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Mike K's '79 242 Barn Car Revival

happy to report that the car has been running great all summer. Besides a little oil leak at the valve cover and the cam seal it hasn't missed a beat. I ran around at ~18psi for a while, now running ~22psi. It definitely feels a lot stronger, goes pretty good for a little 8v and sounds the part too.

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I've mostly just been driving it and making little adjustments here and there. I dropped the rear as low as it will go on 10" springs and tried on the 16.5mm BNE wheel spacers. I made as much room as I could but it was too tight and rubbed at the rear of the arch on both sides under any compression. I'll need to shorten the trailing arms to pull the wheel forward to run them. I like the look though.

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I also added an STS torque mount. I asked Scott if he could make it with a vent port for crankcase ventilation and he obliged. It's tapped for a -8an o-ring fitting, and they did a nice job machining for the o-ring seal. It adds a bit of a rhythmic vibration into the interior at idle, but it's mostly unnoticeable driving around.

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This was a pretty quick job this afternoon I've been meaning to do for a while. The quarter panel side trim on the car was really busted up, bent and missing most/all of the rubber bead. I had a small stash of replacement trim and new clips I finally put to ouse. I had two QP pieces in very good used condition, a trunk piece in good used condition, and one NOS door piece. I ended up using the trunk lid piece for one door by cutting it to length and swapping over the little end cap.

To get the trim off I took the two 8mm nuts on the back of the QP corners inside the trunk. Then at the front of the piece near the door I slid a sheet rock knife under the trim, smacked it with a hammer and sheared off the first plastic clip. With the two ends free you can pull from the rear/push from the front and slide the trim down the clips; then pop the trim off the clips one by one as you go. Punch the center out of the old clips and pry them out of the body with a plastic cats paw trim tool.

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new clips are OE Volvo, I soaked them in a cup of water for a bit and they popped right into the body, then tap the pins in with a hammer.

To install the trim I lined it up, then kind of lipped the top edge of the trim over the clip and smacked it inwards/downwards with the palm of my hand to pop it onto the clip. Repeated that times many clips and bruised the crap out of my palm.

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it looks way better, much cleaner and more finished than the broken up pieces.

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DL trim is kind of the theme of my month. I've put a bunch of time in working with Ian (HiPerf) and a dealership in Germany to ship over some of the last NOS 242dl trim pieces I can find anywhere in the world. If everything works out I should have a complete NOS set of trim to install when the car gets painted :ninja:
 
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This sounds incredible. When my car grows up I want it to sound just like that. Well done on that trim work, makes a big difference.
 
This sounds incredible. When my car grows up I want it to sound just like that. Well done on that trim work, makes a big difference.

God I miss having an nasty 8v. Sounds so good!

Agreed and agreed, thanks guys. I definitely don't think it "sounds like a tractor"! Very happy with the side trim, shouldn't have put it off for so long.

Your beige 242 and hacksters beige 242 makes my beige 242 feel inadequate

All beige cars are beautiful!!


well this week has been a stressor. Driving home from work Monday night I was going up a long steady grade around 4k rpm and like 5psi of boost and suddenly felt a big stumble and it immediately started running like garbage. Ahhh crap it's running on 3 cylinders! Limped it off the road and just had a pit in my stomach right away. It was just like what happened when I spit the lash cap out and hung the valve open. But that happened bouncing off the limiter, how could I bounce a valve at 4k rpm?! Either way it was for sure only running on 3 cylinders, and it looked like #4 was the dud.

Got it back to the garage and started trying to diagnose. I have one major serviceability issue which is that I CANNOT pull the #4 plug without removing the downpipe, there is just no way around it. So I had to go through the dance to get the DP off to even start the basics. First thing was just check compression, which is healthy and even across all 4 cylinders. Phew, this came as a big relief because it meant I didn't hang the valve again.

Pulled plugs and they looked fine. I ohm'ed out all of the plug wires and they checked out fine. The wires themselves are hidden behind a couple layers of thermal protection, but the boots were only lightly toasted and not burned through. I took the #4 wire and #4 plug and checked spark visually with the output test mode in tuner studio, confirmed spark with that pair through all 4 coils. Ok, plugs seem good, wires seem good, coils firing..

Checked timing, hadn't moved. Pulled the fuel rail out and checked injectors, they were firing properly (and one popped out of the rail under pressure and made a fun mess) and flowing. At this point I'm starting to scratch my head. After everything I went through last year I still couldn't get the valve train off my mind.. so off comes the valve cover. I didn't wipe a cam lobe off, valve lash checked out OK... now I'm relieved because the head doesn't have to come off the car and the "why did I invest this much money in a 530" setup has not failed me after 6 months.

But what happened? I was going back and forth with my Dad and Tate all day yesterday and we all seemed to think it pretty much had to be a spark issue. All of the components checked out individually but I decided to just test it out practically - reassemble the car and move the #4 plug and wire to #2 and see what happened. So it all goes back together, start the car and.. it's running fine. I let it warm up and it was idling along on all 4. Went for a drive and did 5 minutes getting it up to temp and all seemed good under cruise. Thinking at this point it was a loose connection or some weird anomaly. Roll into some boost and it immediately falls apart under positive pressure. Damn, but it's only under boost now.

back to the garage. Since I'm only dropping under boost I can't confirm what cylinder is effected now, but I moved the wire/plug as the only real change so I decided I'll just swap out all 4 wires and plugs. Take the stupid downpipe off AGAIN. Pull plugs and wires, and now I have to go through the routine of setting up new plug wires. Because of my turbo location the wires are right next to the downpipe, so every wire gets a DEI titanium heat sleeve, then the heat sleeve is spiral wrapped in DEI reflective gold foil, and I safety wire the boot in place.

Soo I check out the number 4 wire. The boot/heat tape is lightly toasted but not bad, I've had them burned completely through before and never had a problem. Well I go to pull the thing through the boot and out comes...

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I think I found the problem :uh:

I've never been so relieved to see a burnt in half plug wire. First of all I think these wires suck. I had been using some old recycled truck wires for like three years which saw just as much heat. This one failed after maybe 500 miles? Some GM/AC Delco "hi performance" wire. Second it was just an interesting diagnosis. Really the plug wire should have been the first suspect, and it was! But because the things were so mummified in heat wrap I trusted the ohm meter and my visual spark test. I would not have guessed that I happened to wiggle the wire just right so that it made a connection again, but not enough of one to provide a strong enough spark for boost.

For now I wrapped each plug wire itself in heat tape, put boots on, heat taped the boots, and safety wired it all to the coil bracket so I have an air gap to the DP now. Long term I need to a) change the downpipe path b) make a heat shield.

OH WAIT THERE'S MORE.
As I'm crawling around the car I see a bolt missing from the center section of my turbo. Look closer and oh.muh.gawd. 3 of the 5 bolts/mounting clamps that hold the center section into the hotside had backed out. FYI these were torqued to spec upon assembly, but did not use loc-tite. I was realistically a few drives away from having my brand new turbo liberate itself from the housing and bounce around the engine compartment like some kind of battle-bot. I'm now counting the stupid plug wire as a blessing because it forced me to catch a much bigger issue. No credit to Borg Warner for the, imo, stupid design. Never would have happened with a flange and a v-band clamp.

This was extra fun because when things got loose the turbo re-clocked itself in such a way that the drain line was forced up against the header, SO THAT GOT COOKED TOO. Re-making drain hoses is becoming a routine maintenance item now. I will definitely be reviving my project to make a custom hard line for the turbo drain.

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Anyways, that's how a burnt plug wire cost me 24hrs of massive stress and a vacation day at work.
 
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Soooo, does that mean the car is not shaken down yet?

Good catch on those items. Perhaps it would be beneficial to route the #4 plug behind the head. Looks bad but at least it would be less likely to get hot. As for the turbine bolts, that's how Garretts are set up. Weird point of failure though.
 
Was there actual contact with a red-hot exhaust or was that just from non-contact radiant heat? If non-contact, how much distance was there between the pipe and wire?
Dave
 
Soooo, does that mean the car is not shaken down yet?

Good catch on those items. Perhaps it would be beneficial to route the #4 plug behind the head. Looks bad but at least it would be less likely to get hot. As for the turbine bolts, that's how Garretts are set up. Weird point of failure though.

remember when I made a post patting myself on the back for how great the car ran, then the next day it broke? :rofl:

I'll have to stare at things a bit and open myself up to the idea of longer runs like that. I think the best fix would be to get away from the L-shaped downpipe and make something a little snaky that follows the strut tower. Basically just get things away from head as much as possible.

The turbo bolts are a pain for access on the car too, I now have a "Special Turbo Bolt Wrench" I had to make to get the one on the bottom. I have a replacement bolt/clamp on the way now, but my next step is going to be pulling in some drilled-head hardware and learning how to do a nice lock wire job.

Was there actual contact with a red-hot exhaust or was that just from non-contact radiant heat? If non-contact, how much distance was there between the pipe and wire?
Dave

yes and no. The plug wire itself never touched exhaust metal. The protective boot and heat shielding did. So the plug wire was (material thickness) distance from the pipe, but had a conductive path.

I think the safety wire to the coil bracket job is actually a quick hack that will help quite a bit. I now have ~.5" air gap on all four wires.
 
You could also save yourself the ballache and use nord-locks if they fit. As for accessing them in the car, yes I agree, they are awful. I actually miss mitsubishi turbos for that reason :raincloud:

As for the downpipe, I mean that could work. That mentioned, do you ever plan on having air conditioning in that car?

As for patting self in back, I am always in a state of near mental-breakdown as I have zero trust in my mechanical abilities left.
 
here's a picture to reference for routing. This was BEFORE the plug wire. You can see how the DP trends inwards towards #4. #3 and #4 are now pulled in tight against the head so I've eliminated any of the direct contact.

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You could also save yourself the ballache and use nord-locks if they fit. As for accessing them in the car, yes I agree, they are awful. I actually miss mitsubishi turbos for that reason :raincloud:

As for the downpipe, I mean that could work. That mentioned, do you ever plan on having air conditioning in that car?

Ayup, think I might throw nord-locks on it now as I have the size on hand. Will probably go after the lock wire still, I look at so much of it on hardware at work I kinda want to play with it..

Aircon; nah, nowhere in the plans. If it ever happened it would be a vintage air setup. Hell my Viggen doesn't even have healthy air conditioning. I've only ever had one DD with functional aircon and that was when I lived in northern vermont!
 
Would it be easier to wrap the downpipe?

maybe? Was never sure if the ceramic coating on the old downpipe actually helped or not now that ya mention it.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit of an aesthete under the hood and I ****ing hate header wrap and turbo blankets :lol:. Don't ask me why! Just a thing I have.
 
I'll be honest, I'm a bit of an aesthete under the hood and I ****ing hate header wrap and turbo blankets :lol:. Don't ask me why! Just a thing I have.

I'm the opposite. I like a turbo that looks nice and cozy.

Fiberglass wrap does suck to work with though..
 
IF if makes you feel better, the T5R had a stubborn no start for nearly a year. I ended up pulling the entire drivetrain, went thru the harness everything. Couldn't find anything wrong, put it back together, wouldn't start.

Finally someone says "hey is the ground on the coil tight?" "Ofcourse it is, look at it, the wire is parallel to ground, if it was loose it wouldn't be" "have you checked" ... checks and finds just the slightest loose connection... "**** ME".

Seriously, if it would start and vibrate enough to keep a good(ish) ground but when I shut the car off it would be just lose enough to not let the coil fire. What a PITA. Reminds me of your plug wire!
 
Sorry to hear about your recent issues, but man this car is sounding and looking super sweet. Definitely something to be proud of regardless of how many silly failures may pop up.

Regarding the turbine clamp issue, here's the background info I can offer:
  • BorgWarner EFR use a bolt-and-tab clamp arrangement from the center housing to the turbine housing, which you're obviously familiar with. I don't remember the fastener size or details but maybe post that up if you can.
  • Garrett GT28-30-35R (including GTX) use 6 x M8 bolts with two half-circular clamps, and though they can be a PITA to tighten or loosen, they are durable in the field. The bolts are made from a refractory steel alloy. I've seen thousands of used turbos in this size range in the past 15 years with nary an issue other than the occasional broken bolt after hard use and oxidation. For that reason I'd always recommend something like Jet-Lube 550 or other high temp antiseize on those bolts.
  • That same GT/GTX product line when fitted with a 3rd party thin-wall stainless turbine housing using M6 fasteners had tons of issues. I shouldn't name names but it was a well-known manufacturer that makes sexy looking turbine housings. They went to smaller M6 fasteners for geometrical/design reasons (tight job packaging a turbine volute with a bolted joint in that area) and ended up with loosening issues, broken bolts, and headaches. I believe they settled on M6 Inconel studs as a permanent but costly fix.
  • The new Garrett G-series product line uses v-band joints between turbine and center housing on all frame sizes. Bigger products like GT(X)42R and up have always used v-bands here, but now it has trickled down to the smaller stuff as well. After years of top-level motorsport experience I can say this works without any issues as long as the v-band clamps themselves are good quality parts and the right grade of stainless.
 
thanks guys! and Professor Turbo a seat in your class is always appreciated.

I finally bit the bullet and did the front bumper trim job. It was actually a pain in the ass compared to the back trim. Not sure why, just seemed to take forever to find the right placement for the front clips. Are the lower panels different on skinny bumper cars at all?

I also fiddled around with the bumper cover and got rid of the sagging sides. That combined with the better matched trim on the fenders made the little bit of a fight worth it, I think.

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I'd be all over a NOS set of this trim if anyone has the impossible. Actually I'd be interested in NOS grill and headlight bezels too.
 
Headlight bezels were still available new as of a year or two ago...take luck with the trim and grille. I know somebody who searched for an NOS grille and paid $400 ish for one from a parts stash in Sweden 5-6 year ago.


And yes, all of the trim holes are in different spots.
 
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