I've been experimenting with my '93 940 Wagon's suspension for quite a while now, trying to find the perfect combination of smooth ride and good handling. I've tried all kinds of springs, shocks and bushings and nothing seemed to work the way I wanted it to. I had a couple of Volvo's in the 80's and they had super smooth rides but I haven't been able to duplicate that. I thought maybe my memory was fading and they weren't that good to begin with. Ha! But I think I finally figured it out. I'm back to stock springs, twin tube gas struts and stock bushings. What I did differently this time was to pre-load the suspension. I've run across many articles about letting the car rest on it's tires before tightening the cone bushings at the front of the strut rod. to make sure they settle correctly. And the other day I found another article suggesting the same thing with the sway bar. But that's it. Then it dawned on me. You have to do it with the control arm and inner strut rod bushings also or the suspension travel will be severely limited. The control arm and strut rod are torqued to 60 lbs where they mount to the chassis, which means they can't pivot. The only thing that moves as the strut compresses and rebounds is the bushings as they flex. And if these arms are torqued down in the hanging position then when the cars is let down off the jacks and rests on it's tires, which amounts to about 3 or 4 inches of travel, those bushings have flexed just about as far as they can. So when you encounter, say, a medium size bump the strut still has some travel length, but the bushing being at it's limit, won't allow it and your car will bounce over bumps instead of absorbing them, which mine did no matter how soft the springs and shocks were. With the suspension pre-loaded, in the car's resting position, those bushing can now flex upward(compression) or downward(rebound) an equal amount. It really makes quite a difference. I was even able to cut a coil off the spring, to lower the front end, and they still seemed to have full travel and a soft ride. I'm surprised that I've never seen this mentioned on any of the Volvo forums. It's a pretty well know procedure elsewhere: The way I did it is - put the car up on jacks and bolt everything on but don't tighten. Place a floor jack under each ball joint and start raising the strut until it can go no more and the car just starts to raise off the jacks. Stop and torque everything to specs.

 

why not put the car on its wheels then torque everything down ?

 

Tried that and just not enough room to crawl under there and get any leverage. 60 lbs of torque takes some effort.

 

I got that problem solved.

 

You're very lucky!

 

I had to get it for the extra parking space but it has been useful to service all of our vehicles. Believe it or not I just looked it up and I bought this 18 years ago.