I've been a long time viewer of Volvo Forums, and used it quite a bit when I owned a '00 S70 a few years back. My true passion, however, has always been 240s.

So, I'm finally picking up my very first 245 tomorrow morning in Annapolis Royal from an awesome Volvo enthusiast.

The 245 is a '91 5-speed with 469,000 kms and has been given a lot of love in the last five years. I'm looking forward to running through the receipts for the recent work (which are extensive) and picking apart some of the suspension tomorrow and Sunday to see what I have.

Overall the car is in pretty good shape with minor surface rust along one door and the rear wheels wells. The engine and transmission seem to run strong, but there is some stiffness in the steering.

I'm sure there will be lots to learn while working on the car and I cannot wait to get started on the brick. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow after I pick it up, but for now here are some pics from the seller. This will be a thread to record my progress and explain some of the work I'm doing, in an effort to help others if possible.

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those pictures links are all broken.

 

Hmmm, was wondering if it was just my computer or not. I'll dig into it.

 

that engine compartment looks like it was sprayed down with old motor oil then driven 100s of miles on dirt roads

that rust bubble near the left rear wheel likely is a lot more rust than just what you can see, odds are its perforated right through the metal, and there's a ton more rust on the undercarriage. I guess this is normal for land-of-salted-roads cars, out on the left coast here its a big red flag.

 

Yeah very common here for rust. This is actually really good for a 24+ year old car. I had a 2004 Mazda3 at one point that was completely rusted through and undriveable before it was 8 years old.

The engine compartment has actually been undercoated with an oil-based undercoating. Again, pretty common stuff here to protect from salt in the engine compartment. I'm planning to clean a lot of this up with some degreaser to get a good look at what I have, before undercoating prior to winter.

 

yeah, volvos were rather thoroughly galvanized after body assembly and before being filled and primered. the full chassis was zinc dipped.

most japanese cars rust badly and quickly. my wife moved out west from Massachussets with a 5 year old Honda Accord that was a total rust bucket, worse than anything I'd ever seen here in California.

 

nice color! 469000 k wow that is impressive. i'd be curious to know the rust situation underneath. my '91 doesn't have much at all and it lived/lives in new england...

 

Well it's been a few days since I've posted, and the first time since I got the car. I have to say it's been just as much fun driving it as I expected.

The drive home from Annapolis Royal was just a little over two hours and the car drove great the whole way. I knew when I bought it that there was an issue with the steering, where the power steering seemed to surge on and off at low speed. I had a suspicion that that the lower u-joint was binding, as it seemed to happen only at certain points.

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When I first got the car home I tackled cleaning the interior as much as I could. I took the handheld carpet cleaner to the seats and carpet, which turned out really nice. Will post pics of this later. I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for cleaning the headliner? I have a few scuff marks in the back that I'd like to get out without ruining the vinyl.

Of course my dog had to check out my new ride:
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The next big thing to start tackling was the undercoating and dirt under the hood. I bought it looking like this:
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As of tonight, I have it looking like this:
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It has come a long way so far with degreaser and rags, but there's still a bunch to do. I want to get as much of this out of the engine compartment as I can so I can give the engine a good once-over, and so I can sand and paint any small rust spots on the body. I will apply new undercoating when I'm complete so it's protected for winter. Surprisingly there is only a little bit of rust under the hood - the undercoating did its job!

While I was under the hood I decided to see if I could figure out what was wrong with the steering. With the car running and the hood open I turned the steering wheel. Looking at the pump I could see that when it was under load the belt was slipping. A quick inspection showed that there was little tension on the belt, and the adjustment bolt was snapped off:
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A quick trip to a local bolt supplier got me a new bolt. Success! Under $1 to fix the steering issue that was really annoying.

Lots of little things to tackle over the coming weeks. I know that the fuel filler neck has a small leak while filling up. I called my local dealer and they said (along with IPD) that the part is no longer available. There are some good fabrication shops around so I may need to get a custom one made.

Onward and upward!

 

I'm curious as well silvermine. There is just as much undercoating (if not more) underneath as there was under the hood. I have a feeling that it's relatively rust free under there as well, but will need to get it up higher to see. I'm thinking I will clean underneath next and do some inspecting before applying a good coat of POR-15 to any spots that need it.

 

I started troubleshooting my non-working heated seats tonight. After checking the fuse, and for voltage at the switch and element, I concluded that both the fuse and switch seem to be OK. No resistance on the switch when open either so seems to be good.

There also doesn't seem to be any issues with the thermostat (at least in the passenger seat) nor do there seem to be any loose wires at the connection point near the thermostat. According to this tutorial that I followed, those are two common issues.

Oddly enough, however, it seems that when the circuit is closed and connected at the thermostat there is no voltage at the "in" side. When I unplug the "in" side from the thermostat and ground it there is voltage.

Did some more digging after that and it seems that there is almost no amperage at the switch, nor at the heating element. When I checked at the fuse, there was amperage. I've narrowed down my issue (I think) to the wire that runs from the positive of the driver's switch to the positive of the passenger's switch, or the positive wire that runs from the fuse to the driver's switch.

Any thoughts to confirm this theory? Unfortunately I had some trouble getting the driver's seat cover off so have not had a chance to troubleshoot why that element is not working either. I would think that if everything checks out fine there, that it would be the wire from the fuse to the driver's switch "in". May run a jumper wire tomorrow from the fuse to the driver's "in" to see if I have enough amperage to run the elements.

 

how are you measuring 'amperage' ? this is a series circuit, power -> fuse -> switch -> heater -> ground, so the amperage has to be the same at any part of the circuit since the same current is flowing through each segment of it.

 

I agree.

Here's where I'm at: I measured the proper voltage throughout the whole circuit; however, when I put a test light anywhere after the switch, there is not enough amperage to power up the light (there is 12v though). There is enough amperage to power up the test light at the fuse, though. This is where I'm confused. Maybe it's not an amperage problem?

 

well, test lights are voltage testers, but require some minimum current to light up.

I think I'd unplug the seat heater at the rail, and use an ohm meter to meaasure the resistance across the heater... it should be in the low-few-ohms range probably. I dunno how many watts these heater elements are, but if its 3 ohms, 12V/3ohm = 4 amp, and 12V*4A = 48 watts, which is a moderate bit of heat.

when you see this 12V after the switch, does it go away if you flip the switch off ?

 

I did check and had little to no resistance across the heater.

After some more testing, I ran a single wire from the fuse to the switch, and the seat worked. This confirmed my theory that something was up with the wire from the fuse box to the switch. I took the plastic panel off around the fuse panel and cleaned up the contact where the power wire came out from the fuse panel. Success! The seats are now working.

I decided to clean up all the fuses/contacts and wires/contacts while I was there. I'll be adding this to my annual to-do list.

 

get some DeOxit D100, and put a drop of that on each push connector before reassembling, and you'll only need to do it once every 10-20 years

 

So I'm making some plans for the sound system in the car. I don't plan on spending a lot of money, likely just a standard $99 head unit, and some upgraded speakers to fill the current holes. Based on what I've been reading, I'm not sure if there is a stock amplifier built into/connected to my current unit. Would there have been one on the '91 model?

 

I believe the 240's that had amps had the stereo up top, and a equalizer down low below the ashtray, that equalizer was the amp. Our 87 240GL sedan came with no stereo or speakers at all, it was a dealer installed option. there were two speaker position for 4" or 4.5" in the doors, thats it.

 

In my '90 and my daughter's '91, there is an amplifier that's tucked up high behind the glove compartment. I don't know if these were factory installed or added by the dealer. Both cars had the head unit replaced prior to when we bought them.

 

Thanks guys. I have the head unit up top, so I'll take a look as best as I can near the ashtray for an amp on the weekend. I really want to keep this upgrade simple and cost-effective. Mainly want to have handsfree calling and a CD player (with better sound quality).

Any idea what the wattage would be on the factory amp if there is one? The current system really lacks any depth to the sound at all and I'm not sure how much of that is speakers, the amp, or the combination of the two. I'm typically a stock-looking guy, so I would consider just upgrading the speakers and not the head unit if the amp delivered high enough wattage for the speakers.

 

if you're getting an aftermarket deck, bypass the factory amp, and wire the deck directly to your speakers. most all decent modern aftermarket decks have like 50W "music power" per channel, this translates to about 20W RMS continuous, which is plenty of pookah to drive normal car sized speakers way loud with good fidelity.