240 GLT saloon restoration project

[Juular]

Originally Posted by loki_the_glt

That's more like Volvo weather!

It felt very much at home and even handled well in the snow! Perfect car for it.

[Juular]

So I've been using the car a fair bit, including as a daily driver. It's such a pleasant car to be in and quite enjoyable to chuck around a back road for such a lump.

I am still having the very frustrating cold start problem.

I did a bit of work to try and solve it. I pulled the inlet manifold and PCV off again and checked every hose and seal to ensure there were no vacuum leaks.



Found the O-Ring on the bottom of the PCV had perished, so replaced that.



New intake gasket and some (non-rtv) flange sealant for good measure.





The inlet port on the WUR was clogged, so I cleared that out.



Also double checked everything inside was OK, including the heating element, and cleaned it out.



I also replaced all of the vacuum hoses, and tested the cold start injector duration, volume and spray pattern - it's fine.

End result? No change at all to the poor (excessively lean) cold start issue. I'm not really sure where to head next with this.

At the moment I've resigned myself to getting a 3mm allen key and using this to lift the metering plate while the pump is hotwired, to spray some fuel into the engine before trying to start it. It's not ideal but at least I won't get stranded.

I'm also having a seperate (I think) issue of the main fuel pump being VERY loud once I get under 1/4 tank. When this happens it can also kangaroo a little bit.

I checked the fuel sender unit and found that the hose joining the pump to the sender was perished under the clamp.



That was replaced with some submersible hose. I also did a bit of resoldering as the connections were extremely poor.





Repotted



New fuel lines and clamps all round.



Sadly again, no joy. I drove it to Glasgow (40 miles) at the weekend and the fuel pump noise and stuttering happened as usual as soon as it reached 1/4 tank.

I also swapped out the rear springs in an attempt to resolve the high front /low rear stance issue.





Unfortunately no change on that front either. The stance still looks completely wrong despite the front springs being verified as correct.

Finally I swapped the fan clutch as the fan was running all the time.



At least that achieved something as now the car is very quiet!

So all in, a rather frustrating and unproductive time. Still enjoying the car though.

[230ina245]

I havn't read the whole thread (recently) so I'm not sure if this has been covered, but I always thought the stuttering at low fuel levels indicates a bad in-tank fuel pump. Would also explain the noisy main pump as it's not getting enough fuel.
Tim

[Juular]

Originally Posted by 230ina245

I havn't read the whole thread (recently) so I'm not sure if this has been covered, but I always thought the stuttering at low fuel levels indicates a bad in-tank fuel pump. Would also explain the noisy main pump as it's not getting enough fuel.
Tim

Yeah the in-tank pump is new, and a decent make. It's definitely working, I can hear it humming in the tank. That's why I find this a bit confusing, especially since the HP pump is absolutely silent at all other times, suggesting it's not that at fault.

[Juular]

Lots of progress on this recently.

I put together a K-Jet pressure test rig using parts bought from eBay. The total cost was around £30 rather than the £100+ for the prebuilt version.



I stripped down the WUR, cleaned everything and made it adjustable as per the common recommendation.





Testing the base system pressure : as you can see it's a little low as it should be around the 5.3-5.5 bar mark.



I added a copper washer to the main pressure regulator to act as a shim.



That's better.



Next up, testing the cold pressure at the WUR. It started off at 4 Bar which is a smoking gun as to my starting problem. At 4 bar it's going to be ridiculously lean on a cold start, and it should be more like 0.6 bar at the ambient temperatures.

I tapped down the adustment pin using a hammer.



That's closer. I tapped it down a little bit more and got it right on 0.6 bar.

Next, the warm pressures. I fed 12V to the WUR heater strip from the battery and watched the pressures rise.





3.2 bar, not far off. I gave the regulator a tap on the big end and it went up to around 3.4 bar which I'm happy with.

The result:

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/fKHXSVHoy8A[/YOUTUBE]

A perfect cold start! The car also pulls a lot better now, I can only assume the mixture was off across the board.

Of course this car likes to keep flinging stuff at me. While road testing I noticed one of the front wheel bearings becoming very noisy.





That got replaced, I'm very grateful that's a DIY job and I didn't need to get the new bearings pressed in.

Next up, making the car a bit more presentable. It was stuck under a tree next to the coast and insects, tree sap, bitumen and who knows what else were baked into the paint. I'd made this worse with grinding dust, coffee cup rings and duct tape.







Wash.



Clay bar.



Then sorting the rear arches; sanding, filler, primer, more sanding, etc.







A bit of rattlecan.



It's not perfect, but it's not bad either.



Other side.



Now onto the scuttle and windscreen surround. This is what greeted me around there.



I can't recommend Bilt Hamber stuff at all now, it has failed absolutely everywhere I have used it. In some cases the rust has actually become worse than it was before I painted it.

I stripped all that back again and dealt with it properly.



Filler, primer, sanding etc.



Rattlecan.





It's not perfect, but the car is on a different planet now to where it was.



Now just the sills, boot and some bits of the doors to paint.

[Moomoo]

Leaps and bounds bud , leaps and bounds!

You are making her lovely 🥰!

[loki_the_glt]

Now that you've sussed out how to do everything you can come and fettle SFSS!

[Othen]

That was a really good article about the K-Jet FI, I can see that will be really useful to lots of folk. If you had time it would be helpful to list the parts used in your home-made test rig.

:-)

Alan

[Juular]

Originally Posted by Othen

That was a really good article about the K-Jet FI, I can see that will be really useful to lots of folk. If you had time it would be helpful to list the parts used in your home-made test rig.

:-)

Alan

Here's what I bought:

7 Bar oil / air pressure gauge, 1/4 BSP connector (any gauge that you can clearly read 0-6 bar is fine)

1/4 BSP female tee connector

1/4 BSP ball stop valve male x female

1/4 BSP male barbed straight hose tails x2

M10 -> 1/4" barb banjo fitting
M8 -> 1/4" barb banjo fitting

1/4" ID braided injection hose rated to >10 Bar. A metre is enough.

Petrol hose clamps x 4

From left to right the rig looks like:


M10 Banjo -> hose -> barbed hose tail -> ball stop valve -> tee fitting -> barbed hose tail -> hose -> M8 Banjo.

The gauge screws into the top of the tee fitting.

You have to put a ring of blue threadlocker on all threaded fittings, or they will leak no matter how tight they are.

You should be able to put this together for a price in the region of £30.

[Juular]

So, I'm pretty happy that the 240 is now a reliable, solid car at last!

I'll definitely still be updating this thread with the remainder of the little jobs to do, such as painting the sills and fixing a few other niggles that need done. I have the daft notion that I may at some point fit a K cam just to see how it goes, plus I need to do a little bit of welding on the doors to really call the car 'rust free'. Most of all though I just intend to enjoy it.

In the meantime though I'm turning my main focus to my other project, which I just got moved to my place at the weekend.



I've started a thread over on the relevant section if anyone is interested in how that goes: https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=324503