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Tommy's A-series Misery - Collection caper!


Tommyboy12

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  • Tommyboy12 changed the title to Tommy's A-series Misery - The addition of a Volvo 240

The Volvo was pressed into immediate duty over the weekend after the Fiesta left on Saturday morning. It's already been to the loca breakfast meet and picked up some stuff from the supermarket. It's performing admirably.

Bye Fiesta.

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Graceful shot of the brick

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The bike is also back from the garage. New headstock bearings and rear linkage fitted. The bill wasn't as bad as I thought it would be which was nice. 

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Love these. Back in about 1991,  I took an almost new, though recently re-shelled following a nasty accident, 240GL saloon in silver, on a defensive driving course at Goodwood. The ex police instructors were practically climbing over each other to accompany me for the day. Loved the sound of it and also that it dried my damp jeans on the journey down with it’s heated seats😁

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The heated seats are definitely a bonus! Although the drivers side one isn't working. It's on the list for looking at. Hopefully as simple as a fuse but I'm happy to do a bit of wiring. As far as I can tell it's the only thing not working.

The radio wasn't working because it needed a code. Rather wishfully I rang the local Volvo dealer and quoted the reg and amazingly they gave me the radio code!

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It's a disaster! The Volvo's first mechanical failure! I've clearly bought a lemon... The tape player has stopped working...

The culprit:

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I split the radio open and one of the gears has stripped on the motor mechanism. While it's potentially repairable if I could find the parts I'm going to fit something else instead purely because the radio element isn't working properly either. It gets horrendous loud static feedback despite being locked into a solid radio signal and makes it unbearable to listen to. That and a broken tape player means it's basically scrap. Unfortunately being a 'top mount' radio (as in its mounted high on the dash rather than low down by the gear lever) and the car being 30 years old it's difficult to find a radio surround. The surround for the standard radio is not a standard DIN size either. However! I have found a 3D CAD model of a facia plate for a standard DIN unit. So I've paid a company a whole £12 to 3D print me one in black while I source a harness adapter and a 'modern' radio unit.

Also, someone took some cracking shots at the Hubnut social on Saturday

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The Volvo now has a working radio! First time I've ever found a practical use case for 3D printing in my life. Its not the nicest looking radio as it's a cheap one but it's functional and I at least think it doesn't look tacky like some cheap radios. I wanted all black and no stupid RGB lighting.  I bought a harness adapter to keep things simple but still ended up doing some soldering as the loom came with a male plug for one of the connections and the loom in the car was male too.

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That 3D printed bezel looks way better than I imagined it might.

Would you mind sharing details of the process of getting one?  

I've got the original volvo radio which looks great but hasn't worked since I got the car. I was thinking something like a Blaupunkt Bremen would fit in there really nicely, except for the weird bezel shape.

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3 hours ago, juular said:

That 3D printed bezel looks way better than I imagined it might.

Would you mind sharing details of the process of getting one?  

I've got the original volvo radio which looks great but hasn't worked since I got the car. I was thinking something like a Blaupunkt Bremen would fit in there really nicely, except for the weird bezel shape.

Yeah the bezel turned out well. Basically I did a load of digging to find a RHD facia plate and found someone in the UK had already rendered a 3D printable one which is stored on a 3D printing website. Linky below:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4904146

I then approached a company on Etsy that can 3D print on your behalf. I used this company specifically:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/3DLix

It was just under £11 to print it plus postage. I had mine printed in PLA which is a bit temperature sensitive but you could have it done in something more resistant if you think its going to be a problem. Personally I dont think the cabin is likely to reach the 55-60C so I dont see it a being a problem.

I would say the design was good but the slot is too tight. I had to trim inner faces of the radio slot to be able to fit the radio and I fitted it without the cage. Id call it an interference fit 😅 You could ask any company you work with to open up the slot a little bit in their CAD software.

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