302ftw?
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 7, 2010
- Location
- Goshen, NY
Sad to say but that is most cars these days, including 95% of BMWs. If I had new car money to spend id get a GR Corolla.
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Poik's 1983 245 DL - The Ultimate Daily Driver (in my eyes)
- Thread starter Poik
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- Mountain View, CA
Finally fixed my charging issues a couple weeks ago. After replacing the alternator twice with some spares and both of them blowing up I decided that probably wasn't the issue. With some deeper troubleshooting I found that the once-repaired bundle of wires on one of the 8-pin connectors at the firewall was totally corroded and missing most of the insulation. The oil pressure warning, coolant temp sensor, alternator exciter wire, and coil positive wire were all intermittently shorted to each other. The starter solenoid wire was also missing all of its insulation but miraculously had never become shorted to the other wires. I ran new wires, installed a new connector, and installed my 3rd and last spare alternator and now the car is running like a champ!
Took it on a drive in the Santa Cruz mountains this weekend with some colleagues and finally got a chance to push the car with the new brakes, which are definitely the best part about the car; they're just awesome now that everything has bedded in. The car handles pretty sweet too, but I'm going to get some softer springs for the car because the 500/250lb/in setup I have is just overkill and pretty awful for ride quality. This has also reaffirmed to me that I should keep the car NA. On the type of roads that I like to drive power just isn't really the limiting factor, so if I can get double what the car has now I think I'll be pretty content.
Next up is to fix as many of the rattles and stuff to make the car sound less like it's falling apart and to install air conditioning.
Took it on a drive in the Santa Cruz mountains this weekend with some colleagues and finally got a chance to push the car with the new brakes, which are definitely the best part about the car; they're just awesome now that everything has bedded in. The car handles pretty sweet too, but I'm going to get some softer springs for the car because the 500/250lb/in setup I have is just overkill and pretty awful for ride quality. This has also reaffirmed to me that I should keep the car NA. On the type of roads that I like to drive power just isn't really the limiting factor, so if I can get double what the car has now I think I'll be pretty content.
Next up is to fix as many of the rattles and stuff to make the car sound less like it's falling apart and to install air conditioning.
brendon_ak
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Location
- Hood River, OR
I can't remember, are you going to do a 16v NA setup?
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- Mountain View, CA
Yep I'll do a 2.5L 16v NA setup eventually, have most of the parts, mostly just need the time/space to do the rebuild. Going to use an early low friction B230 block for the build.
So I've been chipping away at my list of stuff to do on the car. Since my last post I changed my springs from 500lb/in front to 300lb/in, and 250lb/in to 200lb/in rear springs. For the front I used Eibach 1000.2530.0300 barrel springs which were a few dollars more than the standard 2.5" coilover springs, but provide 174mm of travel until block height so I can finally use the full travel of the Koni front struts even with a bit of preload.
The ride quality is a lot better now, wish I would have done this 10 years ago. I also put on an IPD 25mm rear ARB because the car was a bit more understeered at the limit than I wanted. Once I revalve the rear dampers this thing is going to be pretty sweet.
I sanded and painted the factory tow hitch I've had kicking around forever, and finally installed it on the car.
Probably biggest improvement on the list of things was to install the rest of the air conditioning setup that I pulled many moons ago from a junkyard '93 240 car. I had already installed the whole heater core/blower/evaporator thing like 10 years ago, but finally got around to the rest. Had to switch over to the 90+ power steering pump at the same time, so I did that too. Cleaned up all the brackets and lines:
Super annoying that you can no longer embed photos from Google Photos, hopefully these links work at least.
Got everything connected and pulled it down to 500 microns to let it sit for a while before I filled with R134a:
Annoyingly, the terminals for the connector on the body side of the harness had completely disintegrated, even though the fan side looked good as new. Replaced both sides of the connection with a DTP connector:
Installed the condenser fan and used window isolation foam around the condenser before I reinstalled the slam panel:
Was getting around 13C in the vents with fan on full sitting in the garage when garage temp was about 32C. And of course the day I finished installing the system was the last day of summer, so I haven't actually turned it on while driving yet. Most annoying part of the installation was the replacement orifice tube. The original one came out no problem, but the generic replacement I got would absolutely not go back in. I ended up ordering a new one from FCP when I was ordering some other parts since it was only like $2, and that one ended up working. I measured all of them when I had them on the bench, and it was a tiny small difference, like 0.2mm difference on the oring, but apparently that is enough to make it impossible to install.
I used some rubber isolators I got from Amazon instead of paying $8 per for the genuine Volvo ones for the condenser fan, and they lasted all of 50 miles before one sheared completely off:
With the new suspension and trailer hitch and AC retrofit, I took the car in to work to corner weight it and do an alignment. Full tank of gas, without me in it:
With me in it:
49.9% diagonal so I think that's about as good as I can do
Front left caster was a bit low but didn't have a way to increase this without reducing camber, so I kept camber the same. Will see if I can fix this some time in the future:
Next up is to wet sand and polish the whole car, and continue fixing all the rattles and noises. I recently found out that the tailgate hinges have a decent amount of slop, so the whole thing is moving around and sounds awful when I go over potholes and trashy road surfaces, so I really need to fix that. The car is really coming along nicely though.
brendon_ak
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Location
- Hood River, OR
Dude 2.5l 16v is sooooo sick, can't wait to see how it goes! Been casually looking at penta stuff just in case. Such a cool oem+ move. I remember when I dumped my car on coils and was so disappointed with the ride. Then I raised the suspension into its range and was blown away how well things work when they're setup like they're supposed toYep I'll do a 2.5L 16v NA setup eventually, have most of the parts, mostly just need the time/space to do the rebuild. Going to use an early low friction B230 block for the build.
So I've been chipping away at my list of stuff to do on the car. Since my last post I changed my springs from 500lb/in front to 300lb/in, and 250lb/in to 200lb/in rear springs. For the front I used Eibach 1000.2530.0300 barrel springs which were a few dollars more than the standard 2.5" coilover springs, but provide 174mm of travel until block height so I can finally use the full travel of the Koni front struts even with a bit of preload.
The ride quality is a lot better now, wish I would have done this 10 years ago. I also put on an IPD 25mm rear ARB because the car was a bit more understeered at the limit than I wanted. Once I revalve the rear dampers this thing is going to be pretty sweet.
I sanded and painted the factory tow hitch I've had kicking around forever, and finally installed it on the car.
Probably biggest improvement on the list of things was to install the rest of the air conditioning setup that I pulled many moons ago from a junkyard '93 240 car. I had already installed the whole heater core/blower/evaporator thing like 10 years ago, but finally got around to the rest. Had to switch over to the 90+ power steering pump at the same time, so I did that too. Cleaned up all the brackets and lines:
Super annoying that you can no longer embed photos from Google Photos, hopefully these links work at least.
Got everything connected and pulled it down to 500 microns to let it sit for a while before I filled with R134a:
Annoyingly, the terminals for the connector on the body side of the harness had completely disintegrated, even though the fan side looked good as new. Replaced both sides of the connection with a DTP connector:
Installed the condenser fan and used window isolation foam around the condenser before I reinstalled the slam panel:
Was getting around 13C in the vents with fan on full sitting in the garage when garage temp was about 32C. And of course the day I finished installing the system was the last day of summer, so I haven't actually turned it on while driving yet. Most annoying part of the installation was the replacement orifice tube. The original one came out no problem, but the generic replacement I got would absolutely not go back in. I ended up ordering a new one from FCP when I was ordering some other parts since it was only like $2, and that one ended up working. I measured all of them when I had them on the bench, and it was a tiny small difference, like 0.2mm difference on the oring, but apparently that is enough to make it impossible to install.
I used some rubber isolators I got from Amazon instead of paying $8 per for the genuine Volvo ones for the condenser fan, and they lasted all of 50 miles before one sheared completely off:
With the new suspension and trailer hitch and AC retrofit, I took the car in to work to corner weight it and do an alignment. Full tank of gas, without me in it:
With me in it:
49.9% diagonal so I think that's about as good as I can do
Front left caster was a bit low but didn't have a way to increase this without reducing camber, so I kept camber the same. Will see if I can fix this some time in the future:
Next up is to wet sand and polish the whole car, and continue fixing all the rattles and noises. I recently found out that the tailgate hinges have a decent amount of slop, so the whole thing is moving around and sounds awful when I go over potholes and trashy road surfaces, so I really need to fix that. The car is really coming along nicely though.