The Hacked Saga: A Tale of Way Too Many Projects (100, 200, 900-series)

[okoye]

I suggest you not continue to drive the 960. Drain the trans fluid, and buy a new radiator and pray the transmission is still good. I’ve had that happen to my 960 and lost all gears when it got hot.

 

[fatcatbestcat]

Like... 2 months later update. Ish.

So, spoiler alert, I did make it home after last post. With temp plates on the car, I daily drove it to and from work for about a week while I learned about all the 960's foibles and failings. Here's a short list of everything I can come up with off the top of my head that's wrong with the car:

• Horrific exhaust leak
• Aforementioned shifting difficulties
• Headlights randomly don't work
• Brakes are not great and the front rotors are definitely warped
• No parking brake
• No trunk lock mechanism whatsoever; a key does not fit in the barrel and the hatch doesn't properly close all the time
• Painfully bad wind noise from the sunroof
• Wipers don't always return to park and interfere with the hood closing
• Driver's side taillight falling out
• Passenger power seat broken and immobile
• Rolling SRS light that goes away after throttle is applied
• Power antenna doesn't work
• Rear wiper doesn't work, but the washer squirter does...
• Windshield has a concerning number of cracks and chips
  
  Also it snowed during that test drive week, so I got to drive the thing in the snow. It handled the weather surprisingly well with the transmission in 'W' mode so there's some promise there at least...
  
  I started being more and more suspicious that the bad transmission behaviour is actually more related to the car not running properly than a bad transmission. I really hope(d) this was the case, since one of the POs informed me that it had been totally rebuilt in 2022, with new solenoids and sensors. My first small step towards this was swapping out the throttle position sensor, because some of the behaviours seemed like a throttle position problem.
  
  

  

The Delphi unit was cheap and a drop-in replacement for the Korean Bosch one. I tested the Bosch one out of the car with a multimeter, and there were a bunch of dead spots in its travel, which tells me that the potentiometer inside was pretty well toast. With the new one, the car still had trouble staying in the right gear, but for the first time I had been able to actually rev it past 5,000 rpm and get it to shift on its own FOR ONCE.

And then I parted it out.

Hacked IX: The Rise of the 145

Nah, I'm joking - it was kind of a rusty turd and its whole ass was made of bondo. Not really worth swapping out.

What actually happened is I shipped the 960's (really nice) headlights out to @oscarnenonen in Sweden, and he shipped me back some E-codes. Of course, they got dropped in shipping and between ripping the headlights out of the wagon and getting new glass lenses for the E-codes, I basically didn't touch the car for a month.

My pro-tip for swapping lenses is this: bend the clips way further than you think you need, you will save your fingertips. The aftermarket lens clips are noticeably smaller and shorter than the OE ones. The more you know.

Wired up very sketchily with some parts from Dbarton and a lot of help from @Hodginsa who also broke (and then fixed) one of the headlight mounts in a way I will never get back to and properly redo.

 

[fatcatbestcat]

Fast forward to today, I accomplished nothing once again but did learn some things. Mostly that I need to order more parts.

Here's the sunroof on the 960. I guess Volvo couldn't ever figure out how to paint aluminum

On the early cars, there seems to be this big bezel that goes around the glass, and in this case mine is delaminating. I'm hoping to fix this later with some extra thin double sided tape.

I was hoping to replace the coil pack harness, but the shop was double-booked so I didn't really get much done except some inspection.

This is good. This is fine. I want to live.

I cleaned up some of the oil, which I suspect means a leaking valve cover gasket - which really also means timing belt and water pump, and may as well do head gasket at that point (I'll fix it later I promise). I also pulled out one of the coils just to make sure oil wasn't leaking down and filling up the spark plug slots, which thankfully it wasn't.

I don't fully remember why I felt the need to do this, but I ran the car at medium-high RPMs to see if there was any arcing or anything weird going on with the coils. As bad as the current harness looks, there's no broken wires and all the connectors seem sound. I ran it up around where I was used to the car suddenly losing a bit of power, got out and noticed the coil for cylinder #1 was shooting smoke and leaking melted plastic everywhere.

Sounds like I will also be buying new coils. @jmiles came in clutch, noticing one of the random loose wires from the hoser-made harness was jiggling around and arcing against the firewall. I covered it in tape for now, and it stopped doing that.

Oh well, still more work to do.

 

[ortho stice]

That coil is COOKED

 

[fatcatbestcat]

Ah, so this is that thing that was arcing. I have many questions.

Seems optional, but having a test port seems useful too...

 

[ZVOLV]

What does that test wire do?

 

[bgpzfm142]

What does that test wire do?

It goes to coil-over-plug #1 and it's paralleled with the power feed to it. Presumably so you can get a spark signal from it for testing.

 

[fatcatbestcat]

It goes to coil-over-plug #1 and it's paralleled with the power feed to it. Presumably so you can get a spark signal from it for testing.

Okay, so that thing bouncing around and arcing and touching the firewall isn't intentional. I should have checked if it was hot, the other sketchy wires at the back of the cylinder head ended up just being grounds.

I'm hoping I can get some new coils this week or short notice. I also need to replace the exhaust header gaskets (and by extension the studs and nuts) so I may as well do that.

I also seem to have lost my contact to get the car questionably safetied in time for it to go to the cottage and the VCC meet in July, so I may just leave it dormant for a while. Not really excited about rebuilding the exhaust or redoing all the front suspension to satisfy an inspection.