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Hackster's LSA / T56 2 door

Havent touched the car in almost a month and its been a nice break. When I was down at OPTIMA Invitational LSX Magazine contacted me about shooting some photos of the car for a write up.

I had no idea that it was going to be some of the best photos I have ever seen of the car.

Check it out if you get a chance

https://www.lsxmag.com/features/car-features/meet-sean-fogli-and-his-ls-swapped-1983-volvo-240/

Here are a few of the photos that Nicole shot of the car.

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I honestly never thought this thing would get this kind of love from people but its pretty awesome.

Last summer was simply outstanding for how many events we went to and all the amazing people we met.

Looking forward to the new setup being even better this year.

Sean
 
Had a little motivation from who knows what to work on this thing. But first I had @spooneyluv on IG draw this up for me. Super impressed with his work and this will be getting made into some shirts and hats very soon along with my ninteen78 logo.

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Been tinkering with the old girl, got the wiring up front buttoned up, front tray all bolted on, filled it with fluids and started it up. Had a few little issues, one coolant leak and one oil leak. Got those ironed out and worked on the tune with my boy Michael from the Motor City.

Video is terrible but you get the idea. Time to work on a few other bugs and get the frotn sway bar project started, some more camber up front and get some road testing. Still needs fresh tires and the rearend looked at before March.

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https://i.imgur.com/GLLxAyU.mp4

Would love to get it out of the garage and clean things up, both the car and the garage.

Getting a little motivated hearing it running again, forgot how rowdy this thing is.

Sean
 
whew, that blue LCD display had me squinting in a brightly lit office. I'm guessing it's either not retina-burning in person or you can dial the brightness way down?
 
Love the seats! Do they come in blue ;)?

They can come in any color you want......as long as you find the seats and take them to an upholstery shop the sky is the limit :-P Thanks, I love the seats they were totally worth the work.

whew, that blue LCD display had me squinting in a brightly lit office. I'm guessing it's either not retina-burning in person or you can dial the brightness way down?

Its just how it looks on video, it was starting to get dark and the camera was shocked by the light. Its never even crossed my mind that its too bright. I also have it hooked up to the dimmer so it goes dim when parking lights are on.

Sean
 
Well, been pretty tied up with other stuff lately and to be honest its been a great break from a solid almost 2 years on this thing. Built a pretty snazzy lifted t56 swapped 940, bought a new daily, sold the old one.

Been tinkering on this but not a ton of progress really.

I had nothing but issues getting these parts, from Summit saying it was 2 days out to being almost 2 months before I finally received it to the Setrab order on Amazon getting lost, then the package getting lost. Finally had everything in hand.

Wasnt cheap but bad ass parts.

SETRAB oil cooler, Russel -10 an fittings, Russel braided stainless -10 hoses, Earl's Thermostatically controlled Oil Cooler fitting from oil pan.

Install went well, I trimmed the backside of the front apron to get as much airflow as possible through the cooler.

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I ran the stainless hoses as I am worried about heat and abrasion on oil lines. It just makes me nervous to run something that is just rubber and cloth or PTFE or something so not really the look I love but should be strung and durable.

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The only snafu....

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I had my drill stop move and hit the supercharger heat exchanger and put a mother f ing hole in it.

Not pretty but local rad shop repaired it and you will never ever see it. Pressure tested to 20 lbs again never will get close to that.

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I have switched over to AMSOIL on just about everything and now this. I had great luck with Mobile1 the last year but there is a few benefits to the Amsoil stuff and it made huge differences in trans shifting in both the JK and the 940.

One of the biggest good side effects of the oil cooler is the extra oil capacity, I added in an extra 2 quarts between the cooler and the lines. Full 7.5 quarts to full now. Super happy about that.

Amsoil 5w30 signature series full synthetic going in

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So far no leaks, need to get it up to operating temps and check it all out but going to work on building some extended front control arms to help with gaining some camber before I drop it back on the ground.

Next round is more camber, bigger front sway bar and new tires and should be about good to go for another round of beating the snot out of it.:omg:

Happy Friday all!!
 
I ran the stainless hoses as I am worried about heat and abrasion on oil lines. It just makes me nervous to run something that is just rubber and cloth or PTFE or something so not really the look I love but should be strung and durable.

fwiw we do jet engine harnesses and liquid systems at work here and all of the new-gen stuff is nomex braid. Not many more challenging environments than that. Stainless braiding is a protective layer, it's really not doing anything for thermal protection of the interior layer.

my opinion, worth price charged.
 
fwiw we do jet engine harnesses and liquid systems at work here and all of the new-gen stuff is nomex braid. Not many more challenging environments than that. Stainless braiding is a protective layer, it's really not doing anything for thermal protection of the interior layer.

my opinion, worth price charged.

Totally understand. I have never worked on a jet engine or an airplane so I have no idea wht kind of moving parts there is or what tollerances are like.

In this particular situation, I have 2 large lines that run off of the adapter and pretty close to the exhaust manifold, then right next to the steering, through the core support. I felt like the stainless outside was far superior to abrasion than the other offerings. I understand its doing zero for thermal protection of the fluid inside. I do believe that thermal resistance on the outside of commercially available -10 hoses its the best (Touching a header and not burning through and rupturing a line)

Gaaah hole in cooler. I bet some expletives were used.
Amsoil is good stuff. Try the joe gibbs stuff at all?

Oh that is an understatement. I may have thrown a few things and hit a cabinet or 3. First time I have been that pissed at myself in a long, long time.

Have not tried the Gibbs stuff, but I have heard great things about it. I am an Amsoil dealer so the costs are manageable, the Gibbs stuff is 50% more.

Sean
 
I use to keep tape measures around to throw when I got pissed but I got tired of patching holes in the drywall.
 
I use to keep tape measures around to throw when I got pissed but I got tired of patching holes in the drywall.

Hahah. I feel like I am a pretty mellow calm guy but that one really pissed me off. :-P

Managed a little bit of time to work on the car this weekend. All of my friends in the south area already racing so I figured its time to get a move on.

With most of the engine work buttoned up I turned to the other part of the winter upgrades.

I am burning up the outside of front tires, the front of the car has way too much body roll and not enough negative camber to keep the car planted in the turns.

I am maxed out on the Kaplenkhe camber plates and am at 2.5 degrees. So the plan is to extend the lower control arm out and gain some camber that way, then fine tune with the camber plates up top. Is going to cause me more tire clearance issues but Ill deal with that.

I know that Sellholm sells a lower control arm for the 240's but ordering parts from them is difficult at best and the KL Racing ones widen it too much and add way too much caster.

So I decided I was going to chop up a set of stock ones and add in .75" and patch them back together.

I used some .75" x1/8" strap so I knew that I was going out exactly square and .75" Bent up to match the shape of the control arm, chop grind and tack together.



With the basic concept working out how I had imagined, I went ahead and buttoned it up. Added a bunch of reinforcement to make sure that the arm was solid and had no fears of it failing at the extension.

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Not pictured is the Yoshifab boxing plates for the underside. I wish that they were thicker metal, they are thin gauge sheetmetal, I was thinking 1/8" would have netted a stiffer arm.

All in all the one turned out good. I ran out of Argon so the other side waits.

With that one buttoned up I turned to a few other things that needed attention under the car.

I have been running a 25mm drop bar up front. I somehow managed to acquire a 28mm non drop bar from the twins some time ago. Our fear was that it would hit the oil pan so they had some 1/4" shims lazer cut to drop it down. I only needed 1 per side and the 28mm bar was a bolt in deal. I was pretty surprised to see how much beefier the 28mm bar was than the 25. I have a feeling this is going to be a much needed improvement from the 25mm drop bar. Unfortunately no pics... Its a sway bar, but bigger =)

Onto the last round of my cooling upgrades. Many people have mentioned that the factory front air dam is supposed to have a little plastic diffuser that directs air up from the lower air dam up to the radiator. With so much being different on this car and speeds of well over 150 mph I figured that something of more substance would likely need to be built.

I had some 1/2" thick UHMW left over from my buggy from a few years back and love working with it.

So I had the wife help with a template, some jigg saw action to cut it out then routered all of the edges for a nice finished look. Then it got bolted into the same place the splash tray goes and tucks in behind the front lip. It will get bolted in the front to make sure that it stays planted at high speeds.

Pretty happy with how it turned out and hope that all of this work to keep things cool has a positive effect this summer.

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I am hoping I can get the other arm buttoned up in the next few days and get them off to powdercoat.

I still need to get the rearend looked at, get new tires mounted up and get a proper alignment on it before its ready for another summer of beating on it but feel I have done a pretty good number of changes in the off season, hoping for some good results to come of it and a little faster this year.

Sean
 
No prob. I just dont know how the inner bolt is attached because the sway bar mount is there. Or tap the plate with an m12 and bolt it from the bottom i guess.
I thought the bne stuff would be enough camber but apparently not.

I think if I totally shop out the top of the strut sheetmetal and get the coil to touch the inner it would gain me another .25 degree but that still only puts me at 2.75.

After much consideration after the steel plate extension approach I continued on with my project. I like the idea of the lower ball joint being bolted directly to the control arm with nuts and washers. Having a plate that is threaded with a super low profile bolt holding it all together just didnt give me that Comfortable feeling. I am sure it would be fine but its not what Ill be doing this go around.

2nd arm went much quicker than the first, and I think it turned out even better.

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For the bottom......I initally tried tigging this together and it worked, but it wasnt pretty. Still fairly new to the TIG game I found that the super thin boxing plates I got from Yoshi would melt away super quick when trying to weld to the 1/8" thick control arm material. It wasnt pretty, it wasnt fast so I put that away and got the squirt gun out for the bottom plates. Was so much easier and although not tig and stitched together I know 100% that this is beefy and should hold up no problem to whatever I throw at it.

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If I did it again, I would cut out my own boxing plates out of 1/8".

Now I gotta figure out how to remount the sway bar to the arms and get them coated with something.

Sean
 
Absolute overkill on the sway bar tabs, but I wanted to support the extension I added. Pretty sure that this will do.

I am still learning on the TIG stuff and have clearly learned that the better the fitup is the better the weld and process will be.

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Figured a good shot of the before and after.

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Adding in the sway bar tabs was a pain, with the ball joint bolt moved out, real estate became slim in that area. Angled the tabs, added in some support to the extension all at the same time.

In the effort to save some time I have cleaned them up and will likely just shoot some textured black on them, press in some new STS Bushings and mount them up this weekend.

Hope to get this thing on the road in the next few days, gotta get some new tires ordered up and start on the rear of the car soon.

Hope everyone had a good week.

Sean
 
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