Andy's '88 Volvo 745

[fortbrick]

]Haven't updated this in a while. A little bit to share on, although progress with anything on the car has been slow. Been fixing a lot of small things that have been bugging me.

My favorite photo from fall



And then it spent some time in here while I worked on other things



Had all of the rust removed and some areas restructured in my sedan. It'll be back for paint in the spring. Also put some steelies on the wagon as new wheel prep has began and the summer tires were about shot.



Garage looks about like this now. Epoxy flooring going down in a few weeks! You can see more about the garage *here*.



I've been building a 16v turbo motor with a buddy for his auto-x 242 project. My motor will be pretty similar when I decide to start doing something with it. Here's some pics of his. Lots of weird custom Volvo stuff going on. Most of it is OEM+. Shooting for 450bhp.







And now, hibernation. Lots of things coming together slowly and I'll update again once things are in motion.



And a teaser of a couple things that'll be going on soon.

[fortbrick]

Well, maybe not so big of an update after all.

Shortly after my last update I found an aluminum hood in a shade of silver from a diesel car at the junk yard. The vin plate was gone and I was planning on having it painted anyways so I bought it, carried it out to the lot where the car was sitting and installed it. To my surprise it was a perfect match to the car so I elected to not repaint any part of the car.

That Saturday was the Indiana turbobricks meet, so I was excited to have the car put back together and have a reason to put some miles on her.





And a shot of the car next to my new hangout space. I've been busy building a new garage with my father, neighbor and a couple other guys for the past two months and things are starting to come to a close (this photo is from the beginning of the month). Hopefully I'll be able to drive the wagon into late December before the salt goes down, and then it'll go away until springtime.

[fortbrick]

I love these wagons so much. Good show man

Thanks! And it's just getting started...

[double_oh_9]

I love these wagons so much. Good show man

[fortbrick]

Restored another set of e-code lights and picked up a new set of clear corner lights. I have some older amber and clear corner lights on the shelf that I may throw on to see how they look, but I really like the all clear ones.

-Auxiliary cooling fan removed
-New battery, grille, e-codes, corner lights, and third row seat installed
-Cleaned the engine bay some
-Changed the oil



I have not scheduled a date to take the car back in, but it is drawing sooner. Life has been extremely busy this past month. I'm building a new garage with my father, so that has been taking priority lately. When the car goes back in to the shop some small things need to be tweaked that I am not happy with, and then the core support, hood, hatch, and bumpers will be painted. I have decided to not repaint the rest of the car right now as there are some things that I would like to modify before a respray happens, and the car really doesn't need it.

[fortbrick]

This will be one of those updates where a lot of work has been done, but it really shows for nothing. I had planned on taking the hood from the blue car and having it repainted for the silver car, but this past Thursday I went for a drive to Ohio and picked up another blue hood... this one just happens to be an aluminum one from a diesel car. Pretty hard to find a good aluminum hood these days, but once again I got lucky.

Late last night I installed the new hood on the car and this morning I took a quick trip to my buddies shop where it will be soda blasted. Going to get the heavy hood put back on the blue car and get that sold after this is finished up. The new headlights, corner lights, and grille are finished and awaiting the cars return from paint to be installed. Need to get the intercooler, radiator, and their mounts aligned properly and then I will move onto taking the trim, mirrors, signals, and the sunroof out. Then it will be just about ready for paint.

Just to have a picture, here is how the car looked today when I was about to leave the shop. Still looking about the same as it did in the last update.

[fortbrick]

...what rare parts did you get?

Small and large matching coin/pen trays, ambient temperature gauge, nicer power and heated mirrors, some hard interior plastic pieces, black leather third row rear-facing seat, and a full-size Foha spoiler. At some point somebody had put some time and money into the car.

Got it all for $37.

[Z33_Taxi]

...what rare parts did you get?

[fortbrick]

Today has been great.

I went to the junk yard this morning looking for some old Ford parts, and ended up bringing home some rare parts from a 740 that wasn't listed in the yards online catalog. Came home smiling with my new parts, and then discovered that a handful of boxes containing the last round of parts that I needed had finally arrived. Soon after I got a phone call from the man working on my wagon telling me that the initial body work had been finished, so I came by to have a look at it.

I'm overly impressed that the core support has been fixed, and it now looks nicer than it did beforehand. The front passenger fender had it's bulges and dents worked out with a little pdr, only leaving one small blemish that will be fixed when it goes in for paint. The small dent above the wheel arch on the driver's fender will be fixed when it's painted.

Installed the hood from my blue wagon and brought the car home to do some more disassembly to save some time in the long run.

Plus, I really missed driving it.

Should have the car back to the shop by the first for new paint, but we'll see how that goes.

[fortbrick]

You sir have a talent for finding these cars! Down here(SE Georgia), they are so hard to come by it seems.

They really are pretty scarce around here. A lot of finding this car was in the timing and scouring the internet for hours, but I'm willing to say that there was some luck involved... especially at the price I got it for.

Where do you find all these sick turbo wagons?! Saying I'm jealous would be an understatement.

I use the for sale section on my other forum, word of mouth, and searchtempest.com. It searches all of craigslist throughout the country for whatever you are looking for. The blue wagon will either be for sale or getting stripped for a lightweight track/auto-x/drift build after the silver wagon is returned.

I'm glad to see you getting back on the road in another Volvo wagon

LOVE this thread!

Thanks guys. After driving my grandfather's Cadillac these past two weeks I am happy to be back in something that at least feels familiar.

[willie@stance]

LOVE this thread!

[Z33_Taxi]

I'm glad to see you getting back on the road in another Volvo wagon

[xmax92xd]

Where do you find all these sick turbo wagons?! Saying I'm jealous would be an understatement.

[Darkyoshi154]

You sir have a talent for finding these cars! Down here(SE Georgia), they are so hard to come by it seems.

[fortbrick]

In these last two weeks a lot of looking and waiting had to be done, and it took quite a bit of patience... but I am happy to say that I now have everything that will be needed to get the wagon fixed and looking better than ever.

Being that my other car, an '89 744, is still waiting to be worked in at the body shop to have some rust issues taken care of and be painted, I needed to find a car to drive around until sometime next month when the wagon is finished. I looked around at the local craigslist listings for something cheap and easy to fix if it were to break to no avail, and then I stumbled across a nice looking car within a reasonable driving distance.

I decided to take a miniature road trip to Garden City, Michigan with a couple good friends and see if we could buy a car.




So here it is, another 1988 745ti with m46 trans. It's a little rough around the edges but it'll get me from point a to b in the meantime.




And here is where the wagon is currently. It doesn't look that bad now that it is mostly taken apart. Hoping to get it into the shop later this week.