andyb5

Nice work Kristian, congrats on the baby! Myself and a couple other guys (babyclaude, leco510) on here all went to school with Ricky - small world huh?

he just posted in member announcements.

Thanks for the words of encouragement guys, I really do appreciate them. Tommy, the shifter had a slight notchiness to it that is now gone. Hard to describe more accurately than that. Mark, my rack now has a bunch of on-center slop. However, both of my inner tie rods are totally shot too so that may be part of the issue. I do suspect that the stock rubber subframe bushings aren't doing any favors for steering response either though. Honestly, the rack wasn't bad to remove. I did remove the sway bar because I had planned on replacing it with another one I had cleaned up and putting in new poly bushings. Unfortunately, I ordered the wrong size bushings so that didn't happen either The hardest part was removing the u-joint and the line fittings. The u-joint was easy once I used an air hammer to drive it upwards. The fittings were problematic because initially I didn't loosen the front subframe bolts and couldn't sag the subframe enough to turn the wrench. After I loosened the front bolts, there was plenty of room to work. Now, that being said, it was very easy to remove the subframe. The picture of me working on the u-joint was taken about 10 minutes after I decided to remove the subframe. Getting the rack/subframe back into the car was a bit of a fiasco due to late night frustration/exhaustion but whatever.

After wrapping up my manual swap, I drove down to Stevo's place in CT and he worked some magic for me. He removed the CEL and 4k rev limiter associated with the manual swap, remapped the throttle to make the car easier to drive smoothly, and turned the boost up to about 15/16 PSI with corresponding changes to fuel/timing as well. Boost development is very stable and holds steady to redline at ~6500 RPM. Between the manual and revised tune, the car is a blast to drive. Since then, I've basically been driving it, enjoying it, and taking some much needed time away from working on my car. Had a good time at SCD even if the weather wasn't ideal. However, I have recently been back at it and taking care of a few issues as they've popped up. I had a transmission bracket bolt snap in half, so I drilled that out and replaced it. Kind of a pain in the ass to repair, but it actually was not as bad as I expected. The forecast for the last couple nights showed weather dipping below freezing. Since I was running straight distilled water as coolant, this was a big problem. Since I needed to switch to Volvo 50/50 mix, I decided it was time to install my do88 all-aluminum radiator. I decided to use a -98 style thermostat cover to resolve the overflow line issue (see earlier post about this) Got that all buttoned up and went to replace my worn out, leaky, power steering rack with a remanufactured rack from rackdoctor.com and new OEM outer tie rods and a new OEM 05+ PS reservoir to eliminate a few different leaks. The old rack was pretty nasty and I was so glad that I was replacing it: This is where things got ugly. After I got everything taken apart, I was presented with this horror show Someone who had worked on this car in the past had cross-threaded the return line and the fitting was effectively destroyed when I removed it from the rack. So after exploring a few options, including a call to Hussein (thanks for picking up H!) I dejectedly decided to order a new OEM return line and re-assemble all my old components until I got the new line in. This tuned out to be way, way more work than it should've been. Getting the steering column U-joint back on the rack in the car proved impossible, so I had to drop the rack/subframe, remove the u-joint from the car, and hammer it back on then re-install the subframe back in. So that was a shitload of wasted time and effort, which was really frustrating. On the plus side, I was able to fix a loose turbo drain tube and re-route my shift cables from in front of the steering column to behind the column where they belong. This helped smooth out the shifting a bit.

Looks awesome Taras!! The new tailgate and brake lights are a nice update

Is there a reason you calculated the forces at the middle of the stroke, where forces are minimal, and not near the top of the stroke when forces are highest?

They're listed as available on Tasca's website for $623. Part #5003968 http://www.tascaparts.com/volvo/850/5003968/1996-year/r-trim/2-3l-l5-gas-engine/steering-cat/steering-gear-and-linkage-scat/?part_name=steering-gear

I ordered one from rack doctor. I was undecided between rack doctor and jorgen auto. Both have received numerous good reviews on here and other Volvo forums from reputable members. Both are roughly the same price.

Holy shit. What would cause that kind of damage to the pistons? Are the cracks specifically on the intake or exhaust side of the piston, or is there no pattern?

That's because you were at my shop in Troy, and I live in Schenectady, where these photos were taken. I'm gonna try to grab a few of Troy soon, I'll post back when I get them done.

Woah. That's not what I expected to read at the end of that post. If #3 is toast, why not just put another rod/piston in and keep the XR on the road?

Had some free time the other night and wandered around downtown after sunset.

Quoted so Gabe can see it

Alain you just have to post the image URL inside these tags: (IMG)www.yourURLhere.com(/IMG) but use brackets [ ] instead of parenthesis.

Yeah, think so. It put down 630ish to the wheels last I saw.

http://www.speedhunters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Promodet-930-Turbo-13.jpg http://www.speedhunters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Promodet-930-Turbo-27.jpg Edit: FUCK THIS UPDATE. Why is posting pictures such a colossal pain in the dick? Whatever, click the links for a cool 911. Edit: True.. Try to use good old trusted IMG tags .. :Johann Edit: Thanks Johann. That never occurred to me.... /facepalm.

Very cool, I'll keep that in mind. I can't wait to see your wagon after all the work you're doing to it! Yeah dude especially since you were at the shop helping me with 95% of all that work You gotta start a thread from your S70..!

Yeah it'll start and drive totally fine, it has a 4k RPM limiter until you get it tuned. So are you going to use a S60R dual mass clutch disc then? I remember Hussein had some type of issue with that when using his Spec flywheel with a non-spec clutch.

Thanks guys! Lucas, I'm running the stock tune right now. The throttle mapping is kind of weird/hyper sensitive but it runs pretty normally so far. The 4000 RPM limiter isn't really noticeable because I'm still breaking in the clutch so I'm not winding it out or getting into boost yet. Single mass flywheel is the 98 x70 style - I actually got it from Justus's old S70. What clutch are you going to run with your single mass?

DONE I finished it up around 8pm last night. I am in love. All the frustration and issues I've had with this wagon, none of that matters anymore, the smile this car puts on my face every time I drive it is incredible. Got about 50 miles so far. I had to deal with a few minor issues (radiator hose clamps not fully tightened, loose ECU ground bolt, etc) but it started right up drove on out of the shop like a champ. The throttle mapping is kind of wonky because I haven't had it tuned yet, but it's still very civil and easy to drive. I love the single mass flywheel and clutch/PP combo. Once those are broken in I'm meeting up with Steve to tune it

Thanks Mark! I have the easy route here, I'm just following down the list of items you had to figure out as you worked. Getting work done quickly has it's price though - I've been at the shop every night this week until around 2am (4am last night...) and it's taking a pretty good toll on me. I'm physically and mentally exhausted, I can't wait to wrap things up tonight. Yeah it's a lot more work than I expected. But hey, I really want a manual in my life and I'm too stupid to sell this thing, so M66 it is Get to it! I'm sure the hot weather down there isn't helping with motivation - it was 90+ and humid this weekend, working on the swap was miserable. Yeah the lift definitely makes things much easier. However, not being able to open the door more than ~30* makes getting under the dash to do the pedals and re-connect the steering column really suck. I had every intention of finishing the swap and driving it home last night, but the best laid plans of mice and men.... Installed the heater core lines, and modified the lower radiator hose to clear the shift arms. Then I got the clutch bled. What a total pain in the ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD that was - I initially tried reverse bleeding with an oil can, but that didn't work for some reason so I broke out my buddy's Motive power bleeder. All that did was blast a ton of air through the lines - I let the fluid level in the reservoir get too low So I stopped using the power bleeder and just did it the traditional way. Shifter is all bolted up, ended up having to trim a little more off the dash to clear it. I left the S40 rubber bushings on the bottom of the shifter, then put the new shifter bolts thru the rubber bushing with a fender washer on top of the shifter base. Only 3/4 of the shifter bolts align, the 4th (front lefthand) isn't close to fitting. I'll address this at some point in the future, but for now, it's solidly secured in place No pictures, but I had to remove the plastic harness around the wiring on the underside of the center console to clear the cable/arm on the right side of the shifter. A few months ago I bought a do88 radiator as a part of the group buy. I ordered it without an auto trans cooler - so I went to install that last night and fill the coolant up so I could start it. This is where things went sideways. Anyone see the problem yet? How about now? After having the radiator sitting in my living room and looking at it every time I came into my apartment for a couple months, only when I got it installed did I realize there wasn't a barb for the expansion tank on the radiator. I think "no problem, I'll grab a -98 style thermostat cover left over from a parts car and hook that up to the expansion tank" but after searching all over the shop, storage shed, and my buddy's apartment, there weren't any to be found So I had a bright idea (or, it seemed like one at 3:15 am...) - combine a 3/8" air tool fitting and a leftover 99+ thermostat cover to make a -98 style thermostat cover: Yeah, no. I woke up this morning and realized that was terrible idea So I'm gonna pull the do88 rad back out. Kills me that the junky Nissens is going back in, but I want this done right in the end. Tonight I'll swap radiators, add coolant, put the exhaust back on, and start it up and put some miles on it

Installed a rebuilt ABS module from Midwest ABS. Installed the clutch master cylinder and ran a line from the brake fluid reservoir to the master cylinder. Trim the master cylinder and you don't have to touch the brake booster, it slides right past and bolts up easily. Engine/trans/suspension ready to be re-installed And back in the car Shift cables hooked up and clutch hydraulic line run. I used the line from a 99/00 M56 with internal slave. This line has the clip-in fittings needed to work with the 99/00 clutch master and M66 bleeder elbow. The stock bends in the line are largely where they need to be - I tweaked the line a bit to allow it to pass over the stock airbox bracket rather than the way the factory routed the line through the airbox mount. This required some minor trimming of the airbox bracket, but nothing 30 seconds with a Dremel couldn't handle. ECM harness re-installed, and the TCM harness has been fully deleted.

Aaron hit the nail on the head. The worst thing that would happen if a small rock got wedged in there is the caliper paint would get scratched up and the rock would fall out as the spoke travels past. If you wanted, you could add a 5mm spacer to give more clearance. You won't need extended lugs or anything special to run a spacer that small.