Bought my daughter a 1989 245DL as her first car and have been tinkering with it for a while. Slowly have fixed and replaced allot of things including the tail lights. Ordered some IPD aftermarket lights and installed them with new bulbs 2 years ago.

Thought all my " Hey dad, my brake light, turn signal isn't working again" troubles were over. Meh! Nope, still had to do a tail light fix / twist/ wiggle on a regular basis. Daughter bought a new car and sold it to her brother as his college transportation. Now the housings are melting and the lights constantly go out...........Yea!

While I have been impressed with the quality and tank-like qualities of the " Swag Wagon" as the kids call it, the guy who designed the tail lights needs to quit and get his job back at the toy factory. They suck.

Decided to hard wire them and make a harness for each to eliminate the contact problems. They will now be all LED lamps to avoid the melting problem. Ordered new housings, a complete set of OEM Volvo lamp holders, a full set of LED Lamps, resistors for the turn signal lamps and some 5 wire connectors from Amazon.

First, I removed all the contact points from the housings.



Then cut the tabs off the lamp holders and bent the tabs down to solder them.









Soldered new ground and source wire to each one:



Installed in the housing and added the 5 wire connectors:






Now for some late night wiring adventures....................



Hard mounted the resistors to the body and attached to the ground point:



Attached the factory light signal wires, the resistors and the chassis ground to the other side of the 5 wire plug:





All tied up and ready to go:



Put it all back together and tested the lights..............Wow! They are bright as can be and look great. The turn signal resistors work like a champ, I also changed the front turn signals to LEDs.
One change I made was to wire the brake signal wire also to the top unused fog light, now the brake lights up the top lens and the bottom lens. Can't miss the brake lights on this one now.

Still have the tailgate wiring harnesses to change to get the third light and the tag lights back up and running. Job for next weekend.................then we might need some new halogens in the front

 

Couple of pictures of the tail lights and the brake lights with the normal bottom and the top lens lit. Huge amount of light vs the OEM bulbs.

 

Father of the Year award? Congratulations. Great fix. Did it last a while? Are you available for hire?

 

Dang this is impressive. My passenger side tailight has melted but all I did was take alligator clips and point-to-point clip many of my terminals along with some minor solder work here and there. You're right about those melting taillights, they really are crap.

My 245 is my main college transportation despite being dead in the parking lot now. They're real popular with the youth and are really lusted over and loved on college campuses. I get plenty of notes from students trying to buy mine.

 

Great idea. I will do this, unless someone steals your idea and put a retro kit in Autozone....

 

Dude! That is awesome. Is there any way that you filmed this and posted it to youtube? I need to do that fix to my wagon and if there's any way I can get a hold of you or if you could post what you did to YouTube that would be unbelievable. PLEASE..😂👍🤘

 

sorry, no video, just pictures.