Let's start from the beginning. Shall we? I apologize in advance for the crappy old Blackberry pictures.
It's 2012. I love playing with cars even though I have no money. My '86 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe had recently turned itself into a Firebird...
...so I'm looking for a cheap car that I can screw around with while attending SIU Carbondale. I had a close friend who was daily driving a '94 Volvo 960 that he bought with a broken timing belt for $200. After just shaving the head and replacing a couple valves, he crossed his fingers, threw a belt on it, and never looked back. That car was the cheapest tank I had ever seen, and that was exactly what I needed. The following summer I bought this to relieve daily duties from the LeSabre. 1989 Volvo 245 DL
I'm not a stance boi by any means. However, there was something about a slammed Volvo that I just screamed asshat and it was too cool not to buy it. If i remember right I also bought this one for $1000. I immediately threw an O2 sensor in it and started driving it everywhere. I loved every sub-100HP, non AC having second.
I drove it from SIU to the twin cities for a long weekend of camping with buddies, a spontaneous trip to Lansing, Michigan ALONE (looking back on it that wasn't very smart), and many exploratory cruises around Southern IL, Southeast MO, and Western KY. The car never skipped a beat. I just kept doing little mods to make it more comfortable and enjoyable to drive.
I built my own custom coil overs to replace the cut springs. These weren't great, but worlds better than what was there. lol
Yes, I was still in college.
This was about the peak for this car (during my ownership). Then it left me stranded for the first time ever.
I was about halfway home from moving out of Carbondale when everything started to shut down. My alternator was shot. Luckily my grandma lives in Champaign, so I had it towed to her place and gave her a surprise visit! There was a Napa with my alternator in stock, so she took me there, I did the swap, and I went home.
Then I started my job in Indiana. The car did great while I settled into my apartment for a couple weeks. During a drive back home the car screwed me over AGIAN. This time I was nowhere near anybody I knew. A nice stranger asked if I needed any help. I explained the situation and he let me use his shop which was right around the corner. I was super grateful. The problem this time was that my alternator tensioner bolt sheared off flush with the block. There was no fixing that in a night, so I actually zip tied the alternator to the sway bar mount and continued 100 miles home. I just stopped once to pull the zip tie another couple clicks. I'm still amazed at how well that worked.
It was then that I decided to LS swap it. That was the beginning of the end for the poor car. After about a year of buying parts I would never get to use and finding rust left and right the car ultimately ended up in the scrap yard.
Rest in pieces, Olga. I never forgave myself for destroying a car that was so good to me especially since it was still running and driving with over 400k miles on it. When my girlfriend started bitching about how much she hated her Saab I knew exactly what she needed.
She bought this nearly identical car in the summer of 2019 knowing the story of Olga. Now we both aren't sure if that was the best idea.
Moose isn't living in Olga's shadow. After getting it home we parked it for a few days so I could do a timing belt, water pump, and front shaft seals. Then I gave it the "OK". She immediately took it on a long trip back to her folks place and met me at a cruise-in later that day. When she got to the cruise night the car was leaking water all over the place and steaming like crazy. It was super embarrassing for both of us although kinda funny looking back on it. I walked over to the nearest store for a gallon of water, filled the radiator back up, and limped it over to my buddies house to redo the water pump. There's a stupid o-ring on the back that seals the heater pipe which I didn't get seated quite right. This allowed water to spray directly onto the exhaust manifold. Hence, the steam. The situation could have been much worse, and it would have been all my fault. However, we both lucked out. This still wasn't a great start to the Moose story.
Then we had a bigger problem. I got a complaint that the brakes were feeling funny. The first thing I noticed was that half of the reservoir was empty. Then I saw this.
The 240s braking system was a cool idea. The front and rear hydraulics are completely separate, so in theory if you have a blow out in the front you will still have rear brakes indefinitely and vise versa. It's also supposed to turn on the brake light when that happens. Somebody before me has clearly unhooked that wire though. Shady. Very shady, and not cool.
Well this over-complicated "octopus" as us Volvo people call it is the problem. It's what fails and causes the leak. I decided to upgrade this with fairly rare parts. In 1991 non-ABS cars, there was a solid octopus, so it fully separated the front and rear brakes with solid brass. Then there was a brake light switch on the reservoir cap. Sweet.
Let's be real though, this is the midwest. It's never that easy. The octopus went in without a fight, but bleeding the system didn't go well. Three new calipers, 4 new bubble flares, one new line, hours of wire wheeling and repainting parts, and a couple weeks of cleaning up brake fluid soaked undercoating later it's done!
It's 2012. I love playing with cars even though I have no money. My '86 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe had recently turned itself into a Firebird...
...so I'm looking for a cheap car that I can screw around with while attending SIU Carbondale. I had a close friend who was daily driving a '94 Volvo 960 that he bought with a broken timing belt for $200. After just shaving the head and replacing a couple valves, he crossed his fingers, threw a belt on it, and never looked back. That car was the cheapest tank I had ever seen, and that was exactly what I needed. The following summer I bought this to relieve daily duties from the LeSabre. 1989 Volvo 245 DL
I'm not a stance boi by any means. However, there was something about a slammed Volvo that I just screamed asshat and it was too cool not to buy it. If i remember right I also bought this one for $1000. I immediately threw an O2 sensor in it and started driving it everywhere. I loved every sub-100HP, non AC having second.
I drove it from SIU to the twin cities for a long weekend of camping with buddies, a spontaneous trip to Lansing, Michigan ALONE (looking back on it that wasn't very smart), and many exploratory cruises around Southern IL, Southeast MO, and Western KY. The car never skipped a beat. I just kept doing little mods to make it more comfortable and enjoyable to drive.
I built my own custom coil overs to replace the cut springs. These weren't great, but worlds better than what was there. lol
Yes, I was still in college.
This was about the peak for this car (during my ownership). Then it left me stranded for the first time ever.
I was about halfway home from moving out of Carbondale when everything started to shut down. My alternator was shot. Luckily my grandma lives in Champaign, so I had it towed to her place and gave her a surprise visit! There was a Napa with my alternator in stock, so she took me there, I did the swap, and I went home.
Then I started my job in Indiana. The car did great while I settled into my apartment for a couple weeks. During a drive back home the car screwed me over AGIAN. This time I was nowhere near anybody I knew. A nice stranger asked if I needed any help. I explained the situation and he let me use his shop which was right around the corner. I was super grateful. The problem this time was that my alternator tensioner bolt sheared off flush with the block. There was no fixing that in a night, so I actually zip tied the alternator to the sway bar mount and continued 100 miles home. I just stopped once to pull the zip tie another couple clicks. I'm still amazed at how well that worked.
It was then that I decided to LS swap it. That was the beginning of the end for the poor car. After about a year of buying parts I would never get to use and finding rust left and right the car ultimately ended up in the scrap yard.
Rest in pieces, Olga. I never forgave myself for destroying a car that was so good to me especially since it was still running and driving with over 400k miles on it. When my girlfriend started bitching about how much she hated her Saab I knew exactly what she needed.
She bought this nearly identical car in the summer of 2019 knowing the story of Olga. Now we both aren't sure if that was the best idea.
Moose isn't living in Olga's shadow. After getting it home we parked it for a few days so I could do a timing belt, water pump, and front shaft seals. Then I gave it the "OK". She immediately took it on a long trip back to her folks place and met me at a cruise-in later that day. When she got to the cruise night the car was leaking water all over the place and steaming like crazy. It was super embarrassing for both of us although kinda funny looking back on it. I walked over to the nearest store for a gallon of water, filled the radiator back up, and limped it over to my buddies house to redo the water pump. There's a stupid o-ring on the back that seals the heater pipe which I didn't get seated quite right. This allowed water to spray directly onto the exhaust manifold. Hence, the steam. The situation could have been much worse, and it would have been all my fault. However, we both lucked out. This still wasn't a great start to the Moose story.
Then we had a bigger problem. I got a complaint that the brakes were feeling funny. The first thing I noticed was that half of the reservoir was empty. Then I saw this.
The 240s braking system was a cool idea. The front and rear hydraulics are completely separate, so in theory if you have a blow out in the front you will still have rear brakes indefinitely and vise versa. It's also supposed to turn on the brake light when that happens. Somebody before me has clearly unhooked that wire though. Shady. Very shady, and not cool.
Well this over-complicated "octopus" as us Volvo people call it is the problem. It's what fails and causes the leak. I decided to upgrade this with fairly rare parts. In 1991 non-ABS cars, there was a solid octopus, so it fully separated the front and rear brakes with solid brass. Then there was a brake light switch on the reservoir cap. Sweet.
Let's be real though, this is the midwest. It's never that easy. The octopus went in without a fight, but bleeding the system didn't go well. Three new calipers, 4 new bubble flares, one new line, hours of wire wheeling and repainting parts, and a couple weeks of cleaning up brake fluid soaked undercoating later it's done!
