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Back in a Volvo! (780 content inside)

Coupid

Coupid

Active member
Joined
Sep 24, 2003
Location
Santa Barbara, CA
After a few years away from Volvo since I sold my 744T I am finally back in the Volvo game.


http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?p=3842885#post3842885


I had been emailing with the PO of the 1991 780 Coupe since I first saw the car for sale back in the beginning of July (see for sale thread above). Today he drove it down from Sacramento to meet me at a convention I was at for work in Long Beach. We met right as the show was ending in some sort of parking garage and I took it for a short drive around LBC, realizing halfway through that it was probably in pretty good shape since it had just made a 500 mile trip.

The drive back during rush hour on the 405N was pretty congested so I took PCH when I finally had a chance. It has a few issues that will need sorting before I can sell my Audi and drive the COupe everyday. There is a driveline shudder when starting out from a stop and a lot of the cool electric gizmos need to be fixed too

Overall I'm very excited to be back! Thank god its only almost the weekend, because I'm going to be pretty distracted until I can really get going on this car. Hopefully I can get it looking better for the Big Bear Octoberfest thing.


Here is the one picture I snapped on the way:

image.jpg
 
sweet, enjoy it. I have been looking for a clean 91 coupe myself.
 
Thanks GSWAGON I will!

I can't believe it, Turbobricks still has very little love for the 700 series! I figured a '91 coupe would be different

Here are some more pictures from day one of clean up and assessing what I'm dealing with here.


I took all of the amp wiring out of the car since I won't be running a large stereo in this car. That's a lot of wires! I also hooked up the Alpine Type R's that were sitting in the rear deck but not wired into anything. Should make for much better sound.
image-1.jpg


Then I washed and started waxing the exterior. The paint on the trunk and hood is pretty oxidized I think, but its also black which isnt helping.

image4.jpg



It's looking a lot better than it did yesterday after its 600 mile day!

image3.jpg



All tucked into its new garage.

image2.jpg


I dont have any lights set up in there yet so I won't be able to work at night until I fix that.


This afternoon I was also able to reattach the third brake light to the window and remove all the spare parts I got with the car.
 
I love 2/7/9's equally. I have a thing for wagons & coupes though. I feel you with the black paint ordeal. Mine even after a full exterior detail looks lack-luster.
 
TJcars2 said:
I love 2/7/9's equally. I have a thing for wagons & coupes though. I feel you with the black paint ordeal. Mine even after a full exterior detail looks lack-luster.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna get after it with a clay bar and some wax tomorrow all day. Im gonna try to do all the free time consuming stuff before all my tools get down to CA. Hopefully I can get the lower valance put back together where the PO broke off the passenger side (but to his credit kept the pieces)
 
Thanks Roy! We are going to have to talk about that front airdam
Pretty soon. I have the current one jury rigged together but eventually I'll want something with less zip ties.

I'm continually impressed with how nice these cars drive.
 
Maybe this should be moved to projects?


I took the car up to Santa Barbara Cars and Coffee in Montecito this morning. I was suprised by the response I got from people. I spoke to a few different guys about it for a while. But i did overhear some kid did ask his dad what the car was doing there! Grandpa Series FTL.


There are a lot of great cars up there and I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only Volvos to go there. Anybody else in the area? We can pick a sunday and show up en masse:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Santa-Barbara-Cars-and-Coffee/124523314273193

When I got back I went to work trying to get the paint to shine a little better with some wax. It's definitely helping but there is still a lot of haze and hard water spots on the side.

photo-1.jpg


I also stopped by autozone and bought a normal looking exhaust tip and a hacksaw to take off the dual tipped one. Luckily after I had spent about 20 min sawing away, one of my neighbors saw me struggling and offered to let me use his sawzall which took the old tip off in less than a minute.

While I was struggling with the hacksaw I took a break and decided to start looking into why my break lights and taillights always had a mind of their own. I pulled pack the trunk carpet to look for blown out bulbs and inadvertently tapped on off the three grounding bolts. It was barely attached and tightening it made all my strange lighting gremlins disappear.

And then finally I adjusted the hood latches so that the hood could be opened by one person in one pull of the release latch.
 
+Kardboard+ said:
Nice buy!

How are the lights on that thing? I've been meaning to do the LED light conversions but how good are they, really?
Click to expand...

The hid kit is nice since it puts out a lot more light. I'm working on installing it more permanently since it was all just zip tied in when I got it.

The taillights look normal to me and I haven't seen the turn signals in action yet.

I also like the led dome light but I wouldn't have bothered to install any of it myself.
 
Nice! My HIDs I ziptied in also, but it was done in a semi-permanent way. I have LEDs in my dome light also, but by far the best one I've done is the trunk light. Huge difference!
 
Nice car, nice color. They are the best of both worlds, Volvo reliability, with exotic car looks. What more do you want?
 
Its been a busy week at work but I drove the car to Vons last night and when I pulled back into my driveway it was smoking a little bit.

It had been leaving some oil spots on the ground in the garage and I think it was just leaking a little bit onto the manifold or DP.

I decided to pull out the flame trap this afternoon and it was almost completely clogged with burnt crustys.

Then I decided to pull the oil seperator box and noticed that part of it was split (vacuum leak right?)
654a148c.jpg


and it was missing the o ring and was just sealed with sealant

68554519.jpg


This is a little scary but I ordered new parts from IPD so I should have a much happier car by this weekend.

At least it still looks good...
d2d269ef.jpg
 
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