Hi all,

I just bought my first Volvo - an '83 240GL Wagon in excellent shape.

Very excited to start learning about and working on this ride, and decided that a good first place to start would be replacing the rear pads and rotors, which have about 10% left on them.

However, when I go to any of the 'big box' auto parts suppliers, like Autozone, AdvanceAuto, O'Reilly, and even some of the Volvo-specific suppliers, like swedishpartswholesale.com, I don't see the 240 listed for 1983 or any other year in which it was manufactured.

There has to be a good explanation for this since the 240 was such a popular car. Can 240 owners just use the parts listed for the 242 or something?

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

If a site does not know what a 1983 Volvo 240 is, then don't buy from them. Most sites will list just 240 and not the trim level. If they say 200 series or 245 and 244 and so on, they might know a little more. I just went to 1983 Volvo 240 Parts - Discount 1983 Volvo 240 Auto Parts and found your year, so... what are you concerned about? the fact it does not say for GL's? Don't worry, the trim level does not reflect major parts, but minor options which are usually supplied by the site you are looking at anyways.

 

Thanks for the reply Burn Stains.

But when I went to the site you linked to and clicked on Brake Disc, none of the discs listed were for the specific model '240'. Even the header section labeled 'Select a Model:' has four choices: 242, 244, 245, and 760. No specific listing for the 240.

Do I just forget about the fact that the car is a '240' and just pay attention to the year and the chassis type, e.g. 1983 'GL'?

I just want to see a specific part designated for the 1983 240, not the 245, the 242, the 244, or anything other model. Doesn't it seem strange that none of the individual parts are not designated for the 240?

There have to be other people running across this same issue. I want to buy the right part for my car, that's all.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

 

I see, well brakes should have nothing to do with the body style in this case, but go ahead and select 245 for your wagon, as some parts will reflect the body style, like tail lights of course.

 

May I also suggest looking into buying parts from these web sites https://volvoforums.com/forum/genera...s-thread-7317/ as they are specific to Volvo. They may be extra, but well worth it, especially for brakes.

 

240 refers to the entire series. 242 is the 2 door, 244 the four door, 245 the wagon. In any given model year, most everything is interchangeable between models except model specific items. To make things even more interesting, Volvo dropped the "240" nomenclature altogether from 1980 to 1985. The cars were simply tagged DL, GL, GT or GLT. In 86 with 740/760 sales taking off, they brought back the 240 designation but did not differentiate between sedans and wagons...they were all tagged 240.

 

Wow - thanks for the concise and enlightening information. That definitely clears things up for me and now I feel confident purchasing parts for my wagon.

Hopefully others who are confused about this issue will find this thread.

Thanks again!

 

My goto place for Volvo factory parts is tascaparts... tasca is a Volvo (and Ford/Lincoln/Mercury) dealer in R.I., and they sell everything Volvo still makes available for about 30% the usual MSRP Stealer price.

A few years ago, I 'found' a copy of the 2005 "VADIS" dealer parts DVD online, this has the part numbers and diagrams for every part for every Volvo from the 240 forwards to 2005, and detailed technical info on 940 and newer models. This makes finding parts really easy, since you have the P/N you can just put it into Tasca's search engine.