Hello everyone,

About a month ago, a teenager girl was speeding and texting with her phone on the steering wheel meanwhile my poor Mazda Protege was just waiting for the green light. The end of the story is both of the car got totaled and her insurance covered $2.9k for my Mazda Protege which is exactly how much I bought it in the first place. Awesome. However...my wife wanted to move to better apartment and the insurance money was able to provide a very nice security deposit. Here I was, searched for a car til I found 1992 volvo 240 on craigslist for $1500 with 200k miles. It's been sitting in a driveway for 3-4 months. I thought hey, volvo is known for their reliability and can be easy to work with. So I got myself over there to test it out. The car drove very smoothly without any strange sounds or smoking but there are few problems. I managed talked the seller down to $500 instead of his asking price by listing all of the problems that I found.

1. Engine coolant temp rise very quickly to red zone as soon as I start the car. The seller claims the ECT sensor is bad. I drove the car around including going 60 mph on highway for 5 minutes, the engine wasn't really overheating. I couldn't really tell because I was driving around on a very hot day. There's no smell or smoke coming out anywhere which seem to be good enough for me.

2. Car shakes when I press brake especially in the brake petal area. The petal jumps up and down as I press down. It feels like the rotor is warped but the seller claimed it's the calipers. I think it also might be control arm.

3. There's no cold air coming out of AC, only very warm-hot air on cold setting and very hot air on heat setting.

4. Leak in end of the exhaust tail pipe, it smells like water.

(More information: the seller only owned this car for a year and he already repaired/replaced lights, head gasket, new battery, stuck wipers, and muffler came loose which he attached it back up.)

I'm not that mechanically challenged but I feel as I just jumped the deep end with this car. There are few things that make me feel uncomfortable doing things by myself such as brake system. Although I haven't taken the car apart yet and I've also been doing a lot of research on the problems that I found. So I would be really appreciated if any of you can give me some pointers. (I'll keep up with the update including pictures/video)

Thanks!

 

1) beg borrow or steal a IR thermometer, when the engine temperature is reading hot, pop the hood and read the temp at the thermostat housing, and on the left side of the engine block under the intake manifold. keep the IR thermometer within a foot or so of what you're reading so the zone its sensing is reasonably small. this shouldn't be much over 212F/100C even when the car is very very hot.

note, there's TWO seperate sensors. the ECT is the one used by the fuel injection and ignition control units, while there's a seperate one just for the temp gauge. the temp gauge has a stupid 'normalizer' or 'compensator' circuit on it that is designed to keep the needle dead center as long as the temp is within the normal range, this circuit can go whack and cause the needle to act stupid.

2) brakes, very important!! you at a minimum need new front rotors, new brake pads. use good quality rotors and pads, like Brembo rotors, and Volvo brand or PBR or Akebono brake pads, these are available from places like ipdusa.com, fcpeuro.com. you need to verify which type of calibers you have as several different ones got used and they use different pads. you should check all the front end joints for looseness too. visually inspect the strut mount under the hood (rubber donut around bigass nut in center of suspension humps on either side), if its cracked at all more than a hairline, its critical to get that taken care of away, and its a good time for new struts, ball joints since that all has to come apart. its quite possible a 25 year old car needs new lower control arm bushings too. basically have someone rock the wheel left and right and up and down while you nose under the car and feel things to see where there's any slop. after replacing this stuff, you get a wheel alignment.

3) the AC needs a new freon charge. it might still be a R12 system, which means you'll need to convert it. but it also very well might be leaky, so that will have to be repaired before you can charge it, a AC technician will flush it out, pressurerize it with an inert gas like Nitrogen, witth a fluorescent dye, and use a black light to spot leaks. if it holds pressure for a couple days, then he can evacuate it and recharge it.

4) exhaust condensation is normal for all cars, especially when they are cold and run in a humid climate.

 

I'd suspect a head gasket problem given what you post...

Brakes/front end obviously need attention! How much is hard to say but if you go to a shop and say, "do it'', the bill will be thousands. Same re the A/C.

Unless you do the work yourself, this thing will be prohibitively expensive when/if done. Which btw is true for a lot of cars out there today. At the rates shops charge, a cheap buy that needs a lot of repairs quickly becomes a money trap UNLESS the buyer knows and likes to tinker with his new buy.

 

Okay so now that I already owned this car for few days, I was able to snap few pictures (http://imgur.com/a/s9oBw) and it seem like things are getting little better. I noticed that my coolant temp gauge stopped shooting up to red zone when I start the car. It doesn't get higher than 1/4 way up when I left my car on for 20 minutes. AC cold-warm air also returned.

However, I inspected the fluids today. I saw that coolant level is very low and it was halfway up when I first bought the car. So I assume there's a leak somewhere which may have to do with my temp gauge and AC problems. There is a small leak puddling up in the middle between red oil container and eft side front wheel. The transmission fluid and engine oils also look like it needs to be changed as well. It's light brown/redish. Power steering fluid looks okay to me.

Brake issues; I think I may need to replace almost everything under there due to this car has been in northeast salt belt for past 23 years aka rustville. Calipers, brakes, lower arm controls, sway bar links, ball joints and rotors are rusted with corrision. The struts look okay to me except for minor rust on top of strut mounts (you can see in the pictures) and rubber part inside of coil on left side is ripped at bottom and rubber part on right side isn't holding at the top. This really does explain why my car have a brake problem. Here's the link to my pictures (http://imgur.com/a/s9oBw). Please let me know if any of these parts are salvageable. I will have to get my car tow to my in law's garage so I can use floor jacks on flat surface eventually.

I'm planning to do all of these repairs by myself and my hard-line budget for this car is $1000. I hope that's enough to get it running and passable for inspection. I'm also a little new with fixing cars (I use youtube for car repairs instruction and ordered hayne book). So yeah, here's my shopping list to replace front brake system. Please let me know if there's something that I don't need or won't work with other parts or cheaper parts that can work or something that I missed. Or maybe all I need to do is replace all of the bushings, ball joints, rotors, brake pads and buy $25 caliper repair kit.


*Must need*
Volvo Brake Disc Front - Brembo 1228942 x 2

Volvo Disc Brake Hardware Kit Front (240 244 245 264) - Pro Parts Sweden 51992048 x 1

Volvo Suspension Kit 10-Piece Front (240) - 240FTKIT2 x 1

Volvo Brake Pads Front (240 242 244 245 265) - Genuine Volvo 31261180 x 1


*Might need to replace*

Volvo Brake Caliper Front Left (240 Models with ABS) - Cardone 19-1625 x 1

Volvo Brake Caliper Front Right (240 Models with ABS) - Cardone 19-1624 x 1

Volvo Control Arm Left (240 260) - Pro Parts 1205680 x 1

Volvo Control Arm Right Lower (240 260) - Pro Parts 61430022 x 1

The total for all of these parts is $588.

Thank you for your times! I really want to get this car up and running so that my wife won't kill me for borrowing her car all the time.

Edit: Lev, I was told by the seller that the head gasket already has been replaced 5-6 months ago. Does new head gasket go down that easily?

 

I finally got my hand on IR thermometer. Assuming the thermostat housing is at end of the upper radiator hose to the engine block and intake manifold is close by, it was reading at 160-180F. I also don't feel anything running through the radiator hoses (comfortablely hot), not sure if that means bad water pump? My temp is still wooky, most of the time it's reading high into red zone and other times it was reading in the middle. So I'm going to try this 240 Volvo temperature compensation circuit repair from 240 Temp Faker assuming that I'm ruling the engine overheating out.

 

that sounds like its working fine, and its your temp gauge thats wonky.

re: that temp compensation fix, by 92, I think they'd integrated the 'compensator' circuit onto the main instrument board and its harder to fix unless you're a electronics guru and can figure out the circuit.

 

Update:

This car was very difficult to be taken apart due to living in far northeast for past 23 years. Everything is original. So It took me almost four weeks to complete a job on this car. It had so many seized bolts/nuts and parts and I had to replace them all. The worst part is the calipers, I couldn't get the hard copper hose off the caliper even with 11mm flared wrench, vise grip, torch and two cans worth of PB blasters soaking every night for 2.5 weeks. It's 100% stripped on passenger side up to copper brake hose to flexible hose. I've already gave up replacing the calipers.

So far I've replaced

Tie rods end
Sway bar link
Front control arms
Front control arm bushings
Front control arm bolt (had to cut it out with metal cutter attached on drill)
Ball Joints
Brake pads + kits
Rotors

My brake problem isn't 100% gone but it is a lot better. It doesn't pulse as violently as before I changed the front brake system. It does pulse somewhat lightly on the brake pedal and my whole car shakes a little. I haven't replaced the rear brake pads which I'm going to do that tomorrow. Hopefully that will fix the vibration and pulsing when braking. If not, could ABS be the problem even if the ABS light isn't on?

 

One thing that can cause the car to shake violently upon braking is a binding u-joint on the drive shaft. If the rear pad replacement doesn't help, drop the shaft and check each u-joint. There should be no play and no binding when flexing.

This happened on my daughters car. She called me and said the whole car shakes when braking. In her case it was the rear-most u-joint that was bad.

 

when i had pulsing in the brake pedal it was caused by the rear brakes, including a seized caliper on one side. replaced with all new rotors (meyle) /volvo pads/rebuilt calipers (from cardone). no more pulsing...

pulsing in the steering wheel is likely from the front brakes

 

If the shaking is only felt in the steering wheel, then it is most likely brakes. If the whole car shakes, it may be a u-joint.

 

I'm reading that faulty U-joints will cause vibration when the car is moving, not when braking? I believe U-joint is part of the steering column and I don't feel any vibration coming from my steering wheel. My car is a very smooth ride and the steering is very good. The thumping and vibrations only happen when I press the brakes down. When I do press down, I feel the most vibration coming from my chair and my car door. The thumping sound is coming from the rear.

I'll let you guys know once I get new rear brake pads in.

Edit: Now I finally installed new brake pads and my brake is so much better. I would say 90% of pulsing is gone and all I need to do is replace the rear rotors. I can feel my brake pads going over uneven spots when I slow my car down to stop.

My temp gauge is working perfectly now. I think it was the oil change and swapping oil filter out (MANN brand from fcpeuro) that fixed it. It might not be oil change but all I know it's fixed!

AC problem is going to be my future project for next spring. As for now, I'm fine with no AC (heating works tho).

Huge thanks to pierce, lev, act1292 and silvermine. I really do appreciate all of your helps.

 

those are exactly the symptoms i had. new rear pads and rotors including parking brake shoes solved the pulsing/shaking completely.
i can highly recommend meyle rotors for this application. they also are coated with anti corrosion paint so hopefully will last a bit longer..
you can get them at fcp euro
fwiw i also used meyle parking brake shoes.

 

i'll say this about that... i think unless we all have the tools/lifts/room etc to do some of the complicated jobs,... one of your best assets in life could be your experienced and honest indy shop mechanic. that and a good physician and dentist is what we need in our later years lol