Results!

Awesome, awesome fun.

Full write up to come of the chaos leading up to the race (and there was chaos a-plenty), but here's the nutshell: ran strongly and we were running 75th (in a field of 160) when a conrod bearing gave in Sunday around noon.

The team drove clean and the car was quick (105mph on the main straight). Not too bad for a 330,000km engine.

Volvo, we salute you.

 

Photo credit: HeadOn Racing

Roadblocks

Time's ticking down and we are still progressing, but despite the good run we've had with great people and with helpful people and awesome deals, sooner or later we were bound to hit trouble:

The internet is ripe with deals a-lenty, but what the internet giveth the internet taketh away.

Bought a hitch for our F150 Tow vehicle - found out yesterday it's for a GMC.
Bought a pair of seats from someone of the web, a month later they're nowehre to be found.
Ordered a set of sweet 15x7 rims for the race rubber... 3 out of the 4 rims were bent.


On a better note, Jason tuned the mix and we're now using 1/2 the gas we were, the cage is installed, and the racing seat & pads are days away.

(Jason has to explain to us what an engine is)

Still going to be a little tight, but we're still on track!

We've been busy!

New member to the team, say hi to Jason.

Jason is a mechanic AND rally drives a 240. Great addition to the team, and by God he knows his way around a Volvo.

We though we had lightened the car pretty well, but Jason & his air tools proved us very wrong. Another 40-50lbs of excess trim were pulled out of the car (most of it in the enormous cast iron bumpers.)

Using my rough calculations, that 50lbs should equate to an extra 300+ hp at the wheels. Handy.

AutoX results: 4th!!*

* In our class*

* A class of 5.

PHOTO BY RICK @ vcmc

Turns out, running rear springs with rates twice that of the front results in marginally severe oversteer (surprise!). Liftoff oversteer, power oversteer, trail braking oversteer... you name it, & the car would perform a smoky sideways oversteering version of it.

Not exceptionally competitive, but epic fun.

However, in the spirit of a true AutoXer I'll place the blame squarely on the tires.

Motomaster Tires: When you absoulety, positively 100% don't care about performance.

Big thanks to VCMC for the awesome day!

WE'RE IN!

Got the confirmation back, out of 180 teams vying for spots we made it in! Woohoo!

Still a lot to be done. AutoX on Sunday, time to shake the car down.

I gained 6 pounds in 1 week!

And all I had to do was send away for it.

I'm holding 6 pounds of boost in my hand (though it feels lighter than that). It's a manual Boost controller for $20 from NXS Motorsports.

Now to turn the 240 up to 11.

She's Alive!

There's now a Volvo-sized hole in my garage.

After waaay too long being parked up, Tiago & I plugged the 400ft of vacuum hoses back and tried our luck.

Defying all expectations, she started first pop and ran like a dream. There's no more clunk in the rear, the intake actually has vacuum, and most importantly the heater now blows cold air.


With the rear now 3x as stiff as the front and still on stock shocks it's a little lively, but new shocks are slated for the rear shortly.

We pulled parts off a car, put them back on and improved it. Holy Crap... we must be mechanics.

Junking in the Rain

We celebrated Labour Day by treasure hunting out in the mud and the rain at Chilliwack Pick-A-Part.

The rain eased off enough to grab a quick snap of our prize: a pair of fronts shocks from a 1990 Chevy S10 to go in the rear of the 240. Sweet riding Volvo here we come.

$15 for the shocks, that brings the total cost of the rear suspension up to... $26. Still on budget.

My Recurring nightmare...

Putting this back together.

It looks the aftermath of a explosion at a rubber tube factory.

(Clicking on the link for larger image doesn't help either.)

New favourite tool

Sears had a sale on & I picked up a set of Craftsman (aka GearWrench) Ratchet Wrenches with flexible heads.

Freaking awesome.

They operate with less than 5 degrees sweep and can get places that nothing else would work.

The oil pressure sender screws into an elbow which screws into the block. A socket won't fit on it and there wasn't enough room to swing an open end on it. These things saved the day.

4:1

...is our ratio. For every 1 part we attempt to replace/install, we seem to end up taking 4 more off.

On the upside there are only so many parts that can be removed, so I reckon we'll hit that point and day now.

Out oil temp gauge had been decidedly sketchy so we decided to check the connection to the sender, which is thoughtfully placed between the altenator, the oil filter, and the 7th gate of Hell.

To check the sensor we have to pull the filter (cue several emails telling me how wrong I am) Pulling the filter means draining the oil. Then trying to reach the filter by pulling off the tire, the heat shield and the skin of my left hand.

Two hours to remove the damn thing.


See you in Hell oil filter.

Splice, splice baby.

Bit of cleaning and retaping they're good as new. Hard to believe it's the same wire. Spent a few hours going through cleaning up our the connections.

Only problem is once we were done, we found a 'spare' on the ground. Kinda looks important.

Uh-oh...

Them wires don't look healthy.

Spring Cleaning

The intake is a mess, the bretaher hose venting the blowby back into the intake was taking perfectly good engine oil and moving it to the parts of the car that don't need oil. We spent a day removing all the intake tubing and flushing the gunk out. The amount that poured out of the intercooler could have filled a glass.

I hope this stuff goes back on as easy as it goes off.

Toys Toys Toys

Not just any springs, you're looking at NASCAR springs. Sure, the lengths may be a bit off, and the spring rates might not be dead even (300 vs 325lbs). Some may even call them mismatched. But we call them $10.99. And we love them like our very own.

We splashed out in the front with $60 Summit racing 600lb springs.

Off to the wreckers tomorrow to get a second pair of spring seats to hold them in place.

Bushed!

The bushings are in. After taking an hour to get the first sleeve out we made the executive decision to outsource the bushing removal to a third party.

Only problem was the third party wasn't in the partying mood. Every place we went into could spot those damn control arms from acros the road. "Are those from a Volvo?" they'd ask, then quote us $100/hr.

So in the spirit of LeMons we cheaped out and did it ourselves. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but the bushings are in. All it took was a hacksaw. Hacksaws and heat. And a big honking sledge.

Go with the Flow

It's not just any muffler. It's a MAGNAFLOW Muffler, with 3" of center-in center-out flowtitude.
Cause the old one isn't in the best of shape:
Incidentally, those are not 'back pressure reducing speed holes' in the pipe (as I mistakingly told Tiago).

Beating 'round the bushing pt2

Turns out these buggers are tricky to get out. The rubber core falls our easily enough, but the remaining thin metal which has now rust-welded itself to the control arm takes a bit more persuading.

Yes, we are using the hallowed turbo "Virgo" wheels as a workbench. We make not apologies.

Oh, and to answer all those that accuse me of slacking off with a camera while Tiago does all the hard work?

Yes I am.

Beating 'round the Bushing

We have our bushings (+ trunk of spares, thankyou Brent) 12 bottles of Liquid Wrench and a breaker bar. Time to tackle the rear.

If you look carefully, you can see slightly more wear on the old bushings. See if you can spot it.
I think it's safe to say we've found the source of our clunk.

Seek and ye shall find

So we've been trolling Craigslist looking for bargains, and sure enough a set of busings turn up for a 240. A quick pitch quick lowball offer (with the accompanying LeMons pitch) and we've scored a set of rear bushings for $30!

Next evening we go around to pick them up from Brent.

It turns out Brent likes his Volvos.

They're littered everywhere as we enter the garage (two Turbo Wagons were in incredible condition) and what he didn't know about Volvos wouldn't be worth knowing.


So he brings out the bushes and a box chock full of spare parts... that he thought might come in useful for the race. For free.


You name it's there. Spare altenator, spare fuses, spare relays, spare radiator overflow water bottle thingy.

Hey, he says, what condition are your front strusts in? They can get rusty so hold on, I have a SPARE SET OF FRONT SHOCK ASSEMBLIES!

Me & Tiago can not believe this. The man is a legend.

(And after all this he was still nice enough to suffer through my photo shoot)

We left 3 hours later having cleaned him out of almost every 240 part he owned, and he was still giving us golden nuggety tips of Volvo advice as we pulled away.

So far it's been two for two. If we come a third person that's been as helpful and friendly as Brent & Jim then I'm only buying 240s for as long as I live.

Brent we salute you!