First post in what I hope is my long-term project / grail car. So, some background… my first car was a 1979 245, rust orange, gifted to me by my favorite uncle. He always had a thing for big old cars - he and my aunt had a series of Lincoln Continentals and VW buses. Being 16, I totally didn’t appreciate the car as much as I would today, and when I left for college it was given to a friend of the family.
Fast forward to 2011, my Uncle had post-polio (late life degenerative condition that almost everyone who gets polio later suffers from) and could no longer drive his 1963 VW 15 window, so I inherit that and get it back on the road. I eventually decided that it was too rusty for me to fix myself, and the crumple zone is otherwise known as your knees, and no amount of work makes that safer. So, a year ago I made the tough decision to sell the bus despite the massive sentimental attachment and invest in another car he would deeply approve of, a vintage Volvo.
I‘ve always had a thing for the 242 series, and when I discovered the 262c existed I had to have one. It’s just so ridiculous that Volvo made that car. Plus, it reportedly came to life due to Volvo execs seeing, of all things, a Lincoln - practically meant to be!
I reached out to a guy on FB selling his 242. It was in decent shape a couple states away, and I was pretty tempted. But then I saw he also had a 262c listed! It turns out the 242 was his own personal car, but the 262c was part of an estate he was helping to sell. The owner of a Volvo specialty shop in New Hampshire (Mark owned Royalty Automotive in Barrington NH - almost must have been a TBer??) had passed away unexpectedly and left his large collection of Volvos behind for the family to deal with. The guy I talked with on FB had worked out a deal to help sell the estate cars in exchange for the quirky shop 245. They had just reduced the 262c from $10k to $4500.
I started getting details on the car… it was swapped to a B21ft and M46, with a restoration done around 2011. Runs and drives, but sat for some number of years. Tires are shot, gas tank is krusty, needs all the expected maintenance. I knew I wanted a 262c, I knew I wanted a turbo redblock + manual swap rather than auto + PRV. Pretty much the only downsides were the tan interior (front seats and dash cap are in rough shape) and that it had been sitting for years.
A couple of the 138 photos they took of the car:
Now that I’ve decided this is the car, I want to get it before someone else does. Of course, it’s an 8 hour drive, and I literally had surgery 10 days ago, but off we go! We decide to drive up that weekend, rent a U-Haul, and tow the car back. Of course, everything went exactly as planned…
We drive up to NH only to discover that there is no shit a ducking HURRICANE (Hurricane Lee) hitting NH that weekend. For those of you not from the northeast…. That generally isn’t a thing. In September. When I need to pick up my new goddamn Volvo! Mind you I’ve never towed anything before, let alone a car behind an empty U-Haul during a hurricane.
Next, U-Haul doesn’t have the equipment they promised. Ok, fine, there’s another U-Haul location 30 miles away that does, they’ll cover the mileage and gas, and we have just enough time to make it back before the shop foreman goes on vacation for the rest of the week. So we head over to the second location, where the new employee takes what feels like an hour to figure out how to hitch up the trailer. Thankfully the old timer who knew what she was doing reviewed everything and made sure they did it right.
We pick up the car, drive it back to our hotel, and decide to leave EARLY the next day in hopes of avoiding the worst of the weather. We made it back without much trouble, a little wind and rain but nothing tropical storm bad. And then it was mine!
Fast forward to 2011, my Uncle had post-polio (late life degenerative condition that almost everyone who gets polio later suffers from) and could no longer drive his 1963 VW 15 window, so I inherit that and get it back on the road. I eventually decided that it was too rusty for me to fix myself, and the crumple zone is otherwise known as your knees, and no amount of work makes that safer. So, a year ago I made the tough decision to sell the bus despite the massive sentimental attachment and invest in another car he would deeply approve of, a vintage Volvo.
I‘ve always had a thing for the 242 series, and when I discovered the 262c existed I had to have one. It’s just so ridiculous that Volvo made that car. Plus, it reportedly came to life due to Volvo execs seeing, of all things, a Lincoln - practically meant to be!
I reached out to a guy on FB selling his 242. It was in decent shape a couple states away, and I was pretty tempted. But then I saw he also had a 262c listed! It turns out the 242 was his own personal car, but the 262c was part of an estate he was helping to sell. The owner of a Volvo specialty shop in New Hampshire (Mark owned Royalty Automotive in Barrington NH - almost must have been a TBer??) had passed away unexpectedly and left his large collection of Volvos behind for the family to deal with. The guy I talked with on FB had worked out a deal to help sell the estate cars in exchange for the quirky shop 245. They had just reduced the 262c from $10k to $4500.
I started getting details on the car… it was swapped to a B21ft and M46, with a restoration done around 2011. Runs and drives, but sat for some number of years. Tires are shot, gas tank is krusty, needs all the expected maintenance. I knew I wanted a 262c, I knew I wanted a turbo redblock + manual swap rather than auto + PRV. Pretty much the only downsides were the tan interior (front seats and dash cap are in rough shape) and that it had been sitting for years.
A couple of the 138 photos they took of the car:
Now that I’ve decided this is the car, I want to get it before someone else does. Of course, it’s an 8 hour drive, and I literally had surgery 10 days ago, but off we go! We decide to drive up that weekend, rent a U-Haul, and tow the car back. Of course, everything went exactly as planned…
We drive up to NH only to discover that there is no shit a ducking HURRICANE (Hurricane Lee) hitting NH that weekend. For those of you not from the northeast…. That generally isn’t a thing. In September. When I need to pick up my new goddamn Volvo! Mind you I’ve never towed anything before, let alone a car behind an empty U-Haul during a hurricane.
Next, U-Haul doesn’t have the equipment they promised. Ok, fine, there’s another U-Haul location 30 miles away that does, they’ll cover the mileage and gas, and we have just enough time to make it back before the shop foreman goes on vacation for the rest of the week. So we head over to the second location, where the new employee takes what feels like an hour to figure out how to hitch up the trailer. Thankfully the old timer who knew what she was doing reviewed everything and made sure they did it right.
We pick up the car, drive it back to our hotel, and decide to leave EARLY the next day in hopes of avoiding the worst of the weather. We made it back without much trouble, a little wind and rain but nothing tropical storm bad. And then it was mine!
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Funny story, I’d read enough about pulling the wheel to know to leave the nut threaded so the wheel doesn‘t pull off straight into your face. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that I’d unthreaded the nut all the way and it was just sitting on top of the threads 
but thankfully it wasn’t so stuck on there that it did damage to my face coming off 
This side is a bit more substantial. I was able to remove the flaking layer and probe the metal underneath, still solid, so plan is to remove as much of the surface rust as possible and then use a rust prevention product.
and have the pump mounted and wired. Next step is install into the new tank, but will wait until I have the rust under better control before reinstalling everything.
