Mike K's '79 242 Barn Car Revival

blkaplan said:

I have never been to Granville I dont think, but my uncle does have a house on Lake Otis which is pretty close by. Nice driving out there if you can avoid the cops.

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Otis is close, ride dirt bikes up there sometimes. There are some fun roads around, Barkhamsted Res. area is good. Everything is all cracked up and whooped from frost right now though. When I drove the '92 it was way too stiff for the roads here, skipping around if you pushed it in a corner. But afterwards I realized the struts seem to be adjusted at full stiff, so I'll have to see what it's like with things adjusted and lined up.

Stiggy Pop said:

Otis is close, ride dirt bikes up there sometimes. There are some fun roads around, Barkhamsted Res. area is good. Everything is all cracked up and whooped from frost right now though. When I drove the '92 it was way too stiff for the roads here, skipping around if you pushed it in a corner. But afterwards I realized the struts seem to be adjusted at full stiff, so I'll have to see what it's like with things adjusted and lined up.

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You should be able to get it dialed in with the shocks. dont forget you have compression adjustment too... if thats off it will not ride well.

When I tried test fitting the IAT sensor in the pipe it wasn't threading in far enough to get the element in the air stream. I ended up having to shorten the bung on the pipe a bit, and went out and got a 3/8 NPT tap this morning to run through it. With that worked out I spent some time with sand paper, steel wool, and elbow grease to pretty things up a bit.



When I ordered the odyssey battery I ordered a clamshell type mount thinking I'd lay the battery down. They ended up sending me a billet stand-up mount that was a nice piece (and $50 more than what I paid for) so I figured I'd give it a shot. It turns out I wouldn't have really had room to lay it down anyways and this mount worked out better. The base plate was spaced right to lay over the stock tray. Drilled four holes and it was in.



I had to countersink the bottoms of the support posts to get everything to tighten up, but otherwise it went together well. The mount is a little blingy, probably a good candidate for black powder coating. Now that things are laid out I'll get new battery cables and clean things up. Pretty happy with the results. Plus it cranks the car over no problem.







Drove it across the street to park and idled it for a bit, everything seems to be ok, blow of valve is moving no obvious leaks. It actually seemed to run a bit better but still bouncy idle. Yesterday I upgraded to ms2/ex 3.3.1, it had 3.1.1 loaded on it before. Also updated to the newest version of TS. Initially I couldn't get the car started afterwards (wasn't syncing) so I played around for a while. Eventually I just reloaded the old tune fresh again and it worked. I tried running the warm up enrichment auto tune and it helped a bit. Now that I have everything plumbed I can spend some more time with it.

Will probably put the dash in it, and a cooling fan. What are people using for a fan shroud with a v90 fan on 240 rad?

Really Nice Project, you have done an amazing job under the car
Continue the high quality building

volvobrage said:

Really Nice Project, you have done an amazing job under the car
Continue the high quality building

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Thanks! That's my favorite compliment, I spent a lot of time on it and most people won't see it. I also know it's only going to look this pretty once

Nothing big the past few weeks. Spent a lot of time researching this and that, accumulating some parts. Think I'm going to snag the denso 100amp from my DD 940 in place of the Bosch to free up some room around the oil filter. Need to get some new battery cables made. Fan. Give it some kind of an alignment. Then I can start driving it and figuring out the tune. I've been stalling on the interior because I was still getting water in the floors. I happened to be sitting in the car playing with TunerStudio when it started raining and the water was obviously running right in at the top of the windshield. Based on what the trim/seal looked like it was no surprise.

Honestly I was hoping I could just shortcut it for a while and bought a tube of black silicone. I was all ready to goop it up until we started lifting up the trim and the corner of the windshield was popping right out. Knew at that point I was going to have to get into it so we just peeled it out of the car. The reason I was trying to avoid it was because the bottom corner on the passenger side was ugly bubbly with rust. From the looks of it we were anticipating cutting the corner out of the gold wagon and doing some real rot repair. When I started picking at it I was happy to see it looked worse than it was and it didn't warrant cutting up the car.





Probably better to get it all out and address it. Cleaned everything up well and it was a great excuse to use up some of the left over rust bullet paint. Used some spot putty to smooth out the rough spots.



Masked it off and gave the putty a quick shot of primer. I'll end up using some of the paint I have left from the engine bay for the parts left exposed. It won't be a perfect match but will look better than the rust. If I end up keeping the car for a while I'll probably end up painting the whole thing anyways.



The gold '92 had a pretty good looking windshield so I was hoping to use it here. We were in the car pushing with our feet (laying on piles of parts), had it most of the way out and I shifted my foot a bit and it popped top to bottom... damn. I talked to some glass guys, and was asking for Pilkington glass based on what I read on here. What I was told from the guys in the biz is that the only glass available is made in China now. The glass "Pilkington" has available is made by CCC. Not going to sweat it, actually kind of excited to have brand new glass in the car.

We'll be waterproof on Monday, so time to get moving on the interior. Still haven't picked seats... can I do a Kickstarter for a set of Bride Low Max?

first weekend of the year working with the garage door open - have to love that.

Pretty in primer


Glass is coming Monday so I spent some time putting the dash in. Then I spent some time taking it back out so I could glue the weather strip thing to the inside bottom edge of the windshield channel. Then wasted more time playing trial and error with glue to get the thing to stick.



I think in a perfect world I would have a perfect OG dash with a rally cluster. But the '79 dash was split front to back, and the '92 dash was in really nice shape. I'm going to hang on to the old dash, but I do like the look of the new one.



Need to buy sound deadening and carpet. I think I am going to go black for simplicity and it's hard to go wrong with black. I didn't really need to put the center console in yet but I was having fun putting things together.



I grabbed the wheel, signal stalks and mount off the '79. The old wheel was rubbing on the '92 steering column shroud so I left it off. I'll be getting a hub adapter and some of kind of wheel soon anyhow.



Kinda looks like

This is a great build, it's really coming together! Don't forget to yank the engine again and detail and paint it like you did everything else, haha!

Old Iron said:

This is a great build, it's really coming together! Don't forget to yank the engine again and detail and paint it like you did everything else, haha!

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Thanks, warm weather will be a good kick in the ass to get this thing on the road. I'm almost at the point where I can engage Kenny for a good starting point on the tune and begin shaking things out a bit. Yes, yes I know she's a bit ugly. But just think of this engine as a place holder for something that can make better use of the Holset. Always checking the marina side of the Volvo world on Craigslist

Boring lunch meetings are a good time to make up an off the cuff, in-no-particular-order To Do list for the car.

I've had rust converters be hit and miss. I just fixed that exact same rust on my car but by cutting and welding in a new section. Seems to only happen when the oe windhseild has been replaced.

2fast242gt said:

I've had rust converters be hit and miss. I just fixed that exact same rust on my car but by cutting and welding in a new section. Seems to only happen when the oe windhseild has been replaced.

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Yeah, I don't have any prior experience with them so it's a bit of an experiment - I'm optimistic though. Can always revisit things if/when the car got painted which is why I'm kind of touching up for now. That was not an original windshield in the car so your theory holds up.

Hard to beat new glass! and while I can appreciate the OG chrome trim I think the new style is much cleaner looking - and I'm sure it's going to be a lot quieter.

Lookin good!
I need to replace my windshield too , it was cracked when I bought it bargaining "chip" At least it doesn't leak

I think you should drive this to iPd for the garage sale. Meet me in Wisconsin and we can convoy out.

You had a glass guy do it?

The Full Banana said:

I think you should drive this to iPd for the garage sale. Meet me in Wisconsin and we can convoy out.

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I would love to go to a show like that, probably a little ambitious though! I just missed a show Sunday so I could keep working - I'm looking forward to the car being a reason to go to shows, not miss them.

poulson01 said:

You had a glass guy do it?

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Yeah ended up just having a local guy come do it (paid $190), looks like a nice job. I just had him get a windshield for a '92. I was bummed to have broken the wagon's windshield, but now that I have new glass in and don't have to mess around trying to do it myself it seems like a blessing in disguise.

Looking good - I'm having flashbacks to when I simultaneously did the windshield frame rust repair, new dash, and new late-model windshield on my beige 242. The rust repair had to be done, but the new dash and windshield made the car so much nicer to drive. Looking out over the hood I now have no distracting desert cracks in my foreground vision and no annoying windshield pits clouding my view. Almost feels like a brand new car to sit in. I'm sure you'll enjoy what you've done on yours too.

Stiggy Pop said:

Thanks, warm weather will be a good kick in the ass to get this thing on the road. I'm almost at the point where I can engage Kenny for a good starting point on the tune and begin shaking things out a bit. Yes, yes I know she's a bit ugly. But just think of this engine as a place holder for something that can make better use of the Holset. Always checking the marina side of the Volvo world on Craigslist

Boring lunch meetings are a good time to make up an off the cuff, in-no-particular-order To Do list for the car.

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Haha, awesome! I bet you looked so busy and into that meeting!

Time for an update!

The Full Banana said:

Time for an update!

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Haha, pressure is on! Hey, I think I drove my car first . I did see a street sweeper on my way home yesterday and thought "uh oh, clean roads no excuses better get my ass in gear"

I was actually working on it last night and thinking how I wasn't really doing anything "cool" to update with, took two half assed pictures and thought I'll need a dyno video to really get people interested.

Really I've been trying to work my way through some smaller things (like assembling the rest of the damn car), and thinking through things that I had put off while I worked on the "bigger" pieces. I really wish I had seats by now, so I think I am going to power wash the original brown interior and put it back in for now, then circle back and re-do when I've found the right seat.

Oh I did do something exciting the other week! So for the past year and a half the car has had a broken door handle on the driver's side. Yes I've been working this whole time crawling through to open the door. I finally popped one of the nice black handles out of the '92 and put it in, looks great and a door that opens and closes ooohh, ahhhh such luxury.

Then little things that end up taking some time: got the '92 power steering hose shortened for the AC delete after a few trips to NAPA. Got an o-ring for it and put the belt on last night, so next time I move the car I can see how things look.



Then spent the rest of the night bent over the trunk. I'm going to give it the same treatment as the floors. Anyone who wants to remove the stock sound deadening go get yourself the el-cheapo Harbor Freight pneumatic scraper. Buzz the stuff off, spray some kerosene down, scrub scrub scrub. The trunk is like the floors, overall good with a few ugly spots. So I'll grind everything out and lay down some nice heavy glass over the uglies.



I also beat one of my buttcheeks back into shape (there's a sentence to take out of context), and need to respray both with some fresh black. Once the trunk's done the car is all water tight, ready to wire up lights and put in a suuuper nice set of 5 panels I got on here a while back.

Next week I'm going to borrow a fender roller from Paul Curran and roll the rear fenders, and pray I don't crack my paint. Once that's done I'd like to lower the car a bit front and back. Also shopping for tires, and learned quickly that if you have 16" wheels you better like 50 series sidewalls because you're not getting anything else.

I've been straggling with the tune because I knew I needed more fuel. I have a set of Injector Dynamics ID1000's on the way, so now that I know what I'm doing there I can hopefully have Kenny get me a good solid starting point. Once those are here I would like to put them and the RSI Stage 2 cam in and call it ready to run. Going to just do what I can with stock lh2.4 fuel pumps for now, and will upgrade when the time comes.

Trying to pick a steering wheel... Nardi Classic? Momo Prototipo? Black spokes or silver? These are life's important decisions

Momo ghibli-3.
Momo Mazda Eunos
Momo Cobra