Project Bucket-List (Volvo Content)

The slightly less dusty shop lasted all of 24 hours. Almost.

Then we rolled the S-Car-Go into the space. The plan is to let the freshly painted Molvo languish in the front unheated garage for the remainder of November. By then the S-Car-Go should be ready for daily driving duties.

Full interior is out for a power wash. Then it goes back in.

The rusty roof panel is getting cleaned up: hence all the dust.

Needs:

New steering rack

New radiator

Windows fixed

Ignition fixed ( wont crank on the key )

Assorted electrikery E36 M3 medicated and remediated

Lots of detailing. Probably not until the warm weather return, but I suspect we will yank the engine and do something so as to not actually offend the concourse judges.

Pete

Pushing to get the car on the road by the end of this month.

New rack and rod-ends installed. Windows now working minus one switch. Interior pulled power washed, dried and back in. Still got some electrical to do cause the wipers and the stereo talk to each other. Not in a good way like pulling the squirter turns on the radio!

On a more fun front, the Volvo rad is looking a bit worse for wear.

Not going to trust it for a few thousand miles to FLa nd back.

Spark time! New rad cradle in the making.

This should do it

New rad in place. The reason I have this rad is because the inlet and outlet are swapped  from what I ordered and it did not fit the Molvo with any hose combination I could find. Going to need to fire up the TIG and do something about that. Never welded a rad before! When I went to return it, JEGS did not even want it sent back, "not worth the cost"?

Bye-Bye AC and air pump.

Need to reroute both the transmission and fuel lines cause they look like crap.

Pete

Got the front dress pretty much sorted out and bolted down. Rad is bolted firmly in place and transmission cooler is now actually attached to the car rather than just sitting in front of the rad,

Last challenge is to splice this hose. It makes a 1/4" diameter change from rad to thermostat housing. Also had to sort through a lot of hoses to find ones with the required curves. Once this is done the thing can go back to being self propelled.

I used an exhaust reducer with weld bead to keep the hoses from popping off once.....

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I like the weld bead idea. 

One of the 3 Petes is going to dig through the parts stash to see what he has, else off to CT to find a reducer. Going anywhere near the mall this time of the year is something that I seriously avoid.

Pete

Hose is spliced and car is running. 

Since things were going well, and I had left-over material, the team whipped up a custom grill. 

What a great deal! Those cars seem like they should have come with 5.0s from the factory.

The car was a great deal, but it is hard to believe the amount of hack work that subsequent owners have performed especially when it comes to wiring.

Need to sort ouy why the wipers wont turn off, and regardless of igniting being turned off, if I pull the window squirter, the radio comes on for about ten seconds then dies.  

The radio is probably sharing power ir ground with the pump motor/relay. Ive seen them where they share the ground with the dome light, so it only works with the doors open.

i started fabbing the turbo system tonight.he doesnt know it yet (shhh dont tell) but theres epic amounts of foppery about to go down (ps i'm one of the 3 petes...the one with the Ford know how.and Volvo 7 series cars....this is gonna get fun)

I may not have mentioned that one of the 3 Petes  ( who I will not name) should not be left alone without adult supervision.

Pete

I'm starting to like these Pete guys. They sound fun. 

OK OK.  Just to prove 3P does exist, here I is.  Yes, Sundays would not be the same without the Molvo, B. Bugeye, and countless other projects that have rolled through the garage over the past god knows how many years, but to be clear, I am only here for the beer, bondo and bending.  The engineering and comic relief is all on other two reprobates.  Curley, Larry and Moe had nothing on this bunch!

Too many petes.  My head is going to explode.  

Pete, would either of the other two Petes be anyone I know/knew back in the day?

Y'all better make sure your roof stacking game is on point with this thing before heading for Gainesville. 

Looks like most of the heavy lifting was done, now on to the labor part.    Nice work you're doing there.   As a late model Volvo owner, I'm following with interest.

In reply to Dirtydog :

That is why we grabbed the car. You could not recreate the car for a lot more than we paid however, when you look at the number of hours it is taking to go through the wiring, clean up the roof  surface rust and interior clean-up, you can see why it was cheap.

To those that know us, the three Petes are:

Pete-  Moi the normal one of the bunch. Also known as the Moral Beacon.

Mustang Pete - The 302 and Volvo Guru .  Unparalleled modesty. Lock your beer cooler when he is around.

RePete- Cause he is one week younger than me. 47 years of being a bad influence on this otherwise moral human being

Picture of RePete and myself inventing the sport of  innertubing  behind a boat way back in the 70s. Yes that is a beer bottle in my hand and I really did not want to get water in it!

Edit...

Thought I would add a picture of the tow boat since it was probably the most Grassroots POS ever that went way to fast for its own good, let alone the health of those being towed. Doubt that there was $1000 in the thing and the Vdrive scared the E36 M3 out of me, but it was fast!

Pete

In reply to DeadSkunk :

Where were you back in the day?  SW Ontario?  GTA? Six Mile Lake?

In reply to Repete :

The Skunk Warren) was spared your acquaintances during the era.

Repete said:

.... beer, bondo and bending.  

That needs to be on a t shirt!

In reply to Repete :

Tillsonburg, autocrossing in CASC-OR with the WOSCA crowd from '83 through '99.

Suggest rethinking how you are mounting the engine cooling fan, especially on an aluminum crossflow rad.

Rumor has it that the plastic ties will walk down through the fin to the coolant tube, saw their way thru the tube to liberate the coolant from the radiator.

Nuthin' more fun then being stopped at a truck stop at 3am in the morning in bumm berkeley Utah JB Welding the holes in your radiator back together, with all the local yokels askin' how fast that thar Camaro kin go.

Never happened to me. I'll swear to it.

!00% agree with twentyover about radiator fan ties. I had to re-core my Volvo 240 from that experience. Now I have some simple flat aluminum pieces bolted to the (stock Volvo) core U channel. It looks like your radiator is similar. 10-32 button caps and nyloc nuts. No load on the core. Perforate the aluminum with a hole saw if it blanks off too much air flow, I had to do the upper only. 

"Delete AC" and "Carrying 3 people to FL so it needs to be comfortable" doesn't really mesh. It's hot here, even in October.