Hey everyone, I just bought my first car. It's a 1982 244 GL. Some history, has had 3 owners, I'm the fourth. It went from father to son, then to the people who had it before me, they needed another car for work. It's got 180,000kms give or take, needs some body work and wheel bearings, but I've been driving it for about a week and its great. Nova Scotia car so its been through 31 salty winters, needless to say I'll be replacing entire front and back suspension next summer. I'm gong for a slammed stance and some hipster stretched tires, roof rack and some round head & fog lights, because I'm 17 and I can't resist. possibly bag it if anyone with the experience could help me with that, budget permitting. Wicked almost mint interior, gonna be painting her either metallic black or maroon, also budget permitting. was originally looking for a beamer or a vw (as long as it was European) but i couldn't resist for $1200. Tell me what you think!

 

this old fart says, leave the suspension the stock height and stay on relatively stock sized tires, slamming a car to the ground just ruins the ride and does nothing to improve handling except maybe on a race track with glassy smooth pavement.

changing the headlights to round will require fabricating panels as the older volvos that had round headlights had different grills and different hoods and different bumper trim. and different front turn signals.

repainting a car a completely different color never ends well, unless you are TOTALLY stripping the car down to its chassis, stripping the old paint, primering and painting it inside AND out. which is an ungodly amount of work. slapping a dark color over that silver color, in a year there will be scratches and chips and the silver will show through, plus your door frames and door sills will be the wrong color.

 

Can't argue with experience, and I don't mean the 7" round lights, I'm talking about the quad round lights from a 79'(?) with a round hood, which I gather can be swapped straight out for the ones I have now... I hope. I think your right about the paint, can't go wrong with silver i guess, even though I'll be patching a lot of rust on the outside and will have to repaint quite a bit. As for the suspension, form over function, the car looks way more aggressive, among other things, when it sits low, I'll probably be eating my words in a years time, but I'm young and a comfortable ride is pretty low on the list.

 

watching lowered cars having to painfully crawl over speed bumps at 5mph when I can take them at 25 on my stock suspension height, yeah, whatever.

now, dropping the car just an inch or so via sport springs, with matched HD shocks, thats another story entirely

here's my ride. stock height, bilstein shocks and ipd swaybars (ok, this picture is from before that but you can't tell from the outside anyways), and the factory optional 16" 'hydra' rims that were offered on various 740 turbos, with the standard tire size to suit (205/55-16).

 

I know what your getting at, and I know it'll be a pain in the anus but it just looks so damn good. Whats your take on air suspension?

 

Also, how do you post pictures directly in the post like that?

 

air suspension is popular with the mexican gangsters in a nearby town, also famous for summertime shootouts between rivals. that said, I wouldn't mind some sort of air bag rear suspension booster in addition to my coil springs for when I heavily load my wagon.

re; pictures, my pictures are posted on a photo site (I use www.smugmug.com, google's picasa or yahoo's flickr also work adequately), I link them via the [img] tag and the URL of said picture.

 

Come on now, live a little. Air suspension is the best of both worlds, low for the ladies and high enough for speed bumps/adventures at hippy festivals.

And thanks!

 

I could use air suspension in the back too, for all the dead hookers in the trunk :s

 

lowering the front end can push the roll center through the pavement. In the rear end it raises the relative roll center. By lowering it you successfully increase the stress on the body. Also it reduces the effect of the sway bar by increasing the effective moment of the suspension in cornering.

I'd say it's a great find! I'd get it just for the in-dash tach.

 

Very informative joe, would the stress occur above certain speeds or in general? And would upgraded swaybars (or any suspension component) help? Only asking because I'm not interested in going fast in this car

 

And yeah the tach is nice to have

 

frankly, on a 240/740/etc auto the tach is mostly useless. my turbo has one too, you can't overrev that car if you try.

 

It's fun to look at pierce, auto as in the trans? Because its a standard

 

ok, I suppose its marginally more useful with a stick. pretty easy to tell by sound/feel what RPM that 4-banger is running at. they seem happiest around 2000-3000 rpm, rarely need to go above 4000. above 5000 the power falls off significantly. my turbo automatic likes to shortshift itself down to like 1500 rpm and will cruise there all day at non-freeway speeds. on the freeway its doing more like 3000 in OD when I'm going 70-ish.

 

I hope that's 70 in mph! Mine was cruising at 110km/h on the way home the day I bought it @2000-2500 depending on wether I was going uphill, didn't go past 110 though because it wasn't registered. If your talking miles per hour, our performance is pretty similar (?)

 

yeah, MPH, solly.

and do note, the turbos have a LOT more torque down at low RPMs. my wagon pulls like a slingshot at low RPMs if I am hard on the pedal. the NA lh2.2/2.4 b230f engines are like 118HP and 120 lb-ft, while the turbo is like 160HP and 225 lb-ft

of course, the downside of turbos is a fair bit more $$$ for repairs down the line... they are more likely to blow their head gaskets, they have extra air plumbing, oil and water plumbing, the turbo makes getting at the oil filter a pain, and they suck gas even when cruising gently (I average about 18 mpg in my turbo while our NA 240 gets more like 25-27 mpg)

 

Yeah I suppose turbos have their ups and downs. I'm not sure my exact fuel mileage but I was really surprised and pleased by how good it is. I was half expecting a guzzler.

 

I'm a lucky dog with a 740 Turbo with a stick. I've always loved having a tach, but most of the time it's superfluous. My car pulls hard all the way to redline. I think peaks HP is at 5500rpm, but I'm not actually sure on that one. I wish they had 225lb-ft of torque, but it's a very strong feeling 187lb-ft according to my manual. It's worlds apart from my brother's Honda Element, which is rated at 160HP and 160 torque. At 80 my car is turning at 3000rpm. That's with a 3.51 rear end ratio. I bet you have a 3.43 rear end and it gives you a lower engine speed at the same road speed. My brother threw a tach on his auto 240 and it make almost 1000 rpm difference at the same speed depending on how much gas you give it. So with an auto, a tach is totally unnecessary, but I still like them. I get around 21-22 mpg. The auto turbos have a 3.71 rear end I think. That probably has a lot to do with the mileage too.

 

oh wait. the 225 ft-lbs was my 855T that I gave my kid, hahaaha. and I think that was the HP, it was 240 ft-lbs of grunt. that car is dangerously fast.