Bluebrick91
New member
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2024
I am a year late to the forum thing and need to do a bit of catching up.
This is my 1991 Volvo 240 wagon, LH3.1 factory 5 speed car I purchased it in Hellertown, PA for $2,200 in late March of 2023. The car was certainly a project car and needed a lot of work done to become roadworthy. When driving home there was a brake failure light on the dash and the check engine light was on too. I noticed that 4th gear on my M47 was missing and it drove lazily on the 45 minute drive back home. I could immediately tell it needed brake work and new bushings all around. The first thing I tackled was making the single stage paint shine again.
I gave the car a good wash and polish to check out the condition of the paint and any bodywork that may need to be done in the future. Looking at the cars paint for the first time gave me the motivation to continue the journey that this car had in store for me.
Next I replaced the bushings brakes, rotors, a arms, and wheel bearings on the front end, (what a chore). I also removed the rear axle, all of the other suspension components and driveshaft.
.
I was browsing FB marketplace and scored a $20 M47 from a nice guy driving a 740. He stated that it was supposedly blown but I was going to use it as a learning experience to see how the transmissions went together and gain experience when it was time to rebuild my transmission. The transmission above was completely fine internally and just had a stripped drain plug hole.
Speaking of transmissions, I pulled the one that was running and driving out of the car and discovered that the input bearing completely exploded. So I combined the 2 transmissions to make one decent one and put it back into the car. I have no idea to this day how this transmission worked as well as it did.
I painted most of the rear suspension components and axle (other parts not pictured) to clean them up before I installed them back into the car.
I had to tackle the scariest part that I have been dreading next, the worst of the rot. I cut out the rust in the frame and made a patch and welded it onto the frame. the first half of the repair is pictured but I forgot to take a picture of the after welding the second patch.
I had noticed the bellows on the steering rack were torn so I decided to rebuild and refinish the steering rack to make sure it would not leak in the future, I needed to 3D print specialized tools to complete the rebuild successfully and the rack has yet to leak as of writing the post about a year later.
This is about a quarter of the rebuild that I did on this car in the past year, This is all of the time I have as of right now to update you all on the project and will continue writing up about this in the near future.
This is my 1991 Volvo 240 wagon, LH3.1 factory 5 speed car I purchased it in Hellertown, PA for $2,200 in late March of 2023. The car was certainly a project car and needed a lot of work done to become roadworthy. When driving home there was a brake failure light on the dash and the check engine light was on too. I noticed that 4th gear on my M47 was missing and it drove lazily on the 45 minute drive back home. I could immediately tell it needed brake work and new bushings all around. The first thing I tackled was making the single stage paint shine again.
I gave the car a good wash and polish to check out the condition of the paint and any bodywork that may need to be done in the future. Looking at the cars paint for the first time gave me the motivation to continue the journey that this car had in store for me.
Next I replaced the bushings brakes, rotors, a arms, and wheel bearings on the front end, (what a chore). I also removed the rear axle, all of the other suspension components and driveshaft.
.
I was browsing FB marketplace and scored a $20 M47 from a nice guy driving a 740. He stated that it was supposedly blown but I was going to use it as a learning experience to see how the transmissions went together and gain experience when it was time to rebuild my transmission. The transmission above was completely fine internally and just had a stripped drain plug hole.
Speaking of transmissions, I pulled the one that was running and driving out of the car and discovered that the input bearing completely exploded. So I combined the 2 transmissions to make one decent one and put it back into the car. I have no idea to this day how this transmission worked as well as it did.
I painted most of the rear suspension components and axle (other parts not pictured) to clean them up before I installed them back into the car.
I had to tackle the scariest part that I have been dreading next, the worst of the rot. I cut out the rust in the frame and made a patch and welded it onto the frame. the first half of the repair is pictured but I forgot to take a picture of the after welding the second patch.
I had noticed the bellows on the steering rack were torn so I decided to rebuild and refinish the steering rack to make sure it would not leak in the future, I needed to 3D print specialized tools to complete the rebuild successfully and the rack has yet to leak as of writing the post about a year later.
This is about a quarter of the rebuild that I did on this car in the past year, This is all of the time I have as of right now to update you all on the project and will continue writing up about this in the near future.