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Volvo 740, interior headlining finished! Pg 23.


danthecapriman

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Another mornings spannering to finish the exhaust off today. 
Again, despite its shitty appearance it actually came apart really easily. There were no leaks on the tailpipe, but it was really really rusty, looked awful and had flakes of rust falling off it so since I was doing the exhaust anyway and the new part was cheap, why not.

On these the rear silencer is just behind the rear bumper area and the tailpipe is a short ‘S’ bend bit of tube that fits on separate just to clear the bumper. A single exhaust U clamp holds it in place. The old rusty one undid without snapping off and simply twisting the old tailpipe side to side was enough to release it from the back box pipe stub. No drama!

I used some emery paper to clean up the stub on the back box, then a smear of exhaust paste to seal the joint. Tailpipe shoved on, lined up straight and the new clamp tightened had it sorted. Looks 100% better now. 

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I managed to get a set of new HT leads too, so these went on next. Bosch ones too, no less! The old ones were just cheapo unbranded ones I put on when I first got the car and had started corroding on their terminals and had started going hard with age.

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Heres the old bits. Yes, that is black silicone sealer around the old tailpipe! Someone had used that instead of proper exhaust paste to seal the old one!! Fuck knows why!?

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I couldn’t be bothered doing the diff oil today... couldn’t be arsed getting the trolley jack out! So I’ll do that another day.

 

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  • danthecapriman changed the title to Operation Pig Iron: Volvo 740, Exhaust finished, Pg 20.
2 hours ago, Shirley Knott said:

Good work man, Bosch leads FTW!

When I set about changing the dif oil on my old 940 I was *thrilled to find it didn't actually have a drain plug... I think the earlier cars do though?

I ended up using a Pela to vacuum the old stuff out- not ideal.

 

I don’t think this cars got a drain plug either. Unless it’s hidden under all the muck! Pretty sure my old saloon did though, which was only 6 months or so older. 
I’ll probably do as you did tbh, and use a pump to suck it out. If I’ve got enough oil I might use a bit to flush it down then drain out again before refilling.

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  • 7 months later...

Well, it’s taken me some seven months, but today I could finally be arsed to get the trolley jack out!

In fairness though, with lockdown, working on other cars and other crap... well that’s my excuse.

 

Anyway today I did the diff oil. Jacked the cars arse end up for some space and scraped a bit of the crud off the back of the axle. This one definitely doesn’t have the drain bung. 
I was expecting the level plug to be tight, often as the axle oil doesn’t get checked very often the plug seizes in, but this one was actually loose! It was almost hand tight. With the plug removed I expected a slug of oil to start pissing out but the level was actually a bit low. Given how much gunk and crud was around the plug I reckon it’d been weeping oil out for a while as there’s no signs of any other leaks.

There was still a healthy amount of oil in the diff though so given no drain bung I opted to get my new extraction pump out and give that a whirl.

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Worked a treat! These are absolutely brilliant for doing gearbox and diff oils. I used to do it pissing about with a big syringe and length of plastic tube, not no more!

Old oil actually didn’t look too bad. It’s clearly old and dirtier than the new oil but I’ve seen far worse. It’s almost certainly very old oil though and imho well worth replacing now. Although the cars not quite reached 100k miles yet it’s not like it’s been used heavily but with age oil does loose it’s lubricating properties and will naturally pick up dirt and moisture etc so after this long it wants doing. 
The new oil is Millers EP90 GL5, as recommended in the manual. Getting the new oil back in was a pain in the arse. Well, pain in the thumb actually! The new oil didn’t come in the usual squeeze bottles with a spout but in old fashioned metal cans so I had to pour the oil into one of those oil cans with the thumb pump handle and fill the diff (slowly!) with that. 
Roughly 1.4 L of old oil came out and 1.6 L ish of new went back in, which is what the manual said. 
And now it’s all done I’ve tightened the level plug properly too so hopefully it won’t loose oil this time!

Might do the PAS fluid too now I’ve got this pump. Should make it quicker and easier.

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  • danthecapriman changed the title to Operation Pig Iron: Volvo 740, Diff oil change, Pg 20.
5 minutes ago, Tomtation said:

Nice to see an old ovlov gettin some luvvin.

Interestingly my '88 740 hearse which is based on a saloon does have the drain plug, the diff oil I took out was gacking! 

I don’t know why some do but some don’t have the drain plug. I had an 87 saloon which did have it, this estate is only a few months newer yet doesn’t.

The old oil in this wasn’t bad at all, you can see it in the tube in the pic. Slightly brown-ish but not bad. Even right in the bottom of the diff there wasn’t much mank. The pump was good though, if you pump it really fast you can even move the tube around and suck up the dregs like a little hoover!

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  • 3 months later...

Nothing much done to this since last time, other than going for its MOT which it passed no problem.

Road trip Thursday though! Well, sort of! 
Taking it up to South Wales where my sister lives for a long weekend there. I’ll be gassing up tomorrow then loading it up with stuff for the stay up there, and a shit load of tools and wood planks(!) as I’ll be building a big retaining wall type thing with my dad and brother in law in the garden while there. 
 

Place your bets now;

A: will I make it there and back!?

B: how much fuel it’ll use!?

Ive not done a longer run for a while and can’t remember how it did on petrol, but I don’t remember it being particularly good!

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A- Almost certainly

B- I'm going to stick my neck out and say mid 30's on a run

A road trip in an old Volvo is a glorious thing and always feels like a bit of an event IMO, so much so that with the 940 I had I used to purposefully seek out longer family day trips/tours purely to indulge... I still do that to a certain extent with the V70 despite if being FWD and therefore arguably not 'proper'.

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Just filled it up at Esso down the road. Got to the pump… unleaded E10? No! Supreme 99… yes! Fuck me its expensive though! 
Im sure it’ll get there fine tbh, it’s about 120 miles so not that far really. Just a bit of a worry when the cars hardly been used over the last couple of years through COVID! 

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Got here ok. Torrential rain on the M4 for a bit though, which was the same moment the passenger side wiper decided to slip on its splines though, made vision related things ‘interesting’. Didn’t help having some utter twat in a Stobart artic right up my arse at the same time I couldn’t see. Started working again not long after. Think the retaining nut just needs tightening.

Used just under a quarter of a tank of fuel, though the car was loaded up! Should be significantly lighter on the trip home.

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Also followed another artic for a bit on the A34, coming up to the M4 turn off he drifted off to one side of the road then swerved back over pretty violently but ended up partly in lane 2 almost crushing some poor sod in an XC90 against the centre barrier. 
Joined the M4 and overtook the same artic and saw him in my mirror drifting across into the hard shoulder. Fuck knows what he was doing!?

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Back home now. No issues whatsoever on the way home, tightened up the passenger wiper arm nut which has sorted the problem. For now at least. 
Definitely need to get new rear dampers and HD springs though. The ones fitted are very old Monroe air adjustable shocks and they’re losing air pressure again. Pumped them up to almost max as I set off home, by about half way they’d almost completely run out of pressure. Unfortunately that set up is no longer available/spares unavailable.

Anyway, 

264 miles done = pretty much bang on half a tank of petrol used. Tank holds 60L so I’ve used about 30L, using a mpg calculator online says 40mpg, so being more accurate it’s likely high 30’s mpg. 
It’s not 100% accurate* maths I’m doing here, but this estate is managing better efficiency than my old saloon was. Driving style etc notwithstanding. That was also using 99 octane super unleaded, which is going to burn better than the peasant petrol most use!!

Doesn't seem too bad to me for a big old car (2.3 K-jet, slush box). 
Most roads were big flowing A roads/motorway’s, but some local roads and single carriageway A and B roads, so a mix really. Kept the speeds to 60mph - 70mph absolute maximum.


 

 


*disclaimer - my maths is absolutely shit so I might be wrong!

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

The fuel consumption you measured is about the same as what I regularly measured on my 740 so that is probably correct. Is not bad considering what kind of cars these are. And reading here makes me miss my 1990 740 they are great cars.

My measurements are a bit crude I suppose, more like ‘back of a cigarette packet’ maths! I think round about 37/38mpg would be fairly close. 
As you say, not bad at all really considering! My old saloon was definitely lower though, despite being exactly the same spec (but a saloon!) but that one had done more than double the mileage than this one so I’ll cut it a bit of slack for that!

I think with a little bit more work, this one should be a really good car. Not a show car but something old, interesting and definitely very useable.

Im off to price up some springs & shocks!

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When I converted to liters per 100 km, I used 38 mpg, so that's probably around what it uses. In my eyes, these are the closest I can think of to a perfect car. Good to drive comfortable and built to last. And reinforced springs at the back are a very good idea and have been very common to do with these.

The one I had. Had a very hard life and little maintenance which led to the engine cylinder head having to be replaced as it is aluminum so the cooling duct in it had corroded together most likely  by that the coolant had never been replaced in 24 years. But other than that, it was very reliable.

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Christ, mine must be more out of sorts than I thought then, I don't expect any better than 30 mpg at absolute best. It's the lowly 2 litre auto though, so that might make a difference. And like you, that's a fag packet calculation (mileometer and speedo not working, fuel gauge erratic at best and probably not far off 300k in total). Still, I wouldn't be without the thing. Don't know whether I'd call it perfect but there's literally nothing else I'd want or consider as a daily driver. If something catastrophic happened to it I'd go straight out and get another, possibly upgrading to a 940 if I could find a good enough example. 

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I have no experience with the 2 liter engines as they are rare here. But have been in some discussions about fuel consumption on these and 240/940 before and they are not as bad as some say the 850 / V70 is more thirsty. The worst Volvo I had with consumption was a 1982 240 this was carburetor with 4 speed gearbox and very low gear diff in 55 screamed it at 3000 rpm. But consumption varies a lot and on the use and condition of the car driving style and more. These have also had several different versions of the engines. my 1990 B230F engine  had injection system LH 2.4 with a red light to read error codes. Here, many consider it to be the best injection system. And this combined with 5 speed manual is probably the best when it comes to consumption.

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My only other experience with running a Volvo as a daily was a few months with a tatty high mileage V70 T5 and I couldn't achieve much over 32mpg or so with that either. When it was running properly it absolutely flew, which may well explain its fuel consumption... In absolutely every other respect I regarded it as inferior to my 740 though, terrible turning circle and poor visibility being just two of the traits which spring to mind immediately. That's why it's languishing out the back having run out of Mot and the trusty 740 is back in action once again. No doubt a looked after example might well have been a different story but I just can’t raise the enthusiasm to do anything with it. Never tried a 240or better yet, a 140,as much as I would have liked to they're out of my budget range now. Could have had countless examples ten to fifteen years ago for peanuts but back then I didn't appreciate them for what they were. 

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16 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

 

264 miles done = pretty much bang on half a tank of petrol used. Tank holds 60L so I’ve used about 30L, using a mpg calculator online says 40mpg, so being more accurate it’s likely high 30’s mpg. 

 

 

 

Well, that's very impressive. I had in my head that my 240 ( B230 Kjet) would be a sub 30mpg car. If it can actually do mid 30s it has real potential as a daily..

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10 hours ago, Amishtat said:

My only other experience with running a Volvo as a daily was a few months with a tatty high mileage V70 T5 and I couldn't achieve much over 32mpg or so with that either. When it was running properly it absolutely flew, which may well explain its fuel consumption... In absolutely every other respect I regarded it as inferior to my 740 though, terrible turning circle and poor visibility being just two of the traits which spring to mind immediately. That's why it's languishing out the back having run out of Mot and the trusty 740 is back in action once again. No doubt a looked after example might well have been a different story but I just can’t raise the enthusiasm to do anything with it. Never tried a 240or better yet, a 140,as much as I would have liked to they're out of my budget range now. Could have had countless examples ten to fifteen years ago for peanuts but back then I didn't appreciate them for what they were. 

I have owned a first generation V70 and found nothing I liked about that car. The 740 I owned was a much better car. Volvo was from 850 and S70 / V70 never the same again then the focus was only on being a premium brand and all the old qualities that made Volvo so good disappeared. On my mother's side the family was dominated by Volvo no one has a Volvo anymore because of this there are only a few older models left like the PV and 240.

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11 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

I have owned a first generation V70 and found nothing I liked about that car. The 740 I owned was a much better car. Volvo was from 850 and S70 / V70 never the same again then the focus was only on being a premium brand and all the old qualities that made Volvo so good disappeared. On my mother's side the family was dominated by Volvo no one has a Volvo anymore because of this there are only a few older models left like the PV and 240.

I get the AS Norsk contingent approval then 😁

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10 hours ago, Amishtat said:

My only other experience with running a Volvo as a daily was a few months with a tatty high mileage V70 T5 and I couldn't achieve much over 32mpg or so with that either. When it was running properly it absolutely flew, which may well explain its fuel consumption... In absolutely every other respect I regarded it as inferior to my 740 though, terrible turning circle and poor visibility being just two of the traits which spring to mind immediately. That's why it's languishing out the back having run out of Mot and the trusty 740 is back in action once again. No doubt a looked after example might well have been a different story but I just can’t raise the enthusiasm to do anything with it. Never tried a 240or better yet, a 140,as much as I would have liked to they're out of my budget range now. Could have had countless examples ten to fifteen years ago for peanuts but back then I didn't appreciate them for what they were. 

How much for your shitty V70 T5?

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On 9/9/2021 at 12:35 PM, danthecapriman said:

Also followed another artic for a bit on the A34, coming up to the M4 turn off he drifted off to one side of the road then swerved back over pretty violently but ended up partly in lane 2 almost crushing some poor sod in an XC90 against the centre barrier. 
Joined the M4 and overtook the same artic and saw him in my mirror drifting across into the hard shoulder. Fuck knows what he was doing!?

Probably watching telly

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46 minutes ago, juular said:

Well, that's very impressive. I had in my head that my 240 ( B230 Kjet) would be a sub 30mpg car. If it can actually do mid 30s it has real potential as a daily..

Is your 240 manual? If so it should be well up to at least equalling my 740 if not a bit better. 
Don’t forget though with mine this time it was a long cruise, sticking to a steady speed for much of it. The more urban driving you do I’d expect the mpg to drop quite a bit. Regular unleaded will hurt it too. Although I definitely think the biggest thing is just not being so heavy footed! I don’t tend to care too much for mpg, none of my cars are ever going to be much good so I generally don’t bother trying. 
This time though I thought I’d try to just take it easy and see what I could get (roughly!). Ok, my result is definitely not perfectly worked out and accurate but as a rough figure it’s definitely not too far off. I’d say around 35mpg (+ or - a bit) is certainly achievable anyway. 

Found some suitable springs & shocks, at a reasonable price so I’ll get some ordered I think. 
It’ll be nice to get rid of the old leaking system. Regularly topping up the pressure is becoming a ball ache, and it’s clearly not working properly anymore. 
Hopefully fitting the new stuff won’t be too hard, although I’ll probably need a spring compressor to do it? Changing the springs is a job I’ve never done on one of these!

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