For Sale: Volvo, not on fire (at the moment)

Okay kidding, it's not for sale.  But it WAS on fire.  I was sussing out a possible vacuum leak with brake cleaner (it's flammable, so any vacuum leaks would suck fluid in and change the engine note) and pretty much coating the intake side of the engine bay of Yellow Box...  I must have sprayed down the distributor a LITTLE too much because just as I was deciding that there wasn't a vacuum leak the whole thing WOOFED up in a fireball.  I dropped the brake cleaner can and ran to the other garage for an extinguisher (I didn't realize there was one not 5 feet away) and got it out before it did too much damage.

No pics of the carnage though, I was too pissed at myself afterwards to even think of it.  I'll be doing the fixes I was planning beforehand regardless, and then making sure that the harness is still good.  I have a line on a replacement, so if it turns out that the harness needs replacing, I can get that done without much fuss.

The Yellow Box

Today I went and picked up a car for a friend.  It's a 1983 Volvo 245, sorta nicknamed 'Yellow Box.'  It had been sitting for a while and both the owners and the place they donated it to basically wanted it to go away, so the price was very right.  It definitely needs a bit of TLC before it'll be a good daily for her, but with my expertise on hand it shouldn't take much before it's ready for prime time.  I was a little worried today when driving it home, it started to have a couple of electrical issues, but about halfway home things cleared up so I'm going to attribute all of the problems it has to simply sitting too long.

Battery was nearly dead after sitting, jumping it with Betty

  I figure a good bath and an engine bay steam cleaning are in order, then I'll get it into the garage to poke around a little more invasively before providing her with a list of parts that need to be acquired before I'll feel comfortable turning over the keys.  She really wants a quirky yet reliable Volvo, and I think this fits the bill.  Apparently she fell in love (or at least a great like) with them back when we were dating, and my '79 - though she deemed it a 'scary' car - was the onus for such feelings.

It definitely needs some tailgate love, the fuse area requires a good cleansing, and I may have to get the rotors turned due to the rusticles that attached themselves to the car after sitting so long.  However the outside of the car is fairly straight, interior is somewhat rough but good in the areas that matter, and it drives pretty nicely.  Hopefully this will be the car that gives her the volvo 'bug', just like my 1981 242 did back in the day.

A big update.

I spent a couple of months basically not doing ANYTHING to either car.  I was simply driving Betty around, and my maroon 245 sat over at my parents place so long you can see it in the backyard in Google Maps.  Whoops.

The weather kindof turned bad, and I realized that if it was sitting outside I'd NEVER get around to working on it, so during a break in the weather a couple of weeks ago I cleaned out the garage a bit and pushed Roon (new name, what do you think?) inside so I could actually DO something eventually.

Since then, I've gotten quite a bit of work done, so at least my plan is coming together somewhat.  I finally started wiring up the MegaSquirt, and figured out a few things I did wrong with the alarm/keyless entry, cleaned up and painted a few odds and ends, and test-fitted a '93 850 front spoiler.  I'll include a few pics here, but for the rest hit up my flickr set for this project.

In other volvo-related news, Betty needs a tranny flush and a new speedo cable - and while I have the tranny fluid out due to the cable replacement, I might as well replace the pan gasket and do an accumulator mod...but honestly I don't know if I want to put that much work into the stupid automatic.  Maybe, but... I don't know.  I guess if I do this work it'll be easier to sell later, but I absolutely LOATHE automatics.  If it were a manual I'd have bought the parts and done the whole shebang by now.

In fact, I'm kindof keeping an eye out for an 850 wagon with a manual transmission.  Specifically, a '95 due to the fact that they weren't OBD compliant, so I can pull the computers and MegaSquirt/Turbo it without worrying about DEQ.  But that would be something to do AFTER I get Roon done and the GF's 850 fixed.  Which, will have to be soon since it has to do the DEQ thing before the end of the month and it still has a Cyl1 misfire (possibly burnt valve).  I may be able to clear the codes immediately prior to hitting DEQ so that I can fix it on my own timeline, but that may be iffy due to how quickly the code pops up after clearing.  We'll see if that's possible.

Hopefully I'll update more often now that I'm actually working on things. :D