow, and throw it in. If I don't find the problem while I'm waiting for it, and it doesn't fix it, I can at least rule it out.

Tomorrow if the weather isn't awful I'll check to make sure the ECU is getting power where and when it should, along with the EZK. I did swap them with a known good set and no luck, so I can rule that out too. If the weather is really nice I'll bleed the front brakes.

 

[Rushin]

A little bit of work/troubleshooting over the past few days. Shell left yesterday which gives me more space to work. It feels good to get that thing out of here. A little bit of lifting with the cherry picker and pulling with a winch and it's on and leaving me.

I misread the diagram and realized that the 12v that used to come from the battery doesn't come *from* the battery anymore, but the car harness side. So I accidentally made a 12v loop that goes nowhere since both side have 12v power. Stupid. Because I didn't touch the underhood fuse, pins 4 and 5 on the ECU and EZK are getting the constant 12v they should, without all of that extra wire business.

I'm pretty convinced at this point that the blue-yellow wire that doesn't have a home is part of the issue. It's on every diagram but on this car (1991) and my fiancee's car (also 1991) this blue wire is not present in the harness. I have absolutely no clue where it goes. It has 12v of power which is even stranger. It's supposed to be 12v while cranking (according to the diagrams) but I would have thought it'd only supply 12v while cranking, not all the time.

The new crank sensor came in so I figured what the hell, I'll throw it in. The old one tested good, but so did the one in my other car and that one was bad and led to a no-start condition there.

It came out so easy, that wasn't so bad. Wait a minute, this looks a little weird. I don't think the other one looks like this...

Ah, fuck

It must have gotten smacked or had a failure from the factory. The housing is still in the crank sensor bracket.

After some clever work with a pick and screwdriver, I was able to just barely get it out. If it was in there any harder, I may have had to drop the trans. I didn't, thank god.

Never seen that before.

My friend dropped off an LH 2.2 manifold with downpipe since my other downpipe was a crusty piece of shit, and my manifold had a broken stud. This is actually perfect, now I don't need to buy a cat. Eventually I'll be putting a diesel in this car, so I'd have to pull the cat anyhow, so this saves me time. When that happens I'll just need an O2 sensor plug and I'll be good to go.

The studs and nuts on the head come out wonderfully after a few days of soaking in Kroil. I think I'm one of the 5% of B230 owners that does not have broken exhaust studs.

I get the face of the exhaust manifold all cleaned up, ready for it to go on.

I thought I had gaskets in my box, but turns out they're for something entirely different.. They're close but not quite that close. I've had these for years and they were close enough to look right until I got them on the car. So now I need to order manifold gaskets. It's whatever, this car doesn't run anyhow.

At this point, I really need to figure out where the hell the blue-yellow wire goes. There's no place for it on the body, and it's just a solid 12v. So I need to do more probing on both the EZK and ECU harnesses to see where I'm not getting power. I have a waveform and reference voltage on pin 1 of the ECU when cranking, so the EZK is getting a signal, but something is not kicking on, so I have no spark. I leave for a work trip on Sunday, so this thing will sit for a week. I'll do more research but I'm pretty stumped at this point. Something isn't getting power when it should. I may have time on Sunday to mess with it before I go, but if so, it wont be much time. I might have to have a friend come out and take a look at it. Some fresh eyes on the diagrams and wiring may shed some light on things.

 

[Rushin]

(Old post, relocated to actual thread)

Fucker starts now

After agonizing over that stupid white plug, checking, re-checking, we found the Volvo gods have cursed me. While I have continuity from the blue wire at the plug, the ECU sees crank signal and sends voltage, for some reason 12v doesn't make it all the way to the coil. The EZK SENDS 12v, but somewhere between the white plug on the body side, and the coil there is a break in the wire, just enough to give the coil only a trickle of voltage, but still with continuity. So somewhere in the harness the positive coil wire has like 3 strands to give me continuity, but not enough to pass 12 volts through. Well, no big deal. I'll just run 12v switch power directly to the coil from somewhere else, and now it starts up wonderfully.

I have to clean up the rat's nest of wiring and put everything back together but it's functioning finally.

I still need exhaust manifold gaskets so it's very loud, I can't run it for long out of consideration of my neighbors and I'd assume it'd run like shit anyhow with no O2 hooked up.

Since I haven't ordered gaskets yet, I turn my attention to the rotting lock switch. The wires here look like ass, so I'm completely replacing them.

The housing splits apart with some very minor coaxing and you can see how fucked up the contacts are, it's just an absolute mess in there. Tons of corrosion, everything is coming apart.

I gently pry the locking tabs out and get the contacts sitting by themselves.

I try my soldering iron to get the old crunchy wires off.

Whatever Volvo uses as solder is an amalgalm of tungsten and god, because it wasn't even getting CLOSE to coming off with my iron turned all the way up, so I went nuclear.

Contacts are all free, so I dropped them in Dr. Pepper to loosen up the corrosion.

Until tomorrow! I'll be doing some scrubbing and cleaning on the components, then between the two lock switches I should be able to make one good one. Now that I'm back and she runs I'm able to turn my attention to other things. I still need to get the bumper and sway bar on, and the door cards. I'll wait to do my fuse panel until everything else is buttoned up and I can confirm I don't have any more weird issues.

 

[Rushin]

Current update! A few small things happened over the course of a couple days/a week. I dropped my insurance before they could drop me. I don't want to cut down the tree, and the limbs aren't dead. So I busted my ass for nothing!!!! But it did give me motivation to not have this thing sit in parts for 3 years.

I got the lock switch in, and the door cards on. Remembering how that ring went over the lock mechanism was harder than it should have been, but it's in there and it works! Except for the front passenger side. That one, like my old car, seems to have a seized lock actuator. Whatever, I'll find another car later on to steal parts from. The driver's side lock switch was also placed too low, so it locks itself whenever I slam the door. Annoying as fuck, I'll have to get the card off to fix that soon.

I replaced the door handle backing plates on all the doors since it was missing.

Door cards went on smoothly but I only had some really ugly hydro-dipped trim rings for the door handles. I pulled these out of a black interior and I think the previous owner legitimately thought it looked sick. The beige doesn't help matters.

My exhaust gaskets came in, so the manifold and downpipe went on, along with a possibly faulty O2 sensor.

Since I can run this thing without deafening myself, I went ahead and put an actual terminal end on the switched power wire I'm using for the coil.

I start it up and let it run for a little while.

Fuck me. Of course the shit quality wont show you anything but that light on the left is the battery light. I checked my battery and sure enough, I was running the engine off of battery voltage. The alternator is just as excited as I am about this. This car has been bizarre. This is my 5th engine pull and my 4th swap, and this one has had the least amount of fiddling and time in between swaps and it's given me some insane issues. I was able to get a non-runner into a junkyard shell and get it running in less time. Shit is driving me absolutely crazy. At this point with the issues it's having (No power to the coil, no OBD, no radio power, no exciter wire) there's definitely something going on with the ignition switch or elsewhere. I don't think it's the engine harness but who knows. It seems unlikely that all of these issues would crop up from not touching the engine or harness and then immediately putting it in another car.

I check the grey firewall plug, and it's pretty roached. It's going to take me a while to get the bullet sheaths 3d printed but I can make this work for now. I have new bullets on the way.

I check the red wire with key on, and I'm getting no power. Just to make sure I didn't misread a diagram, I make sure the red wire actually goes to the exciter and it does, I hear the rewarding beep of continuity. At this point, with some sort of obvious issue effecting all of these systems, I'm going to throw in the towel and stop looking for a while. I'm going to fix the firewall plug, and just run a second wire from switched power to the exciter. I'll keep the stock wire intact so if I ever figure out what's going on, I can put it back. I have other things to do in the meantime.

It does start and run now though! Though with a fairly extended crank. It starts and runs and doesn't seem to have any idle issues. Since that's all "good" I take the time to swap in my wagonmeister fuse panel.

Wishful thinking had me hoping that this would magically fix all of my issues and it was just bad crayon fuses like on the previous shell. Not so. It's a lot prettier and more reliable but things stayed the same. C'est la vie, life goes on.

Since I'm waiting on stuff to fix the firewall plug, I don't think I'll have many long or exciting updates, but even after this thing is fully put together and running, I'll post updates to it here. The work is never done, especially on old shitboxes where the suspension has been fiddled with.

Remaining to do before I get it titled:

-Bleed front brakes

-Change oil

-Install exhaust

-Pipe fenders

-Excite the alternator

-Reassemble interior bits

-Fix the stupid driver's door lock

 

[Rushin]

A little more work done today! The Detroit Gambler 500 is next weekend, I didn't expect to be able to go because of a schedule conflict, but that cleared up and helped give me a little more motivation to get this sucker going before Saturday.

My friend 3d printed some replacement wire sheaths and I had some open barrel crimp bullet connectors come in. I always forget that this print isn't quite right so I have to drill out the hole a bit for the wire.

I only have green wire in a new reel and I'm wayyy too lazy to hunt through my harness pieces for stuff that matches, so everything gets green!! Yay!! The plug doesn't fully seat because the sheath print sucks ass, and is slightly too small for the bullets on the harness side to go all the way in. But the wires are repaired and the connection is good. It's pretty tight but we'll see if the first big bump dislodges it.

I wasn't getting voltage on the body side for the exciter, but I was hopeful that this would eliminate the gremlins and get 12v to the alternator. It did not. It's almost certain I have an ignition switch issue or something similar at this point with the other issues I'm having, and the fact that it only starts when I crank it, and let the key go back to KPII. It starts and runs great but it's a little silly since I can crank it for hours and it wont start, but when I let the key off, it fires right up.

I run a beautiful green wire to the alt from switched power. The battery light is still on the dash, but it charges now like it should.

I get both sides cleaned up and everything put away now that it runs, starts, and charges. What a bear dude.

After everything's put away, I get it up to temp and run it for a while to make sure the gauges read properly. Seems like they do, and I'm not overheating or anything which is nice.

I change the oil and filter, the oil smells a bit gassy but otherwise it's in practically perfect condition for the age of it. I try to change it once a year since it didn't get driven much in the summer, but I probably should have upped it to twice a year since I've been doing a lot of towing with it.

I test hang the exhaust. I got quite a few pieces from a friend, but I'll need to cobblefuck something together for this weekend, then get it done properly later.

I need all of the exhaust clamps, and a pipe that goes from the mid exhaust to the downpipe. I'm also missing the small elbow that goes from the over axle bit to the mid exhaust. I'm hoping I can find some garbage at O'reilly's. I'll do it right later but for now I don't want to drive 500 miles with a deafening drone. When the exhausts are sorted on these cars, they're quite pleasant.

I don't have a cat and I'm not running one. This will be hard to fit anything for, I may just have a pipe sitting inside it for now, and wrap a ton of foil tape around it until I can get a proper fit welded up.

Stalled with that for now, I turn my attention to the front brakes. Unfortunately these are rebuilt calipers, and whoever rebuilds them has brains as smooth as glass, they replaced all of the nice 8 and 9mm bleeders with some impossibly small imperial size. Drives me crazy. I'm going to grab a socket and wrench for it when I hit up the auto parts store, if I break a bleeder I have a spare set of calipers, but they're ABS so I'm going to have to run the adapter that was made for my other car, which is much less than ideal.

In that case, I just get the sway bar on. These links are nice but they don't let me level the sway bar out as much as I'd like, so the bar is lightly canted. This is much better than stock but not exactly what I want. I think setting it up to get those extra 20mm is probably not worth the squeeze however, so it'll stay like this.

I get the front bumper on. I have a few of those rectangular clips lying around that I bought new, so tomorrow after I scavenge some 10mm bolts and washers, it should hold nicely.

I have a trim piece that came from god knows where, so fuck it, I throw that on too. My nicer car doesn't need it, and now it's one less piece sitting in my basement. I call that a win.

That's it for now! Tomorrow I'll hopefully get the exhaust "done" and quiet it down a bit, and hopefully wont break a bleeder. If everything goes right (it wont) I'll be test driving this bad boy by Wednesday. Until next time!

 

[Rushin]

Over the past couple days I've been doing some bits and pieces of things to finish up. It runs and starts now without any trouble, but I have yet to drive it down the road. It will most likely have its trial by fire during the Gambler, so I'm expecting some ridiculous breakdowns to happen.

I stopped the driver door from locking every time I closed it. I think there's an OE spring that's missing but I didn't have anything that would work in the space provided so I made do.

I then proceeded to try to bleed my front brakes, and every damn bleeder on the right caliper broke off. That's two calipers I've had to replace using my parts stash.

I HATE BRAKE LINES I HATE BRAKE LINES I HATE BRAKE LINES

I had an awful time getting the top line into the caliper, it must have gotten tweaked when I took the other one off, so I had to completely pull it off, thread it in, then reattach the line.

All of this fucking around took too long and bled my reservoir dry so I'll have to do a proper bleed when my friend comes by tomorrow for the gambler.

Nobody had 2" pipe in stock anywhere so I'll have to redo this after the gambler. This shit is expensive for how unbelievably ass it is. $100 gets me the most putrid exhaust setup known to man, and of course nobody had a 2" 90 in stock for the over axle bit, so the mid muffler is my only sound deadening at the moment and it's blasting into the axle. It's still much quieter than a header but man, it sucks to look at.

There's no real good way to secure anything to the downpipe, so I just used some of the exhaust tape that stoners use when their exhaust rots out. I've done some really gross shit in the past but this still makes me feel really dirty.

Tomorrow I'll have a hand bleeding the brakes and rolling the fenders. I'll be using mr. hammer and mr. jack handle to hopefully make enough room in the wheel wells so I don't rub on bumps and turns. I'm really, really trying to not cut these. It looks awful and ratty. Hopefully I can make something happen. I'll update that as well as pictures from the gambler after this weekend. It's going to get fucken froggy

 

[Rushin]

Big update today!! Gambler 500 was a massive success. I'll lay it out chronologically.

The car still has an ignition issue. The lights on the dash haven't been fixed and it'll probably take me a while. My friend came by at 7:30pm the Friday before the Gambler starts. We have a 2.5 hour drive to Detroit, so we need to fix everything remaining before it gets too late since we'll have to get up at 5:30am to make it to the starting point by 9. I tried to do as much as I can, we have a track record of rushing to finish things the night before events and barely get any sleep.

We get the brakes bled, the pedal has a little bit more travel than I'd like since the rear pads are almost on the metal. It isn't unsafe but will make for some pucker moments when we have to stop quickly. I'll definitely be throwing new pads in there.

Now we get to clearancing. My friend really just wanted to cut the fenders again but I was adamant. We did a lot of rolling but they still rubbed pretty badly, even when going over small bumps. After a couple hours of fighting it, I caved and we cut a small portion out of the front fender so the wheel would stop pulling the fender back in and tearing it up.

We cut this pretty late at night, we started out with a sawzall but now being older and realizing that Saturday isn't really a "free day" for most adults, we finished these cuts with tin snips which took much longer. We marked the lengths and angle with an impact extension to have it be relatively uniform.

It's now 12:45am. We'll be getting roughly four and a half hours of sleep before we have to bounce out. The fenders still rub pretty badly but we figure fixing it when we get there is going to be better than staying up all night chasing our tail and feeling like shit all day.

We make it to the meetup site and see a lot of just incredibly bad cars, which always makes me happy. The spread ranges from completely stock blazers to absolutely nutty monstrosities.

One car had the clutch and brake on the driver's side, and the throttle pedal operated by the passenger. The owner of this car drove it all the way from Washington like this.

If you're not familiar with the Gambler 500, it is a yearly event where you participate in a 500 mile on road and offroad rally with cars worth $500 or less. Questionable math is encouraged, so my $600 shell is close enough. Any 4wd or offroad capable cars that come along are expected to be the rescuers of the other much worse cars. The rally starts in Detroit, and you follow a group of coordinates, take pictures at each location, then end in St. Helen to do more offroading. Saturday night there is a big party and people drag race their cars over uneven fields, do pulls and relay races, and generally just have a great time.

We meet up with @SurvivorBrickDriver90 (Sam for brevity) who brought a completely stock 240 sedan. He took a camry door and made a skidplate out of it, which was worth its weight in gold by the end of the trip.

At the first waypoint, we meet another group driving a Volvo 940 running on 2 cylinders (maybe 1.5), and a Mazda 3 with a small lift and ATs.

The Mazda has the Skyactiv engine and a 6 speed manual, making 167hp. So roughly double our 240s, and probably triple the 940 in its current state. The 940 idles like it wants to die and takes off like it's starting in fourth gear. While FWD is not ideal offroad, the power and trans will make it surprisingly capable.

We make a few more stops in Detroit, and we gain a large convoy for a little while.

Eventually the Brat and other cars peter out and we skip a few coordinates in Detroit to start making our way up North.

I couldn't get the car plated in time (the one week the SOS doesn't have same-day appointments) so I'm riding slightly dirty. I'm having to block my plate a lot so cops with nothing better to do don't harass me.

I got pulled over almost instantly Saturday night while we pull out of a bar looking for a place to eat but thankfully get let go without much incident. I apparently have only one functioning running light and my taillight housing has melted. I'll address that later.

We're getting closer to the offroad site and I still rub, so I have to make some changes. I have to pull the fenders out even farther, and the channel locks come out. I squish down the inner lip and pull the fender out which seems to solve the issue for now.

The bumper cover starts to evacuate itself from the bumper on the highway, so I have to zip tie it to the bumper.

At one of the stops before we make it to camp, I notice that my right rear tire is looking really low. I pull out the gauge and I have a whopping 4.5 PSI in the tire. I fear the worst and look for where the fender finally chewed through the sidewall but see no damage. In a freak occurance, the valve stem has developed a huge leak out of nowhere. One of the other people in the convoy has some steelstik putty, so we smear that all around the valve stem, and zip tie it to the wheel to keep tension on it to have it hold. We waited a few moments and see that the repair has completely fixed our air leak. This was the only repair we had to do to our car the entire trip. I forgot to take a picture but I can't let you all go without seeing this, so I cleaned the mud off today and took a pic of this. Looking at it, it's a fucking MIRACLE it held air for even a little bit, much more so that it's still sealing perfectly.

We start offroading. The Mazda 3 is small and just absolutely RIPS through the trails. We are the most capable car in the group so we end up pulling them out when they get stuck but this only happens about 3 times. It's a little scary when the most capable offroad car is a lifted 240 on chewed up tires. Sam's 240 absolutely crushed it. He only got stuck twice, and once was just because the car in front of him didn't keep their speed through a really sandy curve. Otherwise he sent it like an absolute madman and it made it up some really crazy grades and very deep sand. His lightbar came in handy during the faster sandy portions so he could cut through the dust.

The camry door protected his crankshaft pully and oil pan quite a few times from rocks and bottoming out.

The second day was a bit messier. The Mazda got stuck for the third time in a really bad spot in the valley of two very steep hills and chewed up its alternator belt, tore off its skidplate, and lost both wheel well covers. It also temporarily locked itself out of every gear but reverse, but after some force it went back into all of the gears. The wide-angle gopro lens does not do this hill justice. When we crawled up this hill, we were laid back in the seat and had to give it full throttle to grunt over the last bit. Of course Sam just floored it, bottomed out both front and rear suspension, smashed his hitch into the ground, and made it up after giving himself a runway to get some speed.

This is obviously not extremely impressive from viewing the video, fisheye does not show hills and obstacles very well, and I'm sure a vehicle with 4WD and a lift would eat these up with no problem. But for these cars it was pretty good. We did a lot more trails Saturday and Sunday but I unfortunately didn't get the footage I wanted. We had a multi-mile long stretch of deep sand on a wide path that was a ton of fun to bomb down. Moving in a convoy at 50 just absolutely sending it down this trail was an absolute blast.

The wheels at this point still rubbed over big bumps, but it was just chewing up a bit of the knobs so we weren't sweating it too bad. It looks gnarly but at the end of the trip it completely stopped rubbing. I think eventually I may go down a size in tire or lift it another 1.5inches for a total of 6.5 inches up front.

I also backed into a stump I didn't see, and completely crushed in my right bumper shock. I'll have to find another stump to back into on the left side to even it all out.

Altogether, it was a blast! I smoked too many darts and drank a little too much but I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. I definitely need a skidplate since my engine is absolutely coated in mud.

Here's the pre-trip photo:

And here's the after:

Hoping to get it even filthier next year. It ran and performed beautifully, so now it's time to turn my attention to the little stuff.

To do:

-Replace all U-Joints

-Pad Slap Rear Brakes

-Replace tail lights and correct harness

-Make skidplate

-Add CB Radio

-Hunt down wiring issues

-Install front speakers

-Change diff oil

-Unfuck Exhaust

-Replace brake backing plates and regrease front bearings

-Bedline car, add livery

-Replace front struts, bearings, and mounts

-Install Cherokee Rear Springs, Vanagon Shocks in rear