I've gotten /really/ good treadwear out of my Michelin MXV4 primacy, their treadwear factor is like 620 A A. my size is 205/55-16 91H as I have Hydra rims on my 740T. They are amazing rain tires and very good in dry too. quiet, smooth, and highly predictable when you push them too hard.

they are available as 195/60-15 88H too (also in V, but who's going 130mph ?).

 

Most of the following things I did over Christmas. I have been too busy in the mean time to post anything.

I haven't done anything with the new wheels yet. Not in a huge hurry as there is plenty of tread left on my tires. And I sometimes enjoy skidding in the rain...

My brother and I pulled out the throttle-body, MAF Sensor, filter box, and all relevant tubes between.



We cleaned them all up and cleaned out oil residue that was inside them all. We initially got on this looking to see if we could figure out that 2-3-2 code I keep getting. No dice.







Then we dived into the airbox. These volvos have this feature that adjusts where it pulls the air--if it is from the cool air intake in front of the radiator or if it is from the warm air pulled off the exhaust manifold. My brother maintains that this is unnecessary and can only cause problems (such as only pulling from the warm side when it goes bad). I am inclinded to agree. When we got the air box off, after heating it a bit, it seemed that the regulator didn't really move much. If at all. so we jammed it to the one side so it never draws from the warm air side. Then we removed the tube that goes between the warm air side and the airbox.








After that, I put the new mast on my antenna. That's not really picture-worthy.

Then, I removed the broken front auxiliary fan. It has never worked properly, or really at all. it has been disconnected the whole time, and you can see it has broken fan blades.







And that is essentially all I've done. I need to work on the Antenna a bit. It seems to go up and down on its own time table. i think it is related to moisture, but I haven't really started trouble shooting. I suspect it is a power issues as it doesn't always go all the way up or down. So far as I can tell, when it moved, it moves just fine (doesn't jam or anything), and I have lubricated it... but I need to work on that.

 

Also, my brother has tracked down a manual tranny for this car. It will be coming from an '85 240. He's pulling (or rather in the process of pulling) the tranny, driveshaft, rear end, clutch and brake petals and the wiring harness (this is an M46, so the push-button OD).

Does anyone know if 240s had an 5th gear indicator light? If so, where does it go? Or was this strictly a 700 series feature?

Anyway... it will be some months before I/we have time to do the swap... but it is exciting. Or rather, I am excited. I love driving manuals. We'll see if I remember how to use the clutch...

 

note that if you live in an area subject to smog inspections <cough>california</cough>, the presence of that heat riser pipe is part of the inspection regimen, but the functioning of the air flapper valve isn't. so we wire it shut, then put the pipe back on to keep the bozos-err-nice men at the smog check place happy.

 

I believe the manual 240's had TWO lights, one to indicate you should probably upshift, and the you're-in-OD-light.

ok, on an 87/88 (my 1991 greenbook doesn't even show a manual transmission option), its like this...

the yellow up arrow light that was the automatic OD is instead hooked up to an OD 'gear shift indicator' control unit, yellow red wire from single spade connector 34 on the instrument panel to pin "L" of the OD control module... this light indicates you should probably upshift now.

the 5th/OD light is in between the highbeam and oil pressure lights, and is on connector 31 pin 4 (thats the full circle connector), and is a orange wire to the OD control module pin 'OD' ...

other OD control unit connections shown on the 87/88 greenbook:
* pin 'G' - blue wire to the double connector '200' aka '228' near the speedo
* pin 31 - black wire to ground
* pin 30 - green-white wire to fuse 9
* pin 'C' - brown wire to clutch switch
* pin '1' white-red wire to tach connector on instrument panel and to the ignition coil pin 1


on the 87/88, this control unit appears to be up under the dash somewhere above and to the left of the clutch pedal, but these locator diagrams are notoriously inaccurate. its a fairly large rectangular 'relay' module with 7 pins all clustered at one end of the 'bottom'. appears to be PN 1323998,a nd ouch is a $200 part. black. apparently was used on some 740/940 applications too.

ok, on the 85, much the same, but there's also a separate OD control relay, which appears to be tucked up under teh central dash....


hmm, it appears the OD system will function without that upshift indicator circuit at all. so in fact, you can completely ignore everything I wrote up above, as being incidental if you don't care about the upshift idiot light (my 1989 Jetta 5 speed had one, drove me nuts)

overdrive control circuit as follows:

* fuse 11 1.5mm blue wire to OD relay "H" pin 15. pin 15 also is 0.75mm blue wire to OD button on gear shifter,
* relay H pin 86 is a black wire to a brown wire to other side of gear shift OD button
* relay H pin 31 is 1.5mm black to ground.
* relay H pin 87 is yellow wire to instrument panel 31/4 for OD/5 light next to oil light. pin 87 is also 1.5mm yellow wire to OD solenoid
* relay pin 85 is 1.5mm red wire to gearbox switch [solenoid, button, and gearbox switch wire are both on a 3 pin connector 'E2'

ya know what, I think I'd just use the yellow up-arrow as the OD indicator, if you need to get creative (like, if your instrument panel doesn't have this 5th/OD light next to the oil lamp)

 

I will not hook up the up-shift indicator light. I don't need/like/want that light. The old 740 had one... but I don't know if it burnt out early on, or that system was never hooked up, but we never used it.

I was perusing OTP and looking through various owners manuals I could find (it is aggravating that OTP doesn't include the owners manuals for each year of these cars...) and I think I realized what I'm missing. So far as I can tell, the M46 was never offered on a 240 after... maybe 1989? I'm not real sure where the cut off was, but I am pretty sure by the time you get to 1991, they didn't make any 240s with the M46--they were all M47s. So, why can't I find the 5th gear indicator light? It's not there. (Duh... maybe?)

So it bring me to the question of how important that light is too me... and really I may use the up-arrow light as the OD indicator. If I care at all. I never *needed* it... it was just kind of cool.

As always, thanks pierce for the info. Fortunately, WV doesn't have any emissions requirements... but I will keep the pipe around in case I move to a state with more stringent laws. Of course, then I'll probably have to replace the catalytic converter anyway...

 

Not sure but the '85 may have had a cable driven speedometer with the cable coming out of the tranny. Perhaps someone out there can confirm.

Even if the '85 has an electronic speedo, your '91 may have a different tone ring in the differential so the pickup from the '85 rear end may cause incorrect speedometer readings.

 

oooh, you might be right there. 1985 electrical greenbook doesn't show the speedo. 1986 does. furthermore, 85 Vadis parts diagram shows a speedo cable (mechanical)

so it looks like 1986 was the first year for the electronic speedos.

so me thinks you want to continue using your rear axle as the one from this 85 probably does NOT have the speedo pickup on it.

 

You are correct--the 85 does have the cable coming out of the tranny. I was aware that there may be some complications here. If we use the same rear end as the automatic, then it isn't a problem. But if we decide we want to switch out the ratio and put in the rear end that is correct for the manual, the tone ring may be a problem. Which is to say, I have no idea how the tone ring is connected up in the rear end, if we can switch it if we switch out the rear end, and if the 85 (not even having an electrical pickup) would even have a place for a tone ring, etc, etc. I'll be studying up in OTP to see if I can figure that out...

Oh, sorry pierce... I didn't read your reply very closely the first time... and you basically already said that...

 

The 740 up-shift relay power supply wire has been ever floating around below the fusebox. I found it one day. No one ever plugged it in. So who was I to mess with tradition? It's still unplugged.

So I look at the rear end for that very reason (I had to disconnect the cable speedo cable from the overdrive). Strangely enough, there is a pickup on the differential. I think this car has ABS. I will check tomorrow. The tone ring may be very different inside the pumpkin. Well that's nothing I can't fabricate. I'll have to drill the flywheel to have the pick-ups for the RPM sensor anyway. This will be fun to say the least.

 

the pickup is in the cover, and the covers SHOUDL be compatible (heck, the 1985 Vadis page for the tranny shows the cover with the pickup, but doesn't list the pickup parts). ditto it shows the tone ring but no part callouts, so its not installed. the tone ring appears to fit onto the differential innards, so if you are prepared to crack the pumpkin and gut it, yeah, you can probably install one.

phew, 1985 VADIS page lists a BUNCH of ratios, with and without the antispin locker. 3.31, 3.54, 3.73

 

Yea, we're trying to figure out what my ratio is. There is a sticker on the axle that should have it printed on it. Now, it is incredibly gummed up... and from what I understand it is easy to scrub the printed ratio off of the sticker... but I'll work on that a bit later this evening.

Did you buy Vadis, or do you have access some other way?

 

This is a throw back to my efforts on the Virgos...

Lug Nut size....quick help!!! - Turbobricks Forums

Glad I found this. I was going to see about getting some 12x1.5, which were what I was used to on the 700 series cars... but 200s are 1/2" x 20tpi. So Good to know.


Also, calculated the rear end ratio. It's 3.71 or pretty close to that. But that lines up with what should be in an automatic, so far as I can tell.

 

another bit to snag off that manual car... the automatics, of course, have a starter lockout switch in the shifter, and the sticks don't. this lockout switch is plugged into the harness somewhere near/above the transmision... on the manuals, there's a dummy plug in its place that jumpers pink to blue-green (I think thats the colors). of course, you could just whack off the connector and splice the wires, but if you can snag that jumper plug from the donor car, thats just one more little thing that will be neater.

edit; BZZZ, wrong colors for a 1985 240, see below.

 

Is this the jumper? I pulled it thinking that it may be it. The P/N is M1234705 Just if you recognize it.

 

yup, I believe thats it. the 1985 wiring diagrams show the wire loop as blue, and its a 2 pin connector. the plug it goes into has 2 blue wires to one side, and blue-yellow to the other. one blue wire goes to pin 50 on the ignition switch, the other blue wire goes to the mechanics starter jumper under the hood, and hte blue-yellow wire goes to the starter solenoid pin 50. the jumper replaces the park/neutral starter lockout switch.

 

Volvo AW71 to M46 Transmission Conversion

Sometime ago, I found this resource. It is a walk through of some guy that put in an M46 into a volvo 780T. Admittedly, this is a different car, but he has some portions that may be useful, and he's documented it relatively well. I'll be looking around this forum for tranny swap resources now.

 

the 780 is based on the 760, and the 780T/760T have the exact same motor and stuff as the 240, so its really not /that/ different. the wiring harness is a fair bit different.

 

Power steering (or the lack thereof) has been on my mind lately. For months, it has been working intermittently. Sometimes it would be good and strong, and at other times, it would not work well at all. (And we're not just talking about when I'm moving faster vs slower... sometimes parking lot maneuvers were easy, and at other times, they required a good deal of muscle.)

As I was thinking about it, I realized that these days, it just never works. So I started doing some research on this. I discovered this piece of military genius:

How does power steering work?

Now, this is very different from how the volvo power steering works, but with those principles understood, looking in the volvo tech manuals made some sense.
The odd thing is that I watched that video, and had do go out and run some errands... and lo and behold! the power steering worked almost the whole time. I've searched around the forums, and not found anything quite so intermittent. It isn't related to when the engine is warm or cold (so far as I can tell) and I know it has plenty of fluid and the belts are fine. So, I haven't been real sure how to go forward.

I found this source that has some useful information about power steering.
Steering:

So, I've hit upon the idea of flushing the power steering. In my mind, perhaps there is some debris that has built up in the PS system, and is intermittently blocking or unblocking the valves that control the PS fluid. So, flushing the system would help, right?

Then there seem to be two main schools of thought: the "Turkey Baster" method and the unhook one side at the steering box method. I am rather partial to the turkey baster method--aside from less work, it seems like many people that have tried both recommend the former. Anyway, i don't have the dexron here, and will not be running into town again today, so I'll try some method later. For the latter system, I found this reference:
http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...pic.php?t=8644

Finally, I did find one thread that rather matched my symptoms:

https://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-...problem-64722/

I don't like the outcome here: He replaced the steering rack. Uuugggh.... I hope that is not my situation here--for that is a more expensive repair than I want to go into at this point.

So, I think for the time being, I think I'll try the baster-flush method and see if that helps. Oh, and I also need to find a strong magnet to gather gunk, I think. Others have recommended that.

On an unrelated note, I ordered a new heater valve. So, when it comes, I'll install it.

 

I flushed a couple of our cars using my modified turkey baster aka 'topsider' oil suction tank.

I jacked up the front of the car first and put it on stands so the wheels were free. sucked everything I could out of the reservoir. refilled. engine on, turn steering slowly stop to stop both ways a couple times, sucked up the fluid, replaced, repeat until it came out clean. I used regular ATF. if you get bubbles in the system, turn it to the stop and press it gently against the stop so you hear that PS straining sound for 15-30 seconds, engine off, suck, replace, engine on, do it again the other way, repeat.