tuner4life

It's definitely 10lbs in a 5lb bag if you know what I mean. I wish they sold FWD saffron Rs here.

The whole thing is coming out, subframe, driveline, exhaust, fuel tank, all of it. The lines are crusty enough, I don't trust their integrity once I start moving things around. I'll be bending my own new fuel and brake lines from front to back as well as every single fuel/emission/etc hose that is inaccessible above the tank. I don't want to deal with this again for a very long time lol. I've already got an intermittent evap code when it gets cold.

Prepping for the upcoming project from hell. I put the wagon on stands and absolutely drenched every visible nut/bolt/fastener/fitting in a combination of PB blaster and Fluid film on hopes that it will creep where it needs to go and loosen up some of the corrosion to reduce the headaches.. I literally sprayed 2 full cans of PB and 1 full can of Fluid film on every fastener I could find. Also I sprayed a bunch down inbetween the body and the subframe where I could access through the wheel well. I sprayed a surprising amount in there and only a little bit dripped back out so hopefully it's in there working on de-fusing the subframe from the steel of the car. I'm going to do this a few more times before I start tearing it apart. I literally bought a case of PB Hoping to finish gathering all the parts by the time my work slows down in a few weeks when I can really tackle this. After drenching the rear suspension in PB, I played around with some LEDs that I picked up for the map lights. Big improvement!

I don't have a schematic or anything and I've been battling photobucket to find the pictures that I took, but the basic summary is that the bulbs used in the rear courtesy lights (over the doors) on my 1998 V70R use the style of bulb shown in the picture here. I've labeled the + and - contacts for every application that I've ever seen. This is also the way that the LED replacements I have found are meant to be powered. Also to note, the front dome/map lights take this bulb also and are wired in the normal fashion because the LEDs work up there. The light housings at the rear are switched. The bulb receives power through the outer casing and is grounded at the tip. The switch on the housing determines if the light is grounded at all times, or only when the door is open. So basically to find an LED that will work in this spot, we need to find one that is wired backwards of the normal.

Yeah yeah, old thread or whatever. I've started swapping over some of the dome/courtesy lights in my 1998 V70R over to LED and I got stuck on these lights over the rear seats too. Had me stumped for a good hour. LED bulbs worked fine when hooked directly to power, and the regular bulbs worked fine in the sockets.. there was no reason that I could think of why it wouldn't work.. Then I figured it out I think. Volvo uses a single power wire going to the light fixture (single wire plug) and the switch picks out which ground makes contact to either work with the dome lights or on constantly. They actually have the light socket wired backwards. The type of bulb used here would usually get power from the center stud at the bottom of the bulb and the outer casing (the pins) would be the ground. I'm this application Volvo uses the outer casing of the building as the positive and the center stud as the negative. This would have no effect on a regular bulb, but the LED will only work on a certain polarity. A simple tab bulb like a 194 would be easy to flip over and it would work, not the case as these would work the same no matter which way they are installed. So now the mystery is where to source an LED like this that is setup for reverse polarity. Has anyone found a solution?

Haven't been driving this one much lately since the viscous coupling has started making horrible noise. I think the bearings are shot, but with over 225k miles I'll probably just look for lower mileage VC, differential, and axles. I'll post a wanted ad for those parts soon. Slowly gathering all the parts I need for this fall project.. I'm only about 1/4 invested so far.. Still need to gather all of the fuel tank parts, Nivos, brakes, etc..

Coming along nicely!! I love the history with it being a press car. That's cool!

That cutout is a great idea!

S70 Looks killer! I agree, those Indy 500s are about the best tire out there for the $.

Took the C70 to the Gridlife Festival at Gingerman raceway in South Haven MI. I didn't get signed up in time to drive and my drift car isn't ready anyways, so I just cruised up in the C70 and camped and partied all weekend. Had a great time. Also happened to be camped next to a Volvo group from the Midwest that I had no clue even existed so that was cool too.

Hmm.. I didn't realize it was that easy to clean! I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Did some much needed interior detailing over the weekend. Something that I have been meaning to do for a while now, but kept getting overlooked was to clean up the pilling on the suede portions of the seats. I had read somewhere that a "sweater shaver" was the preferred tool to do this. I didn't have one and kept forgetting to look. Turns out my own mother had one all along. So here is the tool I used: Here is the driver's seat before I started: The right (in the picture) is mostly done and the left has been untouched. Not perfect, but definitely an improvement. And the final product. It's not perfect, but definitely got the worst of the pilling and took several years of age off of the suede.. I will still need to replace the covers at some point in the future, but they are good enough for several more years. (yes, the pass side is discolored. Not sure why, it's been like that since we've owned it)

When Indiana's "finest" can't even read the brand emblem on the back of your car it makes you question if they can read a radar gun correctly.. Looks like i'll be fighting this one. For the record, I have never owned a VW in my life.

^ Mud flaps should be painted body color... Trust me;)

Come on down! The tool is the key, the rest is easy.

Rolled over 168k mi the other day. Did an oil change and ATF fluid change last night. While it was draining, I re-polished the shiny parts that has gotten a little dull over the winter.

Thanks you guys!

The R always felt a little sluggish compared to the C70. I just chalked it up to the AWD and weight, but my OCD wouldn't let me leave it alone. I remembered that when I put everything together the last time, I couldn't find my IPD cam gear adjustment tool, so I just lined everything up how it came apart and figured I would deal with it later. Well later has now been over a year, and I finally found my the cam tool. I checked where the cams were set and holy crap, no wonder it felt anemic! The intake cam was 1 degree advanced, and the exhaust cam was almost 5 degrees retarded!! I reset them both to +2 deg advanced as a baseline from reading through some other threads here and on MVS. There wasn't a ton of good info as to where they should have been set. Either way, +2 deg for both cams really made a huge difference. The surge of power that I'm used to around 3k rpm in the C70 was now actually noticeable in the R. I drove it to work for a day and felt that it could still use a bit more adjustment. I played with it some more last night and settled on +2 advanced on the exhaust cam and right at zero deg advanced/retarded for the intake cam. It really feels like it's running correctly now. The only issue is that it feels like it surges slightly and cuts boost back a little bit at WOT in the higher RPMs. Might be due to my restrictive home made exhaust. Guess we'll figure that out when it gets changed this fall. For now, it's exciting to drive again!

Thanks! It surprisingly rides very nicely. The 18"s with good tires ride nearly the same as the old 17"s with Chinese crap tires. Just need to be a little more pot-hole conscious.

Since the C70 got new wheels, we applied some trickle-down economics and the Comets from the C70 now belong to the V70R. I'm a little excited to get some pictures of the cars together this weekend for the first time with them both looking decent. For now here are a couple pictures from the drive to work this morning. Car is still dirty, but the wheels are clean. The wife wants to repaint them in the darker grey that Comets came in overseas. Not it's time to gather up all the parts for the rear subframe/fuel system/exhaust/suspension overhaul coming this fall.

Got an alignment and installed the new wheels over the weekend! Bremmer Kraft BR11. 18x8+45. with some 225/40/18 Contisports. We really love this setup. Completely transformed the appearance and drives better then I expected being 18". It already has a 10mm spacer in the rear, but I'm thinking about adding another 5mm or so all the way around to push the wheels a little more flush. Either way, here's some picture whoring. It has B&G springs on it currently, Thinking about switching to IPDs. Are they still the lowest springs out there without going to a coilover? The old Comets will be going on the V70R after getting new tires. Also got parked right next to a V70R during the install. It was running with the One Lap Of America event that was also going on at Tire Rack when we were there Saturday. I never got to meet the owner, but he was in a wheelchair and the car has full hand controls for the throttle and brake. Looks pretty neat. I also managed to hook the factory SC901 4x100 amplifier back up so that it works with the aftermarket Kenwood head unit. It took some finagling, and a couple of trys, but we got it working. It's still not a mind blowing sound system, but it sounds much more powerful and full then it did just running the speakers off of the stereo itself. I may still add a sub. We'll see. I'll detail the amp install if I can find my notes and diagrams..

That looks great! Next to Saffron and Lazer blue, Venetian Red is one of my favorites!

Got all 4 fenders rolled last night. Went pretty smoothly overall, but definitely fought me more then the 240sx pop can that I did last. There is definitely some heavy metal here! I was careful and the paint remained undamaged on the front left and right rear, but since the right front fender and left rear quarter panel had both been repainted at some point in the car's life, the paint did crack a little bit on those arches. It's only at the bottom edge and not very visible, so I touched them up with a brush for now, but they will need to be repainted correctly in the near future. The biggest headache was trimming the fender liners to make room for the fenders to roll.

Dug the old girl out of winter hibernation and started working on various things. First, I messed with the window regulators.. The driver's side was getting jerky and jumpy while moving downward. Upon further investigation, one of the cable tubes was broken and not supporting the cable at all. Ended up replacing it with the spare regulator that I pulled from the parts car. After way more time than I care to admit, that one is adjusted correctly and seems to be working decently well. The passenger side worked fine, but has this annoying issue. When rolling up the window with the door closed, it doesn't seem to want to roll up all the way. Just a couple of mm short at the front edge, and it whistles at highway speeds. Opening the door will allow the window to pop up the remaining 2mm and it'll seal fine again when closing the door. This is obviously aggravating if you need to roll the window up while underway because you have to stop to open/close the door to make the whistle stop. I took it all apart and adjusted several things, relieved some of the stress between the window and the seal and rechecked the fitment which seemed to be good. even adjusted the tension/slack on the front lift cable and it seemed to be a little better, but during a road test. the results were the same.. Ugh.. I may just swap that regulator for a spare too. But not this week. Got too much else to do. I have sourced a set of 18" wheels that I hope to pick-up this weekend. Tonight, I'm going to work on rolling the fenders to make some room for them. They are 18x8 + 45 so they should fit fine, even with the existing 10mm spacer already in the rear. I'm also going to tweak the front camber slightly as it is currently at -2 deg using camber bolts. Need to get it closer to -1 and hoping to have it aligned first thing on Saturday. These comets will then be transferred over to the V70R. Friday evening, the project is going to be re-installing the factory 4x100 Amplifier in the trunk. When we installed the radio, we just bypassed the factory amp to simplify things. Everything seems to work fine, but the remainder of the SC-901 speaker system seems to lack the punch that I feel it should have. Going to see if we can't run it through that amp to boost things a bit. The rest of the spring inspection went well. There is an oil leak at the front of the engine. Thinking either crankshaft seal, maybe oil pump o-ring.. Something in that area. The frame rail is wet, but it doesn't seem to be leaving any dribbles on the floor at this time. I'll keep an eye on it, but I don't plan on repairing it until the whole thing comes out for a refresh and manual swap a few years down the road. Should be ready to cruise by next week!