The Morbidmobile Blog

[TomSaintJames]

So then, the next instalment has seen some decent progress! Over the last month I have been doing an hour here and half a day there etc. I had a few remaining parts to fit, the un-mangled oil coolant housing, new heater valve, air filter box, screen washer reservoir, MAF to turbo hose with PCV heater, clutch slave, entire a/c system - probably others! But I forget now and my list in the car.

HVAC heater resistor, as predicted by Luke it was quite corroded and furry. I ended up using a small flat blade screwdriver and fine brass wire brush to clean up all these contacts, I'd already established 12v was getting to the resistor so it as either the motor or resistor - but as we had a full speed fan, a clean up sorted it.


Good (clean) vs bent oil cooler


New hoses


Brand snobbery


New and old drier. The new one has one connector 90 degrees to the original.


Installed, new sensor too. The hose routes well enough for the new drier and isn't strained, but it's bothering me. I did struggle to find the correct drier, well I struggled to find one that wasn't £90!


What I didn't photo, but thought I did was the hard line that goes from the condenser to the evaporator - the two condenser lines were well and truly corroded onto the remains of the crumbly old condenser. They both took quite some persuasion to come off and although I was being careful, I did slip and poke a screwdriver through the line that goes to the bulkhead... I'll need to find one of these or get something made up.

The airbox had broken clips, I understand TADTS so a solution was sought. Claw spring latches from the jungle website, next day delivery. Sorted!




Now that most of the engine bay stuff is done, time for the wiring. It has been some hard won progress here, without the 740 green book I struggled to work out what the 740 wires in the door connectors did, once I knew which system they were involved in - I then had to figure out each individual wire's function. This was NOT helped initially by me using the 1988 wiring diagrams at the back of my Haynes - it turns out this is a 1989 car and so has very slightly different wiring I got there in the end though, squinting at the tiny, grainy HBOL diagrams which are much more difficult to understand than the clear and well laid out 940 green book.

The 940 and 740 seem to do their door looms a little differently. The 740 uses a part of the large 53 pin connector called C2 in the 940 green book (rear passenger loom connector) that connects tot he door through a 12 pink connector on the passenger side. The 940 has a separate 24 pin connector for the passenger door (C144) the same as the 740's and 940's drivers door (C143).
So I had to marry the 12-pin 740 passenger door female loom connector and the 24-pin male 940 equivalent. As I only needed the 12 pins for the passenger door, I just used the 740 male connector with the 940's pins transplanted.

The 740 system


The 940 system


940 pins about to be popped into the 740 connector for a happy union


The drivers door needed a few pins rearranging too, the passenger window switch on the drivers door was operating the passengers door lock. Actually the central locking was a bit perplexing generally, I ended up having two spare wires as the 940 has four C/L wires in the door connector compared to the 740's two, there was also a different number of earths but I can't remember which way around it was now. I wondered if the extra two wires for the 940 were involved in the remote c/l system?



We now have functioning electric windows, central locking and power mirrors from both door controls! This is an improvement because IIRC the passenger stuff didn't ever work from the drivers door previously.

Next was to start looking at the rear loom connections, I listed the 740 functions and position and all of the 940 positions and functions which was a bit unnecessary after I had finished the doors, I only needed some of the first 24 pins for the rear lights, in-tank fuel pump/level gauge and interior lights. All the rest involves stuff I don't need or have, the rear door electrics, boot lid electrics and towing electrics amongst others.
One thing I did discover, is that this 740 already had the axle speedo sensor wiring in place! That is useful.



I didn't finish this as I needed to down tools, walk the dogs, decant the wine and get dinner on etc. The bliss of marital life!

Next steps:

-Clean out and waterproof the scuttle panel (wet carpets...)
-Finish the rear loom connections (fuel pump wiring mysteries)
-Check all hoses and a general engine bay check then fill with coolant (Evans waterless)
-Check oil level
-Check functionality of all dashboard/column switches
-Affix and tidy loom wiring, it's been pulled out of where Tristan and I tidied it during my investigations
-Start the bugger!

Then it'll be dashboard painting and installation, gear linkage and knob installation, brake/clutch bleeding and we'll almost be there!

[360beast]

Brilliant work Tom, good on you for getting stuck in and working out out all of those systems and making the two very different looks match up.

I can't wait for the first start! Fingers crossed it is smooth sailing from this point on.

[TomSaintJames]

You spoke to soon Luke!

Yesterdays adventures included getting the last loom connection sorted, for my 2dr 740 hearse this is just the the rear lights, fuel pump and interior lights thankfully! It would be a whole world of complications if I had to figure out all the rear door and rear screen gubbins too.

So we have rear lights! All tested except indicators and reverse, the indicator stalks aren't installed and likewise the gearstick & gearbox linkage with reverse switch. The instrument panel is now also working properly, as are the door shut lights - even the fuel gauge.



The battery was almost flat by this point, hence the dim lights.


BUT no fuel pump, I started poking my multimeter around and when the ignition was turned on, the voltage immediately rises but the relay clicks off before 12V is achieved - no fuel pumpage. I couldn't do much more as the multimeter positive wire departed from inside the probe... Cheap crap!

Now I think about it, the B200E engine used to run lean @ MOT and the main pump (for the B200E K-jet engine I believe its under the car body) was quite noisy - these things lead me to suspect a dead in-tank lift pump, so one of the next jobs is to remove the tank sender/pump unit and swap in a high pressure post-1995 in tank fuel pump.
I will also replace the fuel feed line from pump-filter and filter-fuel rail, detouring around the under-floor pump. I'm thinking this might be quite expensive in this car - it's fecking long - might as well do the return line whilst I'm there but will depend on how much the feed line is going to cost!

I'll check before I order, but should I be getting 8mm ID R9 ethanol-safe high pressure fuel hose?

I intend to buy a Walbro 225/255 GSS342 kit but will check measurements etc first, I have read a fair bit on these fitting 940's with little to no modification but unsure about how their fitment in the 740 sender/pump unit.

In other news, I had a small issue with the Lexus' rear wiper mechanism last weekend. It seized a few weeks ago so I thought I'd get in with some lube and see if I couldn't bring it back around, turns out I could - but in a quite expensive manner...

Wiper arm off, it took me half an hour to remove a 10mm nut and the wiper arm... I got the feeling this wasn't going to end well.


Before attempting to remove the nut, note that the nut sits on a washer that sits on the glass - there is another washer from inside that has the thread which the nut sits on.


After me trying to remove the nut, and just for the record - I was being SO careful.


The nut is solidly rusted on there, the reason for wiper mechanism is the same - rust. The whole seized washer combo ended up rotating and getting caught on the motor housing from behind, pushed the glass forward and BANG, shattered glass everywhere.


Seized nut

[Laird Scooby]

You should get power back to the fuel pump when you crank the engine Tom and then for ~1-2s after. When you first switch the ignition on, the pump runs for 1-2s to prime the system hence the +12V on the pump feed.
While cranking/running, it gets a pulse from the CPS to tell it to keep going. Do the simple stuff first like charging the battery so you can crank the engine before overhtinking it!

Depending where the fuel hose you're replacing is, it varies in size, 12mm bore from the tank/pump outlet and under-floor pump inlet with semi-rigid nylon pipe in between.
The return line is 8mm and i can't remember if the hose between the under-floor pump and fuel rail is 8 0r 10mm bore. It should be J30R9 ethanol safe hose as you point out though.

Those sizes are for the standard car though, not sure if Neillsens altered any hose sizes when they built the hearse onto the standard car though.

As for the Lexus - bet you wish you'd thrown the car at a Lexus dealer now!

Hope you can get it sorted reasonably cheaply - windscreen clain on your insurance (£80 ish for the excess) and a used wiper motor with a few drops of ATF down the shaft before fitting and periodically after - new washer jet too! They have a similar system on Audis and even a 6 year old one had loads of rust on it!

[TomSaintJames]

Ah, interesting RE the fuel pump. I'm not getting any fuel at the fuel rail, the loom is from a 1995 940 which I believe had a single high pressure pump in the tank, I'm assuming the small 740 lift pump is not man enough to push fuel to the rail on its own or it is FUBAR - hence my need to check. But you are quite right Dave, slapping a freshly charged battery on is much easier as a first angle of attack. I couldn't confirm there was 12v at the pump because of a lack of assistant and a broken multimeter, I'll hopefully remedy both of those this week!

edit: I can't hear the pump running when there is almost 12V at the rear loom connector.

I did use a battery booster to crank the engine after I connected the remaining loom up - no fuel and no start. How do I know there's no fuel? The fuel rail connector is loose for this very purpose.

I plan to bypass the underfloor pump, this 940 loom has no wiring for it. I'll check the hose outer diameters when I can next work on it, thanks Dave.

Refurbished wiper motor sourced and delivered, the car is booked in Tuesday morning for a windscreen. Unfortunately the windscreen people can't supply the metal washers etc and I'm having a hard time finding any in this country. I've email 10 breakers and had no reply for a week so will have to resort to a round of phone calls on Monday including Lexus, how many hundreds for two small metal circles with rubber gaskets do we think!!

[Laird Scooby]

Have you still got the main under-floor pump in the fuel circuit Tom?

If so, there is a Non Return Valve in the output pipe, IIRC this doesn't open until the pressure is above ~30psi so as the in-tank pump only delivers ~4psi (but high flow to feed the main pump) then you won't get fuel past the NRV unless the main pump is running.

From what i remember of the wiring diagram, the output from the fuel pump relay gets fed to 2 fuses on older cars and just one on later (single pump) cars you should be fine to jump across from the in-tank pump feed to the main pump but you might want to increase the fuse value to cover - certainly for test purposes anyway.
If you're planning on using a single pump system but only need to prove the engine runs, that will be fine, if you plan on keeping the under-floor pump until either that fails or the in-tank pump fails and then converting it to single pump then you'll need to make sure everything is safe electrically rather than just a jumper wire.

[TomSaintJames]

That makes a little of sense Dave - thanks as always. The underfloor pump is indeed still in circuit - currently the whole fuel system on the car is 740 k-jet spec, with the feed and return lines temporarily extended to the lh2.4 fuel rail.

I had an hour or two today to fiddle, i couldn't be bothered getting into the fuel system so had a go at the headlights. I think I previously mentioned that the 740 and 940 use different headlights connectors - no surprise there as the headlight units are totally different! The 940 has integral fog lights aswell so uses a 4 pin connector where's the 740 just has full/dipped/dim.

Cross referencing the 740 HBOL and 940 green book, usefully the wire colours are the same! I was tempted to pinch the 940's headlight wiper motor connector (this is the same as the 740 headlight connector) but removed the connectors from the 740s loom.
So, three wires 1, 2 and 3. Difficult to **** up right? Unless you assume that wire position 1 is at the top, which it isn't - its at the bottom of course!

So all wired in, but weird light behaviour. The drivers side indicator was acting like the headlight and vice versa, except when it wasn't and was being a good indicator really, the sidelight wasn't doing much. So I checked the wires and they all looked like they were where they should be and posted for help in the WhatsApp group. Dave piped up almost immediately like the star he is, and suggested earth's as a culprit. Right enough, wiggling the earth connectors gave a flash of headlight. I removed and cleaned them, turns out a bit of stonechip overspray had gotten onto them - I did the other side for good measure and the two earth areas on the bottom of the A posts too.

So headlights sorted, onto the brake lights. There are none! I even bridged the wires on the connector to no avail. Turns out there are two yellow 4 post connectors on a 940 loom, the one I needed was tucked away and cable tied to the main loom, perhaps the one I was using was for the automatic brake switch version? It's an automatic loom after all.

I had to leave it here, the drivers brake lights come on, which means the switch is working - great, but the passenger side dim brake (day running) light goes out with no brake light, this leaves just the centre of the bottom three lights on (tail light).

I'm thinking the bulb malfunction relay might be at fault here, apparently they aren't interchangeable and I'm using the 740s yellow one with the '95 940 fuseboard and loom. Otherwise perhaps there is an earth issue - not sure where though, back when the hearse was on the road I hardwired one of the rear light clusters and put in an additional earth for them to make the fog lights work, to pass a looming MOT.

Sadly there's unlikely to be any progress for a little while, we're off to France on Friday for a little trip, replenish the wine stocks, eat too much and soak up a little culture. Happy bricking folks 👍

[TomSaintJames]

It has been some time with no Volvo-ing happening, this is sad. Life happens and other things take priority, not necessarily nice things either!

Upon revisiting I realised I didn't post any photo's in the above post. Tut tut!

Rear lights (the RHS bumperDRL light has since blown...)


Sidelights


Dipped beam


Full beam


The lights all look a bot dime for a reason, the battery is knackered! It is the old one from my BX that used to leak, I charged it but it doesn't hold charge long. I'll see if there is a January sale to take advantage of.

Brake lights to investigate, gear linkage to install and reverse lights to check. Then onto fuel, new high pressure in-tank pump and lines.