tuner4life

Drove the R a lot this past week and weekend, and the coolant level has dropped a little bit again. I am checking this in the mornings after the car has been parked all night. And I always check it while parked in the same place in the garage. I'm trying to rule out any anomaly that might be due to temp or the level that the car is parked at. 

I can't see any visible signs of a coolant leak. Literally every serviceable part of the coolant system has been replaced in the past year. I suppose maybe I'll try some of that dye that gets added to the coolant and shows up under a black light.. Not really sure where to go from here.

Am I correct that if a cooler in the transmission is leaking, it would make the coolant dirty (this happened on the C70), this is not happening here.

If the head gasket was seeping, there would be other symptoms right?

My coolant scare seems to have been a fluke. Maybe just a bubble somewhere in the system finally came out. I have no idea, but it hasn't lost a drop in the last couple weeks. I'm going to call it good.

Moving on to another project.. Not proud of it, but I have not properly detailed this car since we brought it home. The paint is basically garbage, many of the body parts have been repainted at some point, and not at the same time. We'll call it a good 20 footer.  I had a little extra time between projects so I figured I would give it a good once-over and see how good I could make it. I still need to give it a good waxing tonight, but I'm finished with everything up to that stage so far.  

Started with Meguiars Gold Class wash, chamois dry, then Meguiars Ultimate Compound via orbital buffer and by hand in spots. Tonight I am going to give it a quick rinse off to remove any remaining compound, then Meguiars Gold Class wax. It will need a full repaint sometime in the future as there are excessive rock chips, scratches, dings, etc. But for now, It's good enough for the daily/winter car that it is.

I have looked around that tank some, but I don't see anything. I've had coolant come out of the old tank and it left white spots all around it. This is a new OEM tank and cap as of last fall and I see no signs of leakage there. That's what is scaring me, I replaced virtually every coolant related part with OEM or better less than a year ago.

Just worth noting something I'm keeping a close eye on lately. There is a very slight coolant loss going on.. This car gets driven about an hour a day and after a week, the coolant might be 1/4" lower in the reservoir than before. I'll top it off and it will be about the same a week later. It's very slow, but I don't want it to turn into a catastrophic failure. I looked it over pretty thoroughly last night and everything that I can see is perfectly dry including the heater core and hoses. This is a little disconcerting considering that I replaced basically everything related to the cooling system except for the head gasket.. Coolant and oil are both clean for now so I guess we will just keep driving it until whatever is going on becomes obvious.

Not much to document, but I don't need this thread getting archived again..

Last night I changed the fog light bulbs as one has burnt out, and while underneath, I realized that there is an oil leak from the front of the engine. I suspect camshaft seals, crankshaft seals, or maybe oil pump o-ring.. Not sure. I'll give the engine a refresh while it's out for the 5 speed swap. Hoping to do that in the next couple of years lol. Just been a nice driver a couple days a week til then.

I'm always down for company while working on the cars.. If you are ever over this way, swing by. Paint will take a bit more planning though as I actually borrowed a buddy's shop, and some of his time..

Thanks! 

Gas station photo shoot. The spoiler really makes the difference on a wagon.  All body parts (spoiler, mud flaps, mirror caps) are painted and installed except for the exhaust trims which won't get installed until after the new exhaust goes on. I'm so happy with how it looks now!

Done! I'll try to get better pics sometime this weekend, but it's on! The mounts are a complete pain. Thanks to Robert Spinners video on how they install I was able to figure it out. I would have never figured it out otherwise.  

 Crappy teaser pic, but this is finished and ready to be mounted!

I have a spoiler and mount kit. I screwed up the paint on it though so it's waiting to be redone. Should be soon!

The wheel weights are what they are.. Actually the whole wheel setup is temporary. These wheels are so messed up that they weren't worth using sticky weights on. None of them are round or straight. they all have issues sealing at the bead they are corroded so bad.. Looking to find some 16" for winter (I believe that Perfos are the ones that fit over the 302mm brakes, I want to get the BBK at some point).. Maybe I'll just get whatever junkyard 16" wheels are available before winter.. and forget about the BBK on this car.. Idk.. Then around spring time, I'll be looking for some nicer 17" or 18" for the good weather months..  Anyways, the point of that is that the current wheels aren't worth worrying about and are basically scrap.

This thing is totally rad! I like the way you did the battery relocation, I would be worried about something arcing it in the trunk though and the venting issue. Have you thought about making some sort of plastic cover for it to keep fumes out of the cabin? Or maybe vent it to the outside?

The C70 has it's mud flaps painted in this same fashion from the factory. Not sure why the V70's didn't. Seems like a no-brainer.

Daylight pics of the painted mudflaps and mirror caps! I'm leaving the exhaust trims off until I mount the new exhaust since the current one kind of bangs around sometimes. And I messed up the paint on the spoiler so that will need to be done again before reinstalling.  

That being said the mud flaps and mirror caps really up the class of the car compared to the black plastidip.

Working on some stuff recently.  Painted the mud flaps, mirror caps, exhaust cut-out trim, and spoiler. Only the mud flaps were cured enough to install last night. I like how they turned out! Much better than black

Please excuse dirty car and garage. I'll try to get better pictures in the daytime.

I finally acquired the last body part that I have been hunting for!!  In the next couple of weeks I'll be painting these, a spoiler, the mirror caps, and the back of the mud flaps to match the car. Can't wait!

Also, it was getting ready to storm really bad while at work yesterday and they were calling for hail.. All the car enthusiasts hit the storage sheds lol.

Thanks! Yeah, Dan is a great guy. We ended up standing around chatting for a few hours before heading back home.

I'm considering the Grand Rapids event, but weighing the event costs vs. just dumping that $ into the car lol. Do we have to be members of the VCOA to go? We are not members and the link I found wasn't too clear.

Acquired a homelink mirror. Dyed it black. Installed it. Then figured out that it won't work with my Chamberlain garage door openers.. Fail. Evidently there is some compatibility module that I need to buy to make them communicate?  Idk. I'll figure that out some other time. 

Logans! There is a Texas Roadhouse just down the road, but we've always had pretty bad service there. Thanks!

I Met the wife for dinner after work yesterday. Both cars are filthy and the pictures are bad, but they rarely are seen together outside of my driveway so I had to snap a picture.

Then in typical fashion, I tried to take some rollers of the coupe on the way home  :D

Video:

Rolling video

Finished removing all of the window tint last night.  The PO had done an absolutely horrendous job of installing cheap tint. There were bubbles, haziness, incomplete coverage, etc.. It just looked terrible. While I would like to have the windows re-tinted professionally at some point, I think this looks much better for now. Brings back some of the car's lost class.  Plus it was free! Just a couple hours of labor.

Before:

After:

Slowly chipping away at actually making this a nice car.

The wife and I made a short trip to Kalamazoo on Friday to meet Dan (DDM) and buy a used EST axle-back exhaust he was selling, ended up staying and chatting for a couple of hours about cars, houses, life, etc.. I bought a few other parts from him as well and was gifted several others. One of the nicest and most generous people I've ever met from a forum. Also excited to have discovered the "Volvo Enthusiasts Of Michigan" Facebook page. Being only a short distance from MI, I'm looking forward to doing some things with that group this summer. Indiana has virtually no Volvo activity anywhere.

On to the pictures. Dan's VR is sweet, absolutely immaculate and has all the cool mods, definitely an inspiration!

Some terrible dark pictures of some of the cool pieces I brought back:

Super solid, but needing painted EST exhaust:

Clean dash:

Homelink visor and pillar pod:

Not pictured:

Sweet back seat bases with the integrated booster seats, plastic cargo mat, and rear armrest with a cup holder.

I have also started removing the horrendous tint that was applied by the PO. I got the back doors done last week, but haven't started on the rear quarter windows yet. I'll post before and after pictures once I'm done. Really gives the car back some of it's lost class. I never realized how distracting crappy window tint can be.

The new wheels look great!

I followed the wife home after meeting up for a dinner date after work, got some pics of the wagon in motion. 

Yeah, it's dirty, the roads are stuff, and the car needs lowered, but It's getting there.

Too much traffic to get on it much, and I had my phone out the window too far so most of the video is wind noise, but you can hear the exhaust in part of it.

http://vid354.photobucket.com/albums/r401/tuner4life2/1998 Volvo V70R/VID_20160525_184832454_zpsmnmec6in.mp4

Terrible picture, but I swapped the wheels from my parts car C70 onto the R yesterday. I'm happy that I won't have to add air to them every week like the other ones. However I will need to balance them because they do have a little shake over 60mph. Not sure if this is just because they have been sitting since fall and the flat spots need to work themselves out, could just be a bad balance on one of them. The wheels seem to be very straight and the tires are virtually new from right before I got the parts car, so that's cool..

The wheels are old American Racing wheels and are fairly ugly.. But the sizing is decent.

I did that. The right rear is the worst offender losing about 10 psi/week. I personally dismounted the tire, ground any and all scale/corrosion off of the wheel where the beat sits. Inspected the wheel for cracks, inspected the tire for issues, even changed the valve stem.. No difference. The last possible offender might be the wheel weights. When I mount the wheel weights, they to dig into the tire a little bit more than I would like, but they shouldn't cause a leak.. Idk. I'm going to switch to the spare wheels from the parts car and deal with these when they are off the car.