I got the radiator back from the radiator repair shop.

I did a mounting frame for the electrical fan. Oil cooler will be sitting next to the fan also.




Turbo heat shield is going to get new paint.

I fitted the oil cooler today and got the oil lines done.

I placed the oil cooler in front of the radiator as there was enough room.




Snug fit for the hoses. I had to cut out some metal to fit the hoses properly.



Snake nest




Volvo OEM filter of course.



Quite stealth outside. Might later fit the black covers for the hoses even..

The car's been running for a month or so. Works great and engine is smooth as new, no mechanical side noises from the valvetrain anymore etc... Pulls way better also.

I replaced the windshield as the old one was cracked from two places.



and I also did some rust repairs. The rear inner sill was corroded badly around the rear jackpoint so I re did the area completely.. The outer sill was in good shape as it has been replaced about six years ago but some of the rust from the inner sill was spread on to the outer one so I renewed those bits also.



~1,5mm zinc plated sheet metal.. Everything else rusts before those.

Crappy cell phone pics as like usual I didn't have the camera with me.

Hello

Not much has happened car wise except driving. I've been quite busy with other stuff. I've refurbished a Hella grille I aquired some time ago. It was badly painted with silver spray paint and light brackets are missing etc...

With some searching I found out that Fairy Power Spray, meant for removing burnt grease stains from kitchenware etc.. works wery well as a paint remover for plastics as it doesn't harm the plastics like Nitromorse and other stronger stuff does.

This turned out to be correct.




Now the grille only needs some hot air gun treatment and Autoglym Bumper Care.

As the brackets for lights are missing and due the fact that I've got an intercooler and an oil cooler, I'll be fitting Bosch Pilot 150 auxilliary driving lights on to the mask instead of the original Hella ones. Pilot 150s are way thinner than original Hellas so those should fit nicely even with the intercooler and oil lines in the way.

I've also assembled two good driving lights from three bad ones. With the Hella grille, the light power should be increasing quite a lot compared to the current faded setup. I also have two good headlight wiper motors which I will install at the same time.



I also have a sand blasted gearbox support bar waiting to get painted and installed as the one in the car is showing signs of rust. I'll probably be changing the gearbox input shaft's seal at the same time as it's leaking. I might also try swapping to a taller diff ratio as with the current 3.64 the first gear is kinda useless and there's too much RPMs for my liking at highway speeds. The GL Turbo we had had the 3.36 diff and it was a spot on for this kind of an engine.

lookind good its nice to spend a while doing what ever to car then just sitting back and driving the thing for a while without any problems touch wood haha
and i rely need to something about my light they are crap

PA12 fuel lines have undergone a stress test during last weeks. It's currently -20C outside (-4F), no signs of leaks or ruptures.

I ordered some fronts springs from Intrax Racing.

Intrax Racing delivered a package few days ago. Excellent service! They answered my E-mails in 20 minutes and springs were delivered to my home door from Netherlands.




I also have a one sandblasted gearbox support beam (stored in my livingroom corner ) which is in a need of some paintwork.

some nice work there mate!

you have any photos of the gearchange bracket you made to replace the original 'bellhousing bar' thing that's fitted standard?

Thanks! I don't have any pics but I can take some later. But basically I just made a metal bracket which bolts on to the gear lever support from above. I used the two bolt holes for reverse gear block bracket/light bracket as attachment points and welded couple nuts on to the chassis and attatched the self made bracket to those nuts. Reverse gear bracket bolts are only 6mm or 8mm, but those have been holding fine. Of course it would be possible to weld some attatchment points on to the underside bracket also.


I haven't driven the car for couple weeks because I noticed the gearbox support beam is almost rusted away from the driver's side.

So the spare one I had laying around needed some paint ASAP.



While I was at it I also painted the windshield wiper motor's brackets I had. Those were quite rusty so some phosphorous acid bath was needed first.









I've also been preparing the +90 style exhaust manifold for a T3 flange.

I used a powerfile for the porting of the collector opening. Almost got it done but I ran out of sanding belts so one side is still undone. The lip on the flange needs to be machined down also.




At the same time I drilled and tapped the collector threads for 10mm studs. Stock ones are 8mm.






More painting of stuff. Intrax springs I bought have a quite thin coating of paint (I had a bad experience before with the Spax springs which had similiar type of paint and it flaked away after one winter) so I sanded the paint down and dipped the springs on some Polyurethane paint I had laying in the storage room. Should be ok as polyurethane paint has some amount of flexibility.








Next step, of course, would be installing these prepped parts in to the car.




I also spotted this driving ahead of me at the Ring road few days ago... Not a usual sight at these latitudes in this time of a year..





-Marko

nice work there!

I see now how you have done it, I might give it a go, that way i could get it working nicely without having to drop the torque tube, thanks for the explaination

Collected a cardboard box with a Volvo logo on the side.



Box also contained some stuff.



Door hinge pins, gearbox gaskets, exhaust manifold gaskets, exhaust manifold nuts&washers, cam seal and gearbox fill&drain plugs.

I'll be heading to Ireland for about a week at 17th of this month so I won't start doing any work on the car before that. When I'll return, there will be a bigger update when I get some time to install this stuff...


-Marko

Hi!

I think something is missing here.




Found it!




"It'll buff out"




Gaskets 'n stuff




I didn't have a diff cover seal at hand so Permatex Right Stuff will do. I also changed the diff cover for better one.





This much crap fell out of the old gearbox support beam when I removed it




"New" manifold...




...with some stuff attatched to it.




As we all know the gearbox mounts are NLA so I had to get a bit creative.






It's a Trelleborg NOVIBRA industrial mount (quite expensive for a rubber mount, almost €50/piece) combined with some self made nylon bushing and a piece of old rubber for centering/cushion. Though I think I'll switch the nylon insert for a steel one as it's made out of steel in original ones. I just had some nylon plate laying around so I used that for "prototyping".

While I was at it I also changed the fuel tank breather hoses and the hose clamps of the fuel fill pipe.




More pics to follow when I'll install some stuff back in..

Interesting solution for the gearbox mounts, but the aluminium brackets look a bit cracked. Probably worth painting the brackets and/or bushes to stop Al-fe corrosion. Mine where well wasted around the inside of the dome, I've got 1 new bracket and 2 new bushes (bought before NLA) I plan to strengthen the other bracket with Al welding.

Yeah I'll paint those before installing. Structure of the alminium brackets is ok, it's mostly underseal, oil and dirt and the pics make those look worse.

I got the spring flu some days ago so car was on hold for few days.

But today I got the car up and running.



Gears shift way smoother when everything is adjusted properly and the box has good oils (Castrol 75W-80 fully synthethic manual gearbox oils).

I had to remake the downpipe as the turbo sits in slightly different position with the new manifold. The old downpipe was hitting the subframe and fender.





I'll have to get some proper pyro jacket for the spark plug wires. There's a small seepage of oil at the oil intake of the turbo. Flared fitting probably got scratched when the turbo was on the desk so I'll have to get a new fitting from the hydraulic shop. Boost is also a bit lower currently than it was before as I took out the compressor housing so the wastegate is now in slightly different position. I'll have to adjust the wastegate also to get boost on proper levels.

Pulls way better though even with lower boost.There's an instant response when the gas pedal is pressed and there's plenty more torque available at low revs. This is mostly because the old manifold setup was leaking like crazy but the newer style manifold seems to affect the spool quite nicely also.


-Marko