Project Operation Pig Iron: Volvo 740, Door handles & sunroof problems, Pg 21.

[juular]

My weakness is the sound of the T5. It gets thrashed everywhere as it's like an expensive dopamine drip.

I CAN get 30+ mpg out of it, but that's like visiting a Michelin star restaurant and eating Ryvita.

[Low Horatio gearbox]

I had to make do* with a plain NA 2.5 @juular. That S70 was probably the best, most comfortable do it all cars and I was a fool to get rid.  I need a  modern-ish daily in the next 5 months and a 740 thru to 960 estate is just as competent at what I need as the Octavia front runner, with a 1st gen Xc90 lurking. In no way did my Volvo fetish influence my suggestion of a C30 to the GF when her fiesta died 2 months ago .

[Amishtat]

2 hours ago, Cord Fourteener said:

How much for your shitty V70 T5?

Two hundred. 

[danthecapriman]

Parts ordered. 2 x rear shocks, 2 x rear springs. Opted for the heavy duty springs, slightly thicker metal and slightly bigger coils over standard. Mainly as it’s an estate so load carrying ability and I do tow with it occasionally. Standards would likely have been fine tbh but the price difference isn’t much.

Just over £100 from a german supplier. Not bad!

Had a quick look online at fitting, it looks like I can do this without a spring compressor. Two bolts on each shock, easy. Then use a jack to lower the axle down, remove spring retaining plate, pull out spring. Sounds easy! 
Obviously then I just need to remove the old air pipes and the air valve/pressure gauge in the boot. That’s also easy.

[captain_70s]

16 hours ago, Amishtat said:

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.  

My 2.0 auto never managed more than 26mpg. My 2.3 auto will do mid 30s on a run.

I find the 2.0 needs to be worked harder to to peak torque being far further up the rev range than the 2.3. The AW gearbox is also a permanent slush box while the ZF box on 2.3s locks up at 57mph in top so less power is wasted.

[Rust Collector]

My 2.3 manual 740 wagon did about 450 something miles on a tank whilst holidaying recently - I know the web figures say it's a 60 litre tank, but on the last full tank I filled it up at a point before the light had come on, and managed to get 69 litres in before the pump clicked off for the first time. I did check for holes 😅 From memory, at the time I made it to be roughly 29mpg based on my back of a fag packet calculations. I'm not light footed though, so maybe the mid 30's are achievable. My motor is on 220k miles as well so possibly feeling a bit of wear and tear!

The air assisted shock absorbers are interesting, are they a factory fit item or an aftermarket one? I don't think I have them on mine.

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Rust Collector said:

My 2.3 manual 740 wagon did about 450 something miles on a tank whilst holidaying recently - I know the web figures say it's a 60 litre tank, but on the last full tank I filled it up at a point before the light had come on, and managed to get 69 litres in before the pump clicked off for the first time. I did check for holes 😅 From memory, at the time I made it to be roughly 29mpg based on my back of a fag packet calculations. I'm not light footed though, so maybe the mid 30's are achievable. My motor is on 220k miles as well so possibly feeling a bit of wear and tear!

I think (but may be wrong!) there is an extra range sized tank available from when they were new? Sure I’ve read it somewhere. @Six-cylinder might know from his days selling them? 
This ones only on 93k miles. Barely run in really.  
Another odd thing about the mpg, on the way there I was quite heavy. Rear seats were folded down and I was carrying several big heavy planks of timber. Like scaffolding boards but thicker and pressure treated so pretty heavy. Didn’t seem to have any effect on it though.

1 hour ago, Rust Collector said:

The air assisted shock absorbers are interesting, are they a factory fit item or an aftermarket one? I don't think I have them on mine.

I think mine were fitted from new, but they’re not Volvo parts, they’re Monroe. It’s like a cheaper alternative to the Nivomat self levelling system fitted to some Volvo estates. 
There’s two types though, mines the basic system with a valve and gauge in the boot under one of the side hatches in the floor, then you just pump air in to lift the ride height or drain it out to lower it. 
The more expensive version has a separate pump to do it instead. 
 

Looks like this.

[Six-cylinder]

23 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

I think (but may be wrong!) there is an extra range sized tank available from when they were new? Sure I’ve read it somewhere. @Six-cylinder might know from his days selling them? 

Now we are working my memory!

In Oct 1987 760 saloons gained independent rear suspension and a larger fuel tank.

Somewhere in the back of my mind is pre 1987 760 saloons also had a second small tank working in conjunction with the main tank. I can't remember for sure. No 740's or estates had a larger or second tank that I remember.

[Rust Collector]

Not sure what happened with my tank then - I actually took a photo at the time due to the eye watering price 😅

that levelling system sounds pretty cool, good to see that parts are still available. You’ve had me excitedly pulling my boot floor up this eve just in case, mine just has the standard shocks though 😅

[danthecapriman]

22 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

Not sure what happened with my tank then - I actually took a photo at the time due to the eye watering price 😅

that levelling system sounds pretty cool, good to see that parts are still available. You’ve had me excitedly pulling my boot floor up this eve just in case, mine just has the standard shocks though 😅

You can have my old ones if you like😆 you never know, it might just be a loose air pipe!

[Rust Collector]

9 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

You can have my old ones if you like😆 you never know, it might just be a loose air pipe!

They sound like a good addition for the ‘I’ll get round to it at some point’ pile 😅 would you like to drop me a PM with your location and what you’d want for them? Cheers!

[Shirley Knott]

Interesting re the shocks, I was just about to suggest they were nivomats, but clearly not!  Strange...

Let me know how you get on with the HD rear coils- I fancy a set myself for the V70 but have read that they can make the car a bit bouncy when unladen.... That being said, these are opinions from the Volvo forums and they're a finicky/odd bunch at the best of times.

[danthecapriman]

Volvo update, since it’s been a few months.

Not much actual work done on the car as I’ve been using it. I had intended to fit the new rear springs & shocks but a combination of needing the car usable and not wanting to lay on a cold wet floor in winter has seen that put off until it’s a bit nicer outside! Not much longer now. Hopefully!

Regular readers might remember me mentioning a problem with the front wipers. Basically, at some point the passenger wiper arm has stripped its splines and then been fixed* by tightening the retaining nut more. This does work. For a while. Then it starts to slip and before you know it your on the M4 in a busy stretch in heavy rain and that’s the time the wipers decide to screw up on you! So fixing that more permanently is high on the agenda.

I did look for the easy option of simply buying a new (used) wiper arm but couldn’t find one anywhere locally. A specialist breaker was the next option but then I had a thought about fixing what I had already. If it works then great, if not I’ve lost nothing and still need a replacement wiper arm. 
So my fix was to remove the offending arm, then using my pillar drill, drill a small hole through the side of it. Then temporarily refit it onto its drive spindle on the car aligned to the correct place for a parked wiper then use a battery drill to run through the new hole and into the drive spindle by a few mm’s. Then remove the arm again, use a tap (m5 in my case) to make a thread through the hole in the arm. Then refit the arm onto the spindle again, tightly secure it down with the nut then screw a small grub screw into the new hole in the side of the arm, tight enough to make the end of the grub screw go through into the shallow hole in the spindle, essentially pinning the two parts together. I greased the threads too to prevent the grub screw seizing in. 
The result? So far it’s working perfectly! All it cost was a bit of time.

The reason for getting that done was another trip to South Wales to visit my sister and brother in law and to use the Volvo to take several big planks of timber with me for their garden. 
Typically it was dry both days I was on the road! None the less, the car did over 300 miles without missing a beat, roughly half of that was loaded up pretty heavily with timber and tools too! 
 

So not much gone on recently really but it’s still alive and well. 
Once the spring arrives my plans are to get the rear springs & shocks changed and also I’m going to strip out the headlining, and sort out the sunroof once and for all as it’s got blocked again and is leaking! While the headlining is out I’ll sort the fabric on that as the damp has made it go baggy. And I’ll rub down the sunroof lid panel itself and paint it as the paint on it now is a right mess.

 

[High Jetter]

Liked for the costcutter fix.

[JeeExEll]

Aye, I like the tiny grubscrew idea for the wiper spindle. Had same problem on a BMW e34 5-series many years ago. As a temporary measure in the pissing rain I wrapped the spindle in some bared stranded copper cable I had in the car, leaving a tail at the top to pull it up, then carefully slid the wiper arm over it..  Never had any problems afterwards. Zen and the art of e34 maintenance.

Hope Capri is progressing Dan.

[tooSavvy]

Fixed the worn out nylon ball/wiper arm Escort =

1st fix was crushing ball through a poly shopping bag (fair!!)

2nd fix was a bit of placcy strip and a nut & bolt making it stay in (100% fix)

..... ooof >> a lonnngg time ago 🤔

[danthecapriman]

I’ve heard of using tin foil wrapped around the wiper drive spindle then forcing the arm on over the top to pack out the gap from the worn away splines. 
It did cross my mind to do something similar with this but the grub screw method actually completely prevents it from slipping again so should be a permanent fix. God knows how you strip the splines off in the first place though! Maybe not clearing snow/ice off the screen then trying to use the wipers to do it?? Must take a fair bit of force to strip them all.

[danthecapriman]

I’ve gotten really bad at updating this! Over a year!

It was a lovely sunny day here today (if a bit on the chilly side) so I decided to spend a few hours on the old brick.

Just after New Year I posted in the grumpy thread about it, basically I’d not used it for a while then went into the car and discovered that the sunroof had shat its pants big time. The entire headlining was sopping wet, front passenger seat covered in water and the rear passenger footwell full of water. Closer inspection revealed the sunroof tray had actually managed to fill up, then overflow into the inside of the car. As you can imagine I was mightily pissed off by this, having already cleared the sunroof drains, tray etc out when I got the car, then spent many days fabricating and welding a new floor and seat mount into the same rear footwell that has now filled with water again!

So as a temporary measure I bought an outdoor car cover to keep the car dry, wet vacuumed the footwell to suck out as much water as possible from the carpet/underfelt and installed two big trays of silica gel to absorb the moisture from the cabin. Which is where it all got left for a couple of months both to dry out and because I just couldn’t be arsed with it!

So today. Uncovered the car and opened it up… all nice and dry inside but mould all over the seats and steering wheel. So first task was breaking out the disinfectant and tissue wipes and gave everything a thorough scrub. Didn’t actually take much effort thankfully but it’s clean and mould free now. 
I’ve felt the carpets in every footwell, given them a good squeeze and there’s no water in any, so the cover worked! The silica gel trays were both full of water though so they’d clearly been doing their job well. 
Headlining was also dry but unfortunately the damp has finished off the glue and foam backing so the material is now loose and baggy (like almost all 700’s!).  
Next task was to open the pile of shit sunroof and see why it was overflowing. 
I never use sunroof’s! I think they are absolutely shit. They are frankly humanity’s worst ever invention, especially so when your country is a cold wet shithole like ours is! All they do well is cause leaks, wet interior’s and rusty floors. They are wank! Therefore opening this one took a bit of effort. It’s been a few years since it was last opened and it’d got very stiff. Forcing it got it free in the end. Inside it didn’t actually look terrible. 
Some crud and grime in the water ways around the edge of the tray so I’ve hoovered it all out. Then used a long steel wire cable with a little brush on the end (bought off eBay specifically made for this job!) and fed that down the drain tubes in the corners. I couldn’t feel any resistance like a blockage but pulling the cable back out, the brush was covered in muddy crud so there must have been something down them. After this I fed a really long length of garden wire down each drain to prove they were clear, once the wire poked out of the bottom of the car I was satisfied. 
I also got a length of screen washer hose, fed that into each drain hole then sealed it at the hole with bluetak and blew air down it to further see if anything was still blocking it - all good! So I hoovered it out again, then poured hot soapy water down to test. All four drains working with four little puddles around the car! I also boiled the kettle and poured boiling water down it just to make sure any shit in the tubes was dissolved and washed out.

I couldn’t find anything else wrong so it must have been blocked or partially blocked somewhere and letting the tray fill up quicker than it could drain out, then just overflowing into the car. 
Everything is back together now but the headlining will need removing at some point and fixing properly. I’ll probably pull the entire board out, strip off the old material and foam then recover it with better material before putting it back in the car. Bit of a ball ache but I want it looking nice inside. 
I spent the remainder of the day wiping leather restorer cream onto the seats and buffing them up a bit as they’d gone quite dry and hard, then hoovering the whole interior out.

Im hoping the sunroof issue is sorted now 🤞so I’ll just wait and see next time it rains. 
 

If it’s dry again tomorrow I’m going to have a go replacing the old outside door handles on all 4 doors. I got a set of 4 new old stock chrome versions (intended for a 760 etc I think) a while back which I think look nicer so they will be going on, and while I’m at it I’ll fill the door bottoms with cavity wax since the door cards need to come off anyway. One card is loose on the bottom too and rattles sometimes so that will get sorted too. 
I’ll get some pics tomorrow hopefully, I forgot today!

[Shirley Knott]

Any mention of 'sunroof ' in the context of 700/900 series cars still sends a shiver down my spine after the bother I had sourcing and replacing the entire moonroof on my old 940.

I think they were a kind of willy waiving option to tick at one point, a must have to show the other reps how well you were doing?

Completely agree- They're not even that great when they're operating as they should, but when they're problematic they're the work of the devil.

[danthecapriman]

2 minutes ago, Shirley Knott said:

Any mention of 'sunroof ' in the context of 700/900 series cars still sends a shiver down my spine after the bother I had sourcing and replacing the entire moonroof on my old 940.

I think they were a kind of willy waiving option to tick at one point, a must have to show the other reps how well you were doing?

Completely agree- They're not even that great when they're operating as they should, but when they're problematic they're the work of the devil.

I remember you doing that with the 940!

I did actually give serious thought to removing the sunroof entirely, smashing it to bits, setting fire to it and pissing on its chard remains, then getting a sheet of steel and welding the hole up permanently. 
Not an easy job though on a roof skin! Then I’d have to paint it too. I’d still love to get rid of the bastard thing tbh! Awful awful things sunroof’s. Even worse though are those nasty aftermarket sunroof installations! They really are absolute crap.

[Split_Pin]

I actually forgot you had a 740!

I agree, sunroofs are just a worry, 2 of my fleet have them and thankfully they've been OK, although the 75s drain tubes needed sorted when I first got it as they were blocked.

I honestly think a soft top is a less leaky and better idea.

[danthecapriman]

5 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

I actually forgot you had a 740!

I agree, sunroofs are just a worry, 2 of my fleet have them and thankfully they've been OK, although the 75s drain tubes needed sorted when I first got it as they were blocked.

I honestly think a soft top is a less leaky and better idea.

You’re probably right about a soft top. 

I think it might become an annual job now to lance and flush out the sunroof drains on this. There is a seal around the lip of the lid itself but apparently this is only there to stop wind noise rather than stop water getting in. Which means all the water that gets on the middle of the roof goes into the sunroof tray and down the drains. If it’s heavy rain that’s potentially quite a lot of water!  
Most of the problem seems to be moss! It starts growing on the seals and in all the little gaps etc then gets washed into the sunroof. The first time I cleaned the drains out a few years ago I blew air down the tubes and the blockage actually held the air pressure for a while before suddenly letting go. Shows how badly plugged up they can be!

[danthecapriman]

As promised, more pissing about!

Todays job was to at least make a start on fitting the new door handles.  
Decided to kill two birds with one stone and start on the rear doors, as then I can also fix the loose rattling interior door cards while I’m at it. 
Door cards on these are really easy to take off, just a few clips, a screw and then carefully slide the brittle plastic handle trims off.

Theres no plastic membrane on these cars, they have plastic covers that clip on over the holes instead which makes things much cleaner and easier. The door handles are just held on with two 10mm bolts and a small screw, these rear doors then have a short link pin that connects the handle to the latch mechanism. This is adjustable and ideally you’re best off not messing around with it… I did not follow this advice! I had to completely readjust it after I was done!

Heres one of the handles removed with the link pin still attached. Probably best I’m changing these handles as this one is starting to crack on the inside mechanism. Eventually it splits and stops the door opening with the outside handle.

 

Theres not actually a huge amount of space to work in as the handle and latch is right up in the small top section of the door. I lost a lot of skin today doing this!

With the new handle fitted and tested for adjustment I decided to hoover out the door bottoms and spray a load of cavity wax (Dynax S50) inside since I was there anyway. There’s little to no sign of any rust in them but, since I’m there and have the wax I thought why not. 
The rusty flakes in the pic are from a steel strip at the top of the door. No idea what it’s for but it’s hidden under the door card normally - that got cleaned back and coated in wax too! 
And I’ve also sprayed all the window mechanism, door latches and pivot points with spray grease too just because!

 

Returning to the door cards, the reason they rattled and were loose became obvious. 
Someone has been here already! Looks like they struggled to get the trims off and inadvertently tore the plastic clips on the bottoms off. Normally they’re held on with impact adhesive type glue, so I just smeared some Gorilla glue on instead which took a while to go off (cold weather) but seems to have gripped very well.

Theres also a beige edge protector strip all around the sides and bottom of the cards but this had obviously got in the way before and was just shoved up under the card! I’ll put it back on properly when I put it back together.

And here’s the result!

The chrome strips look so much nicer than the old dull plastic ones imho. Adds a touch of class!! It is a GLE after all.

Tomorrows job is refitting the rear door cards now the glue has cured, then do the front door handles.

[danthecapriman]

No further progress on the door handles, not had time yet so it’s just sat there with chrome rears & black fronts! 
Discovered the sunroof issue is still an issue! Checked inside after recent rain and it’s leaked again. So it’s definitely not the drains or crap in the tray. Further investigation needed on that. Annoyingly. 
 

But. I needed some clips for the rear door cards that were either missing or broken and discovered this guy. 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/volvobreakers

Bought some clips I needed and thought I’d send him a small list of bits I was after on the off chance he could get them. 
He’s an absolutely top guy and has actually managed to source me all the bits! Most other places I’d tried over the years couldn’t be arsed or didn’t know.

So on the way are;

Dashboard trim strip - new old stock, in Volvo packaging at clearance discount! Last one Volvo had and came in from USA.  
Pair rear door card interior window trims - I’m missing one and others faded - new old stock in Volvo packaging at clearance discount! Came in from Volvo Sweden.  
Set of genuine Alternator bracket bushes & regulator pack. These are fairly easy to get but I need them regardless so got him to send some.

Im impressed by the NOS interior parts tbh. Never thought I’d find those. I did look at various places for used ones but they are all either broken, faded or minging! 
 

No connection to the above guy, other than a customer, but if your after Volvo parts he’s well worth contacting.