Andy's '88 Volvo 745

[fortbrick]

Looking seriously cool with some proper wheels! Both of your cars look extremly clean too altough they have been driven that much. Here in finland we have a lot of old volvo bricks, but only few look as clean as yours . A common upgrade for the poor gearbox here is to change it to volvo m90 from a 940. Its a easy swap and m90 is alot better. But when dealing with some power bmw zf gearboxes from e36's is the way to go .

Thanks! It has a few love marks, but it's definitely a survivor. After the suspension is complete, one of the following projects will be swapping the m46 out in favor of an m90 or a t5 from a 80's Mustang.

[Golden Gramps]

Your brick is stupid clean. Keep up the good work!!

[Jannes123]

Looking seriously cool with some proper wheels! Both of your cars look extremly clean too altough they have been driven that much. Here in finland we have a lot of old volvo bricks, but only few look as clean as yours . A common upgrade for the poor gearbox here is to change it to volvo m90 from a 940. Its a easy swap and m90 is alot better. But when dealing with some power bmw zf gearboxes from e36's is the way to go .

[fortbrick]

Another cross-post from turbobricks, just to keep this updated as well.

Got the quick steer/roll correction spacers and the adjustable strut mounts installed in early March and had the car aligned. Have to give a big thumbs up to Ben at Kaplhenke Racing for designing these great products for cars that not many people have an interest in. I'll have to take some photos of how it all turned out.

Took the car to Water by the Bridge in Louisville, Kentucky in the end of March. The car did great, and fun was had, but a few concerns became apparent. The days are limited with an m46 in this car. Between the in-operable overdrive and overall lack of satisfaction that comes with shifting this bowl of macaroni and cheese between gears, the time has come. I have begun gathering parts to swap it over to a t5, and hope to find a bolt on solution to the less than desirable shifter location. The front flange on the catalytic converter rusted off before the trip, so the car made the almost five hundred mile trip running with the downpipe wide open. Still battling a bit of steering wheel shake between 50-60mph. I attribute this to the cut studs on the car or simply the adapters. Looking into getting the wheels redrilled to 5x108 to hopefully alleviate that issue and allow the use of a larger tire.





Installed an OBX catback system and coupled it to the stock downpipe as a temporary solution to the leak, although some crazy sounds come out of this with it running wide open. Took it out for a quick shakedown run. Have a 3" downpipe from Jesse and a hybrid 19t in the works so I didn't make it too pretty.

[fortbrick]

This should be interesting. Adjustable strut mounts and quick steer roll correctors going on.

[fortbrick]

my stock liners are long gone due to driving with huge front tires for a while with my coils maxed out haha. and I was probably going to cut and pull the rears a little and maybe to 9", but my car isn't near as clean as yours so I'm not too scared to cut it up a little haha,

Yeah, cutting was not in my best interest.

[notmarshall]

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.

my stock liners are long gone due to driving with huge front tires for a while with my coils maxed out haha. and I was probably going to cut and pull the rears a little and maybe to 9", but my car isn't near as clean as yours so I'm not too scared to cut it up a little haha,

[philohlean]

Wagon looks fantastic man, reading this makes me sad that I'll be saying goodbye to my brick in a matter of months

[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.

[notmarshall]

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

[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.

[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.

[double_oh_9]

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

[reiernumans]

This thing is so awesome

[fortbrick]

Out of the garage for the first time since January