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D?j? Vu Mid-Blue - 1989 Volvo 245 DL

My god. Incredible! I need to harness your energy & skill for the rusty quarters on the 145.

Looks great man. Super impressed
 
My god. Incredible! I need to harness your energy & skill for the rusty quarters on the 145.

Looks great man. Super impressed

Thanks! It's got some areas that I'm not particularly proud of, but it took every ounce of energy I had to complete. I think it's good enough for prolonging the life of a daily driver.
 
I got the oil pressure sensor connector in the mail yesterday. Thanks for the link, white 855T! I also have a door switch ready to replace one of the broken ones. I figured that if I'm going to make myself fix that stuff, I want to warm up my butt when I'm done. Its been a bit uncomfortable riding into work with cold vinyl seats even with the remote start! I have the Bentley manual, but I've found the tiny hand drawn diagrams to be useless. I can't read or see a thing. Luckily my buddy is a shop teacher, so he slipped me his Alldata password which gave me access to much nicer diagrams.

Volvo might try to behead me for posting this pic, but I'm going to try anyway. Neither of the switches illuminate when I move them to the "on" position, and the fuse is confirmed to be good. This gives me three different scenarios. There can be an issue with the power wire between the fuse block and the driver side switch, the ground for everything can no good (probably my first check), or both bulbs are burnt out with some other unknown issue. I would not be surprised to find any of these as my fault because the car is kind of a wiring disaster. I'm actually not going to blame the previous owners for this because the car is very stock besides the remote start. It just has some funky electrical gremlins in all the convenience systems which seem to have occurred naturally. I guess we'll find out once I find out for sure when I find my issues once and for all.
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It's clear that the driver seat was reupholstered at some point, and I think a new heated seat grid was installed at the same time because the wires look too new. They are also way too long which results in getting tangled in the feet of rear passengers. I'm for sure going to address that while I have the seat out. Wish me luck, and relatively warm weather! I have to do all this outside of the garage.
 
Oil light works again!
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Replaced a door switch and even transferred the little rubber dust cover. *Pinky out* It's all in the details. ;-) I sure could use another one for the tailgate. I'm kinda just glad I happened to buy a door switch that didn't break on it's way out of the bag.
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Then I started playing with the heated seats becasue it was still light out. I'm gonna make a whole other thread for that because it's a disaster. In better news, I'm immune to COVID now! :lol:
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It's disgusting how much junk accumulates in the center console.

Here's a taste of what I'm up against. So much for not blaming a previous owner. lol
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This reminds me that my passenger side door switch isn't connected to anything. Wonder whether I'll ever get around to it...
 
This reminds me that my passenger side door switch isn't connected to anything. Wonder whether I'll ever get around to it...

lol it made me super happy to have that work again.... for about 5 minutes. I took the car to get pizza and the odometer stopped rolling. :wtf: Now I'm ready to light a friggen match. Any time I spend a bunch of time repairing a bunch or little stuff the car kicks me in the nuts with some sort of failure. I HATE THESE ELECTRIC CLUSTERS.
 
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I was there for 5 years or so. Then your fixes wear out and you start all over again.

My T5 is making noise and the alarm horn in the BMW stopped working. Sometimes you just have to take it like a man and spread you chee...wait wrong analogy.
 
I was there for 5 years or so. Then your fixes wear out and you start all over again.

My T5 is making noise and the alarm horn in the BMW stopped working. Sometimes you just have to take it like a man and spread you chee...wait wrong analogy.

:lol:

Cars are such unappreciative little brats! They seem to band together and go on strike so that you have multiple great cars one day and then nothing functional the next.

For those who are interested in the seat warming stuff, here's a link. https://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=358372 I'm not touching the odometer though. I'm officially out of ideas with that dang thing short of sending it in to a VDO wizzard.
 
The odometer failures are related to a little plastic gear that sheds teef. Not a big deal to repair at all.
 
Ohhhhhhhman. STACK time.

:-( yeeaahhhh given all the work I've put into the car, I'm almost ready to bite the bullet here. I think I'd want it to be the last mechanical issue left though. If I manage to fix the heated seats, rear dome light, and rear floor light I'll consider sending the cluster in for a refresh. That's assuming everything else continues to work the way it should too! It may just be a cheap old car to some, but I think it would be awesome to say that all the factory functions work and we continue to take this 30 year old beater everywhere.
 
In order to keep my build thread relatively streamlined, I decided to keep my cluster issues in it's own thread. Here it is again. https://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=350828 However, I'm pretty confident that this is the end of THAT particular problem. A very nice guy sent me a new motor. With careful soldering and new iron, I was able to bring this odometer back to life!
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What's a bummer is that I still cannot confirm whether I have full IP operation or not. This started happening every drive cycle.
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Either I messed up my gauge while I was fixing the odometer, or my engine isn't staying warm. I say "staying" because the gauge goes up to operating temp for a minute or two after warmup, and then starts to crawl down to under 1/4. It never goes back up unless I let the engine cool all the way back down. I popped the hood and felt around. The radiator hoses are not very hot. I even squeezed the upper to find that the system is really pressurized. :thinking: The expansion tank cap must not be holding pressure. However, there is still a lot of coolant in there, so I don't think it's boiling. Thermostat?
 
In order to keep my build thread relatively streamlined, I decided to keep my cluster issues in it's own thread. Here it is again. https://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=350828 However, I'm pretty confident that this is the end of THAT particular problem. A very nice guy sent me a new motor. With careful soldering and new iron, I was able to bring this odometer back to life!
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What's a bummer is that I still cannot confirm whether I have full IP operation or not. This started happening every drive cycle.
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Either I messed up my gauge while I was fixing the odometer, or my engine isn't staying warm. I say "staying" because the gauge goes up to operating temp for a minute or two after warmup, and then starts to crawl down to under 1/4. It never goes back up unless I let the engine cool all the way back down. I popped the hood and felt around. The radiator hoses are not very hot. I even squeezed the upper to find that the system is really pressurized. :thinking: The expansion tank cap must not be holding pressure. However, there is still a lot of coolant in there, so I don't think it's boiling. Thermostat?

Interested to see what you find here... my temp gauge has always hung out right at 1/3. OE temp thermostat, temp faker bypassed. No matter if its the dead of summer in texas with AC on, etc... I might try a hotter thermostat and check the results with a IR temp gun
 
Interested to see what you find here... my temp gauge has always hung out right at 1/3. OE temp thermostat, temp faker bypassed. No matter if its the dead of summer in texas with AC on, etc... I might try a hotter thermostat and check the results with a IR temp gun

That is kind of odd. My temp faker is bypassed as well. I'm not really sure what would be normal to see, but my temp gun was showing 125F at the t-stat housing after a 10 minute drive. That seems quite cold to me. I feel like it should be too hot to touch and relatively close to the opening temp of the t-stat.
 
That is kind of odd. My temp faker is bypassed as well. I'm not really sure what would be normal to see, but my temp gun was showing 125F at the t-stat housing after a 10 minute drive. That seems quite cold to me. I feel like it should be too hot to touch and relatively close to the opening temp of the t-stat.

When my temp gauge was at that point, it would read 175F at the hose. Make sure you're pointing at something non-reflective, like the hose, not the housing.
 
The gauge was reading at about 1/3 while I was taking this measurement. This makes me believe that the gauge really isn't fooling me. I have a cap and a 92*C (stock) thermostat on the way.
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