There hasn’t been much of an update here in a while. I swear, that has more to do with a lack of time to blog rather than work on the car. To give you an idea of what nonsense I’ve been up to, I’ll give you a sneak peek and a promise that I’ll get stuff written down soon.
After a little hunting around I realized that those two stray bulbs mentioned in my last post where actually part of the climate control panel. I removed the two screws holding the panel in and was able to slot the sockets back in so that the blower and temperature controls are properly back lit.
After everything is back together it all seems functional. However the rear defroster light doesn’t like to turn off after being turned on. This may be because of the damaged wiring in the rear gate hinges that I have yet to replace. Also the AC switch doesn’t light at all. I was told the AC doesn’t actually work so it might be related to that, or the switch itself is bad. AC functionality is way down the list of stuff to fix, so I’m not concerned right now. I’m just glad all the bulbs are functional.
Speaking of those rear wiring harnesses, I’m very eager to get those done but for two things. First, as usual, is the weather. It seems that every time I find space to work on the car the heavens open and pour rain (much like it is doing literally as I write this). The second is that to gain access to the wires I need to pull off a section of the headliner in the back and thus far my small attempts to do that have shown the thing to be very stubborn. I have read how it stays on – there is a rigid lip over which the headline is stretched and clamped – but I’m hesitant to yank as hard as is seemingly required to get over this lip. I think I’ll eventually just have to bite the bullet and pull the thing until it comes off. Once those wires are fixed the back end of the car should be pretty much done.
I replaced all the bulbs in the lower dashboard, got all the switches and wires reconnected, and I’m happy to say that the blinkers work and all the switches light as expected. However (and there’s always one of those) I have two extra bulbs whose location I can’t quite figure out.
One bulb goes into the glass “lightbar” (part 1212530) above the controls, but I just can’t figure out where the two other similar bulbs originally went. I took photos of everything still installed before initial disassembly, but they aren’t particularly clear on this. If anyone out there knows, feel free to click the Contact Me link and share your knowledge.
Here is my simplified diagram of which wires went to what. The pictured layout shows the cigarette lighter as the large circle on the left and the safety belt reminder light as the smaller one on the right. The empty space towards the middle is an unused spot on my car.
I know I haven’t had an update in awhile. I’m sorry about that, but no worries. The weather is improving which will give me more opportunities to get things done. In fact, last weekend was quite lovely. However lovely also makes yard work possible, and I had a huge amount of hedges to trim and branches to clear from my back yard. That made car work impossible, sadly.
Also not so sadly, I’m about to take a vacation for a week in sunny Florida. That makes tomorrow a wash in terms of car stuff, but I will be back in time for next weekend. I very much hope to get something going then. Please stay tuned.
And not just a wagon but perhaps the wagon of wagons. I give you the Wagon Queen Family Truckster!
This wagon shepherded the Griswolds from the suburbs of Chicago, throughout this beautiful country of ours, and finally to Wally World (wherever that is). Well, not this one because this is a reproduction, but it’s currently up for auction! I’m not sure how much its expected to go for, but if you think you have some extra money laying around this is a solid gold investment opportunity if there ever was one.
The day was relatively warm but very windy, so my ability to work was somewhat limited. I installed the newly painted driver’s outside latch and reinstalled the door card and arm rest.
So now I can open the door from the outside again. This is good, but I was reminded as to just how terrible the door cards are overall. Some day I think I’ll have to replace them all for good measure.
Next up I think will be to get the center dash reinstalled with all the lights working. Stay tuned.
I had a few minutes over lunch free this afternoon, so I decided to reinstall the central locking harness I repaired in the previous entry. The trickiest part was getting the end of the harness that fits around the lock itself in the proper place.
Notice the small, white bracket piece. In it sits a lug attached to the lock mechanism that turns with the key. This bracket is a small switch that makes the connection to drive the lock motor one way or the other to either lock or unlock the other doors. I had to make sure the lug was in this bracket before squeezing the plastic ring closed.
I placed the rod that the lock knob attaches to back through its hole and attached it to the actuating link for the central lock. Then I reinstalled the guide casing and taped the homemade vapor barrier back into place. As soon as I get the screws I need to attach the new handle I’ll close it all back up.
Since the weather has improved a little in the last couple of weeks I felt it was time to address a few things actually inside the car. As we’re in the Smarch part of the year, it is still generally too chilly and windy to do complicated things outdoors. I’ll be tackling easier things at first.
This time that took the form of replacing my broken driver side door handle. I had recently purchased a used replacement that needed a little paint, so that was job one. First came paint stripper and then some scraping and sanding.
As you can see, this went well enough. I even repainted the handle using a can of 16-year-old satin black Rust-Oleum I had laying around which had just enough aerosol in it to paint the handle.
There was a complication, however. When I took the door card off the door I got a good look at the central locking switch (part 3540135) wires. They were in a real state with a lot of the insulation flaking off and some of the wires beginning to fray. Touching them had the tendency to ground out the connection and trigger the lock. I imagined someone letting themselves in by giving the door a Fonzie-like fist pound and decided to switch tasks to the rehabilitation of this part.
When I got the harness out, the insulation continued to flake. I took it down to the shop, removed the loom, and snipped the wires close to the connector. I then covered the frayed sections with heat shrink tube and resoldered the wires back together. A simple continuity test told me everything was still connected.
Unfortunately that was the end of the day for me, so I didn’t have a chance to reinstall the wire let alone the new handle. That was missing one of its screws, a type and size I didn’t happen to have on hand, so I’ll have to stop by the hardware store to get one before I can address that. That’ll probably be the subject of my next post.
The cold weather has not been kind to my battery. It was almost completely dead. I once again borrowed my friend’s recharger and topped it off, so to speak.
Two small updates. First, I was able to locate the last piece of trim I need for the exterior. This was part 1255891, the “Dirt Deflector Moulding”. It runs below the doors, in my case on the driver’s side. I got it from a local guy who I’ve seen advertising on Craigslist for some time but had never been able to get a hold of through email. My persistence paid off, though, as he both had my piece for a very fair price and also had, like, seven other 240s around his house. I see him being a good resource provided I can keep him answering emails.
The second item on list was a few outstanding interior wall and door cards. For longer time readers of this blog, you may remember that the door cards in this car were not in great shape. I decided to rectify this by reinforcing all the cracks and problem spots with simple white glue. As silly as it sounds, white glue is well suited for strengthening paper. So I squeezed some along each fissure, around the shabbier fastener holes, and anywhere the card was coming apart. I placed heavy objects along the cracks to keep them together and the card flat.
The cargo area is now back together after taken most of the panels out when I replaced the fuel pre-pump. I also finally put the rear driver side door’s card back on.
The weather is still sucky in my part of Pennsylvania. It tends to vary between snow and mud with cold and windy as the consistent theme throughout. So not much work has been done to the car itself since the last time. I have finished cleaning up my shop, though. With that cleanliness some the ability to actually work in, and that is what I have done. Among the tools I received from my friend was an old K-Mart brand creeper (so you know it’s quality!). I actually used it when fixing my Honda, but it was in terrible shape. The wheels were these terrible, chewed-up plastic things and the foam rubber head rest had long ago turned to dust. Other than that it was fine, so instead of going out and buying a new one I instead bought new wheels, a few pieces of wood to accommodate them, and some new foam and voilà… I am now scoot enabled.
If you’ve ever done a little maintenance on your car you’ve probably owned a Haynes Manual. The man who gave his name to those manuals recently passed away. Take a moment and spare a thought for him and his family.
You may remember that I had bought a new set of tail lights from someone one the internet. I actually tried installing them pretty soon afterwards but found that even though I knew all the bulbs to be good, once the lights were in the car they intermittently stopped working. Electrically, Volvo 240 tail lights can be a bit problematic. They make heavy use of spade connectors and the ground connections are done along a bus bar of thin metal, all of which are prone to corrosion. On top of that the plastic of the assembly and the sockets in which the bulbs sit can warp over time and disrupt contact between the tabs and the connectors. The solution to this has been to remove all that stuff and solder the connectors together, and this is what I decided to do.
Like a lot of the country right now, we got hit with that “Polar Vortex” nonsense and temperatures have plunged well under freezing. I saw a number of other 240 owners trying a cold start in such low temperatures, so I figured I’d try it too. Then this happened.
I learned a lesson: when old metal gets really cold it becomes very, very brittle.
Also the car did not start, but I sort of expected that.
The weather is still too terrible to work in. Today we were down in the single digits (Fahrenheit) and the wind cut straight to the bone. No fun. However it was recently my birthday, and my oldest son was kind enough to make me a shirt commemorating my 240.
On the shop clean up front, the status is currently at “getting there.” I have finally sorted all the wrenches and sockets I inherited and got them on a pegboard. I think I’m officially set for a long time on the socket front having pretty full sets of 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, and even 3/4! We got Metric and SAE, shallow and deep, hex and twelve-point, extenders, breaker bars, universal joints… the works!
The rest of the shop is a total mess, but I’m getting there.
I am still here, and I am still working on my 240, but currently I have three main impediments keeping me from doing much of anything. First, the influx of tools mentioned previously has overwhelmed my tiny basement shop so I’ve been spending a bit of the little free time I have devoted to cleaning up and incorporating them all into my collection. The resulting confusion and mess has left the shop very difficult to actually use for fixing and building things. Second, it’s gotten really cold here in the last week and it even snowed a little last Sunday. Personally I find it super no fun to work on cars in below freezing temperatures, and the aforementioned shop mess has made it hard to even take parts (such as the intake manifold) indoors for repair. Third, and perhaps most importantly, my real, actual, daily driving car’s starter decided it had enough and quit. My wife and I pushed it out of the driveway and onto the street where it has sat while I look for time to work on it.
So far I’ve managed to get the old starter out and put the new one in. The next step is to plug all the electrical stuff back in and hope that this solves the problem. After that’s taken care of, the shop is cleaned up and made usable, and perhaps the weather gets better, I’ll move back to the Volvo.