Andy's '88 Volvo 745

[Z33_Taxi]

...what rare parts did you get?

[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.

[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]

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.

[double_oh_9]

I love these wagons so much. Good show man

[fortbrick]

I love these wagons so much. Good show man

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

[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]

]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]

Out of the garage for the first time since January

[reiernumans]

This thing is so awesome

[double_oh_9]

Looks perfect!!! the fact that the picture of both is atleast 750,000 miles worth of volvo is amazing

[fortbrick]

I haven't updated this in a long while now, but first in order to cover a few things we'll go back in time before my previous post to mid January. I had planned on getting a winter beater but hadn't gotten around to it, so I ended up driving the wagon through a few weeks of snow/salt abuse.

This was the last time I had the car out in the early winter, shortly after getting it cleaned and ready to go into the garage for a couple months.



In mid March we got a spike of warmer weather, and an opportunity to get out in the garage and work on something (without shivering) arose. I had a custom short shifter made for the car that effectively cut the throw of the shifter in half, making the car much more enjoyable to drive. I even went so far as to put the summer wheels back on, which immediately proved to be a bad idea. So back into the garage it went after another session of cleaning. About this time I picked up a truck as a new daily.





By late April I had regained some motivation to work on the car. Some new ideas came together and I ended up with a set of custom coilovers from Ben at Kaplhenke Racing. You can check out his stuff *here*. This setup utilizes Bilstein HD inserts and shocks. 275lb front springs and 200lb rear springs from Eibach give the car a very responsive and performance oriented feel while retaining a tolerable ride quality. Also pictured is a lower chassis brace and adjustable panhard bar from iPd.



Got around to installing my R-Sport wheel shortly after. It's 13¼" diameter, nearly 2" smaller than the original wheel, improved steering feel more than any modification that I've made to date.



And after running into a few issues with the car unrelated to the suspension installation, the car finally left the garage in late May. This is now how the car looks with the coilovers all the way up on steelies. It was quite comical in person.



Back in the beginning of the thread I had hinted at a set of Pontiac GTA wheels, which for a long time was the vision I had for the car. Unfortunately, even after calculating the offsets and measuring multiple times, I wasn't happy with the look the car had with them installed. I didn't bother to take photos, so just imagine the car with about an inch of poke all around. Definitely not what I had in mind for the car, so they were sold off and I went back to the drawing board.

After driving the car on steelies for over a month and knowing that this wasn't the progress that I wanted to see, the hunt was on again for a setup that would better suit my new vision. Adapters were ordered and tires were chosen, and after a short drive to South Bend, I had found what I had really wanted all along. The rear brakes have been overhauled since then. Seeing that fresh adapter against the decrepit rotor was reason enough for me.

[fortbrick]

Repainted the bumpers and rocker panels. But more importantly, I got the new wheels fitted.

They're BBS Style 5's in 17x8, et20. With adapters they're effectively et0. The fitment in the rear is excellent after rolling the quarters. Some adjustable strut mounts and a re-drill should get the front sitting better. I don't have intentions of going crazy low, but this is as low as it'll be until some more clearance up front comes into play.

[notmarshall]

Ok this is good. I've been tossing around what spec wheels I want on mine and this helps a lot!

[fortbrick]

Ok this is good. I've been tossing around what spec wheels I want on mine and this helps a lot!

Ideally with an 8" wide wheel you'd want et10 in the rear and et20 up front for maximum clearance. People have used 10" wheels in the past but that require pulling, whereas my rear quarters were rolled and I still have the stock fender liners in the front.