More Yellow Box

Yellow box got put back together today.  Harness was reinstalled, timing was set, and it still failed to start.  I traced it down to the ecu not seeing that the engine was cranking, and found that the ecu itself might be bad.  Probably my fault since it WAS working before I started fucking with the harness.  Looking for a replacement ecu now.

Then there are a few other issues that need attention, main one being a bad heater blower motor.  I REALLY should have asked/checked this before buying it, but I figured that it was a minor corrosion issue with the fuses and/or ground.  Son of a bitch.  Anyway, I suppose it's time for me to swap one out, since I haven't EVER had to do it in nearly 20 years of Volvo ownership.  After that it needs a few minor interior pieces and some speakers.

It's a good little car, I like it.

Fixing a Yellow Box

So Yellow Box had a small engine fire.  Not my car, but now my problem to fix because I caused it.  Posted on OVT about getting a new harness, and got a hit - but when I picked up the harness it wasn't the right one.  Looks like it was for a k-jet car, not LH.  However, the ignition harness that came with it was for a bosch distributor instead of the chrysler piece of crap, so I grabbed one of my spare distributors out of my stash and installed that.  Then I went about fixing the old harness, because I looked through the records that came with the car and the harness in the car was only about 5 years old - which for a 27 year old car was FABULOUS.

While the pic of the harness LOOKS bad, it was really only singed in a few places, and only one connector was unusable (which was on the ignition harness, which I swapped).  When I cut off the sheathing the wires underneath were absolutely perfect.  Some of the insulation was slightly bonded to the sheathing, but I was able to cut it all off and make it perfect.  And then I reinstalled it.

An upside to taking the intake manifold off to get to the harness was that it revealed that the car DID, IN FACT have a vacuum leak.  The intake manifold gasket at #1 was nastified and broken (nowhere near where the fire was worst, so that wasn't the cause).  The intake tube was also melted, but I'm pretty sure THAT was due to the fire...luckily I have a spare from my maroon 245.  I picked up the parts for that today, and I should have it back together and running this weekend.

THEN I can start on the other 3 cars I have to fix...  Betty needs a transmission mount, the 850 needs a valve replacement, and Roon needs to be finished.  Sheesh.