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!

Stripped

Interior has been stripped & sold for $220!

Sold to Jim, a great guy who found himself an even cheaper 240 with a tired interior.

Thanks to his help we were able to strip ours out in just over an hour.

While we were there he kindly offered to run a compression test on the enginem, the results weren't as bad as I had feared.. 130, 120, 120 & 90.
Not catastophic, but oil consumption may be an issue in the race.

Thanks Jim!

During this he also noticed that the plugs weren't tight in the block, so he gapped and reinstalled them properly.

Driving home, it could be a function of the extra noise, but the car feels a lot quicker now.

unfortunately there is a slight issue with Carbon Monoxide entering the cabin while driving, which means the car will need to be parked until we find some kind of leaky-free exhaust sorted out.