Gilda, the 92 240 GL

[RAPTOR479]

Had the day off work today so I decided the best way to take a break from my job fixing cars was to fix my own car, in this case just a plug change and an oil change in the driveway.

tunes supplied by the boombox on the roof in the form of Rush and Journey cassette tapes.
Everything went about as easy as one could expect doing the most basic maintenance to a B230.

The oil plug came out looking like this, but it seems to just be a combination of the K&N aluminum filter I had on the car (I had it in the trunk when I bought it) the Newly installed IPD magnetic drain plug from the last oil change, and that A cam swap from about 4100 miles ago that gave a decent bit of metallic sludge, but with no large pieces of bearing, the oil itself wasn't glittery

You need to get a little creative with the skid plate so the filter can drain (right onto the motor mount and crossmember)

Also got a much more gnarly angle of the damage caused by my adventures in New hampshire, I think the time is coming for some new stainless exhaust parts considering the manifold already leaks and needs to come off.

In other news I drove the car around for half a week with a busted maf and check engine light because the old bosch LH3.1 maf decided to unexpectedly kick the bucket, huge huge thanks to leecat for the hookup with a good 3.1 Maf

Until next time! Which will probably be the rear main as that's still leaking, is the consensus to fork over the money for the expensive genuine volvo seal? It's 35 bucks for a rubber ring but I'll pay it if it means I'm not dropping the trans again in a year

 

[RAPTOR479]

Not a post I wanted to make, ever, but a post I must now make

At roughly 10:30 on today, July 4th 2023, while driving to Ira Subaru in Danvers, my place of work to replace a wheel bearing, on Route 1 North passing santarpios pizzeria, I hydroplaned into a Toyota prius. The chain of events leading to the accident were a heavy rainstorm that'd just started Maybe 5 minutes prior, and on approach the light was green, I did not see it change from red to green, it was green from when I saw it to the collision. I was traveling at normal highway speeds in the center lane and not speeding. I looked at the green light and assumed the car ahead of me was moving, however by the time I was close enough to realize the prius was stationary, it was too late, I slammed on the brakes and Gilda, my 92 240 hydroplaned into the prius, I estimate the impact speed to be 20-30mph and the car was in a full nosedive, brakes on as hard as possible at the impact. My car sustained the damage shown above, the front end was bashed and the airbag deployed. The prius only suffered a torn off bumper cover and was able to drive away. My car was able to limp to the roadside at which point I shut it down to prevent damage to the engine. I suffered only some rope burn and a little swelling on my left wrist from the airbag, my friend in the passenger seat was completely fine. The 30 year old Volvo airbag deployed as it should and as it was designed to.

I couldn't believe it. This car is my Girl, she's kept me going when life has really sucked, she's never let me down, ever, always being a mode of dead reliable transport and a place of comfort even when everything else has been terrible.
It's time for me to return that favor. This car will not be getting junked. It will not be getting parted out. And it will not be getting parked. The parts will not be being put into a new shell, I don't care what it costs and I don't care how long it takes. This car WILL be put back on the road, the odometer currently reads about 299,300 and she WILL be making it to 300,000, I only regret that I was stupid enough to crash her, she's never let me down, but I let her down. I really wish this hadn't happened, that at any moment I'd wake up and she'd be fine in the driveway and waiting for another one of our many adventures, but it's real, and it sucks, but it's happened, and all that there is to do now is repair, rebuild, and restore.

Volvo saved my life, in more ways than one

Thank you, Gilda, I'm so, so sorry.

 

[RAPTOR479]

Finally got a chance to see her for the first time since the crash, front end is absolutely smashed in, bumper bar is cracked in half right at the middle, and various sheet metal is bent and twisted, especially on the right side. However here's the good news.

The front right frame rail, which bore a lot of the collision force, doesn't seem to have bent or kinked.

As you can see here it seems that a lot of the upward motion was taken by the bumper shock, which bent itself and instead saved the frame rail, of course there is the part of the unibody which runs across the frame rails which is twisted to hell, im sure all the damage sustained to those parts will be hell to cut out and replace or pull

The left side appears to have fared a lot better in this regard.

Inside the car you can see the deployed airbag, however the airbag smell that is still imprinted in my mind from the moment of impact is gone, and replaced with the old library smell that has characterized this car from the day Ive had her, however everything is still covered in white airbag powder.

It still doesn't feel right, to put my hand on her mangled right fender and think about all the miles we've had together so far, but where she protected me, it is now my time to return the favor, knowing that despite the shot she took the damage is still more cosmetic than structural. It will be a lot of work, but for this car every turn of the wrench, spark of the welder, every part pulled, replaced and every moment and dollar spent, will be worth it.

Updates soon

 

[RAPTOR479]

Three months out, twelve straight hours of work in one day behind me, I come with insight and information from the dismantling process

It was here, September 9th 2023 that we pulled her into a workspace, I arrived in Maine at about 6 o clock, driving straight from work with a truck full of tools and supplies, connecting with a friend and her husband who have been a huge help with this process

To Maine I took my vehicle of two months, a loaner from the same friend, a 1988 Jeep XJ, 4 speed, two door who's adventures are of a whole other chapter, but today we're here to talk about Gilda

The night of arrival was spent sharing stories before I headed to bed, said friend was leaving for a flight in the early hours of the morning, leaving me and her husband and my car. The next morning I woke up at 6:30, we had coffee, and I got to work. This picture was taken after I'd spent awhile drilling and hammering to remove the four spot welds remaining to the top of the driver headlight bucket, all those on the other side having been broken in the collision, with that the mangled radiator support came free, leaving the tops of the bashed headlight buckets free.

I moved quickly, from the radiator support I moved straight to the largest, most daunting task, the passenger fender, having been smashed and twisted over the inner wing at the front I was afraid they'd be too stuck to pry, as the 8 top bolts came loose with ease the fender shifted back, finally getting close enough to brush the door, from there I removed the two torx bolts in the door jam, the support bolt next to the mud flap as well as the mudflap itself, and the bolt connecting the support beam for the frame rail and the fender, letting it flop down as seen. From here the fender was trapped, one of the bolts bonding the inner and outer fender, and the headlight bucket having been turned almost a full 180 degrees, to tackle this I pried the valence, which had been folded over itself enough to remove the six remaining bolts, allowing the valence, twisted and mangled, to be removed

Once the valence was removed the bolt holding the three components together was more accessible and removed once the fender was finally off I moved to the headlight buckets, their welds broken they were trapped by the AC condenser and twisted metal, so I got to yanking the condenser, it coming free easily

I began piling the removed parts next to her against the wall

From there I moved like whirlwind, Airbox, which had been smashed into the PS pulley, removed, bumper and shocks removed, fan shroud, and assembly removed, the front of the car was stripped in short order, leaving the radiator upright, dented and twisted from impacting the fan, but not leaking. The above picture was taken at 7:05 pm. There was no break, no stop, from the first bolt to the last on the first day I hammered, pried and turned nuts and sheet metal to get her stripped down. And such concluded Day 1, I had dinner with my host, we talked about various things and I headed off to bed around 11

 

[RAPTOR479]

Busy day today but there is a sequel to the last post for some parts of Sunday I missed and Monday

 

[RAPTOR479]

The stack of parts that need replacing grows quickly

This picture tells one of the more interesting stories, the skid plate I put on caught some stuff which i noticed when i got to it late on Sunday, there were a few bolts, some broken glass but more importantly two shards of plastic in red and clear. Pieces of Prius taillight. These sat on top of my toolbox for a day while I thought of what to do with them, and eventually I had an idea, I drilled a 5/32nds hole in the top of each, got some string and made a mirror ornament. Even in the carnage there may be beauty.

From there there was but one thing, this is the only non video of it.
Chuck in a battery,
Key in
Crank
Fire
And after laying dormant for three months her engine fires to life without hesitation.
What's the saying? Old Volvos Never Die?
More to come next weekend

 

[Scaramanga]

Excellent! Keep up the good work

 

[Bricktothefuture]

Crazy - I was friends with the owner who brought this car up from Tennessee to NH and sold it to whoever you bought it from. We stored the car for almost a whole year at our place in NH around 2017-18ish. When we had it in our garage I did her a favor, disassembled the front seats, and ran the covers and carpet through the wash a few times. That interior was MINT when she took the car back. What happened to the original driver's seat cover I couldn't even guess. They were... interesting people who we haven't heard from in years. Don't have any other pieces of intel on the car for you aside from wondering if the weird third party temp gauge is still in place.

 

[RAPTOR479]

Crazy - I was friends with the owner who brought this car up from Tennessee to NH and sold it to whoever you bought it from. We stored the car for almost a whole year at our place in NH around 2017-18ish. When we had it in our garage I did her a favor, disassembled the front seats, and ran the covers and carpet through the wash a few times. That interior was MINT when she took the car back. What happened to the original driver's seat cover I couldn't even guess. They were... interesting people who we haven't heard from in years. Don't have any other pieces of intel on the car for you aside from wondering if the weird third party temp gauge is still in place.

You know Hannah! The original driver's seat was replaced with a black one by the guy I bought the car from (another friend) because he said the foam/grid was badly collapsed (par the course for 300k miles) I got good tan fabric from a friend and rebuilt that seat again with new foam, new grid and a new heater. The sunpro temp gauge is indeed still in place under the factory 52mm clock. The house I'm working on the car at is the house of the woman you know as she was nice enough to give me a spot in her garage

 

[RAPTOR479]

More stuff from this weekend! Got the radiator out and only spilled a medium amount of coolant everywhere.

Now of course, the biggest concern with this rebuild is where I'm sourcing new panels, after all, non rusty panels in gold aren't very easy to come by. Fortunately where I have the car is about 15 minutes up the road from Independent Auto of Augusta Maine, which has to be the biggest RWD volvo specialist shop in New England, and conveniently they have a field of just about anything

Conveniently, one of the parts cars is a Gold 93' wagon. Being a New England car the hood has rust on the leading edge and the fender has rust below and under the stick on side trim. But I've decided that I'm gonna give those two panels to the same shop that's doing the inner fender repair for repainting. (The motivation to start with gold panels is for the underside of the hood to be the right color)
Unless someone happens to have a rust free hood and fender in 400 gold off a late car with good paint sitting around MA or Maine?
Other than that the valence, core support and headlight buckets are all just what I need for replacements and aren't rusty. If you're around the Augusta area I'd highly recommend Independent Auto for a state inspection or any work you don't wanna do yourself, the owner is really cool and has a bunch of his own awesome projects.

This is totally unrelated to this thread but this is Hazel everyone say hi to Hazel =)

Hopefully next weekend's update will be me with a freshly pulled gold front end and the car in for the repair to the inner fender.

 

[Bricktothefuture]

Wow! We had a cat named Hazel as well… does that yard have any 75-80 245’s? Might need to make a trip if they do to source some panels for my wagon!

 

[RAPTOR479]

Wow! We had a cat named Hazel as well… does that yard have any 75-80 245’s? Might need to make a trip if they do to source some panels for my wagon!

There's a lot of cars but I don't know whats customer what's parts and what's resto, for 75-80 it's probably gonna be rusted out beyond repair (any of the cars for parts are there from rust) and a lot of the earlier stuff is available new (try vp autoparts)

 

[RAPTOR479]

Holy shit a thread update!
Finally back to working on the 240 after one weekend being taken by a Jeep XJ brake master and booster replacement and the other by moving into college!

To start us off nice and slow...

Got a full set of virgo lugnuts on the car since the rears used to be mismatched random ones

Next, while doing the teardown I noticed the hard water pipe that brings coolant from the water pump to the Heater Core was concerningly rusty, and with the front of the car off i decided to order a nice shiny replacement from STSmachining because I have the most space possible now (without having the manifold off)

And the old one

Next, I headed to home depot to grab some paint and primer to do some rust repair on the part the Radiator and AC condenser sit on as some rust had started around the spot welds

And then primer

I got this far before I decided to take a break as I'd spent the past three hours hand sanding all the rust (I'm also going to get some masking tape and random paper for
paint)

And finally, with all that out of the way, the main event!

It's unfortunate that a gold on tan 93' wagon met it's end however its parts shall go to a far less rusty gold 240

After fighting the siezed nuts on the plastic headlight buckets (via drill) I was able to get the front support out, and I was pleased to learn that my theory about being able to remove these four spot welded pieces as a single unit was correct, and most surprisingly there's almost no rust on any of these parts, which unfortunately isn't true about the hood or fender

Next I took on removing the bumper, which was real easy, six bolts, two being huge, and just pull it off, and only one of the air dam mounts is broken!

After pulling the bumper I decided to get to removing the fender from the car, which is in what I'd call passable shape, some rust below the stuck-on plastic trim and a little more at the front down bottom, and a small dent at the arch but it will need painted anyway from the bazillion scratches

I was also able to score a lot more stuff, like a fan shroud, airbox (after removing a HUGE mouse nest) washer tank bracket, AC pusher fan and more small stuff

I'll be going back sometime to take the hood, it's hinges, as well as essentially the entire airbag system. So expect that as soon as I have a Monday or Friday with no classes.

 

[RAPTOR479]

Not much to report on this weekend except for taking this

And turning it into this!

(This is code for the XJ needed work but now no longer randomly loses clutch pressure or hemorrhages oil)

 

[RAPTOR479]

Got stuck back into it this weekend, with the sheet metal part of the damage just awaiting straightening I decided to tackle the other part of the damage, the SRS system.

To start this project. I need to introduce the white 245 that I accidentally stumbled upon in a local PnP while looking for XJ parts

Unfortunately, this clean Virginia wagon met it's end shortly after coming to New England due to what I can only assume was a tree falling on it

Fortunately for me, the car had a complete SRS system that hasn't been exposed to salt air for the last 30 years, and an airbag ecu that was sitting on a solid floor.

Getting the components out of the car was trivial except for having to go to autozone to get a 1 and 1/16ths socket to remove the wheel.

In terms of getting the scavenged parts installed into my own car, I was able to install them in an evening, swapping my original clock spring and it's melted connector to the new one

And then swapping in the new airbag ecu and crash sensor

After that the only thing left to install was the airbag itself, which is where I found a problem

The old airbag exploded with such force it BENT the horn contacts the airbag sits on, causing it not to sit deep enough in the wheel. The contacts are pretty strong and aren't able to be bent back by hand, fortunately I have somewhere I can get (flat) replacements next weekend, stay tuned!

 

[jams2018]

great thread! Where did you find that white Volvo? I need a drivers door

 

[RAPTOR479]

great thread! Where did you find that white Volvo? I need a drivers door

That white 240 is at the Pick N Pull in Johnston Rhode Island. VA car by the stickers so the door was cleeean

 

[RAPTOR479]

Got to it again this last weekend and sourced a few things. New horn contacts so I could finally button up the airbag system and retrieved the hood off the gold wagon

Kind of cool seeing the wheel back together for the first time since the wreck. I can't quite say the interior is complete again because I had the center console out to do some seatbelt buckle repair (and decided I should really get a less beat up center console soon)

I somehow completely forgot to take pictures of this hood, but it was in the back of a tacoma..

UNfortunately both the hood and the fender off this wagon were typical new england parts car panels and therefore the hood is full of rust at the leading edge (past repairable) and the fender is rusty down low and has a nice dent right on the arch, but they were present and all the stuff off that car was a package deal, they're about the right color and will most certainly work for now, however if anyone in or between Rhode Island and Maine has a clean rust free 400 Gold metallic 240 hood and Passenger fender with good paint let me know, I'm interested

 

[JW240]

Great to see this 240 being saved! Hope you will have it back on the road soon.

 

[RAPTOR479]

Great to see this 240 being saved! Hope you will have it back on the road soon.

That makes two of us! =D