Mine was replacing my automatic trans. in my driveway by my self.Have to say when I started I thaught what the hell was I getting myself into,but it took me 2 days and alot of sit back and take a break and check your work.At 61 it felt great 1. That I could do it. 2.The $$$ I saved.3.That my freinds couldn't beleave I even attempted it.But like others have said helping others repair there car is the most gratifying. Charlie
--
85 244ti B21ft 180,000 Dawes @12psi,Airbox Mod,Magnecor 8mm wires.Allways a work in progress,but you got to love it!

Getting the 52mm clock to operate at temps below 60f, was my most gratifying repair. Thanks to the posts in the archives that told me to replace the capicitors made the clock reliable once more.

The most gratitying repairs I do are for other people. I enjoy being able to do it.

Using a coathanger to get a mother into her car after she locked the door with the keys laying on the seat. Or changing a flat tire for someone who does not have a clue of how it is done. Showing a guy how to change his wiper blades in the parking lot of AutoZone. Getting a car running when the starter won't engage because the battery posts are too corroded.

I feel obligated to help because it is easy for me and only takes a small portion of my time and many times the problem is overwhelming for some people.

It was a sad day when consumer automotives was cut from high school curriculums.

Randy

The Wagon... $575.00 off craigs list With Stock shocks and struts.. 248000 miles 5 speed.

Looking for a stumble and finding it Bad rotor replaced it Runs really well!

Replacing shocks and struts and rear springs and control arm bushings putting the set of 16 wheels with new rubber and DRIVING IT!!! WOW

Replacing the tail gate harness so all the lights and the rear wiper worked and no bulb failure light!!! That is a special one for me...

All with a lot of help from this site.

Also the fact that my boys get a lot of compliments from driving the Volvo's and they would rather drive them then a Neon or Civic! 93 244 135000 miles 1990 740 TIC 120000 miles 1990 245 252000 1982 242 Turbo IC 4 Speed with lots of goodies

Spending time with my son's doing maintenance on them so they LEARN about cars

First one I thought of was replacing the transmission mount on my '72 144 with a D-type overdrive. Due to rust on the frame rails where the crossmember bolts to, I was afraid to unbolt it. So I left the crossmember intact and removed the mount from the gearbox and was able to change the rubber without disturbing the crossmember. Got a few more thousand miles out of it after that.

Other satisfying repairs would include finding the wires disconnected on the light bulbs that I never knew existed like the three over the heater controls on that same 144.

Went to look at a '90 240 with excellent maintenance records. Owner said she had recently had a battery and a cable replaced and now it wouldn't start- had no idea why as the car had been running perfectly before that. She said she would have it towed to be checked out at the local indie volvo shop.

I checked the 25A fuse connection under the hood- sure enough, it had pulled loose. Put 'er back together and it fired right up. Got $300 off the asking price!
--
'92 240 wagon, 285k, '90 240 sedan 229k

First clutch job in my 122.. took all of my spring break, senior year in high school. Not all that gratifying...

Years later, started a clutch job in my 1800 after a pizza delivery shift at 12:15am. Had it finished by 2am, got a good nights sleep and made it to the next shift at 10am the next day. Very gratifying.

Most recent... a cold morning, I swapped out the failed thermostat in my wifes car at 6am.. on the road at 6:30 with a good heater finally! Quick/easy stuff that makes big differences are great. Especially when you can identify the problem with the offending part visually.. knowing right away your diagnostics were correct.

Good post subject!
--
-Matt I ♥ my ♂

I rebuilt the tranny valve body on my 1986 740T,
without removing the tranny. Shifting was very rough,
specially going from 1st to 2nd...
Inside valve body are small rubber balls which totally
disintegrated. Volvo at that time sold the rebuild kit.
I felt I was rebuilding grandfather clock...small parts
were everywhere....
All worked well at the end. Good excuse to down a beer or 12...

My first Laycock OD. The cost of parts from dealer was $67.89. The quote from dealer to replace was $1450. Others have since benefited from that first six hours.

Blower motor without removing dash or chain sawing the side. Those case clips are a bear but can be removed and replaced and the case sides will come out from under with a bit of flexing.

Trailing arm bushings.

Duane

Hello All
for me the most gratifying repairs are the ones i havent had to do.
thats just me.
mike

the very first timing belt/ 3 seal and tensioner i ever did was for me the most satisfying. not because it was the hardest but because it gave me the confidence to tackle anything that came down the road after doing that job right.

for me that first t belt change was like a 1 dollar bill in a frame over a lunch counter cash register.

Almost ten years ago, when I had my first two Volvos, my '86 740 had nasty leaking front seals, and I knew that the timing belt was soaked and ready to give up the ghost any day. Anyway, I still got several months on it before, one day, I was sitting at a stoplight, and the car just died as if I'd turned off the key. I immediately knew what had happened. Just to confirm, I tried to start it once, and just got the "kweeeeee" of an engine turning its crank only.

Because I had already known I would eventually be tackling this job, I already had the parts, and had even already bought a counterhold tool. I was just working up the nerve, as it would be the biggest engine task I had tackled to date.

I followed the Bentley manual procedure for the belt replacement to the letter, replacing the front seals as I went (they were toast). As I was finishing buttoning everything back up, my wife and 1-year-old daughter had come out to the garage and were sitting in the car playing and talking to me while I worked. When the time came to turn the key and see how I did, I asked my wife to do it, since she was already sitting in the car. When she did, the sound of the car firing up perfectly and their cheering me for fixing it were a huge shot in the arm.

Gained a lot of confidence in my own mechanical ability that day, and now, ten years later, timing belt jobs are routine. So much of being able to fix your own car lies in having the confidence to say, "I think I can take this thing apart and put it back together again."

Once you know that, everything else falls in line, thanks to the people on this forum.

Now, OTHER than that, on enjoyment per dollar, I can't think of any Volvo task that gave me more enjoyment than putting a large tach and small clock combo in my 240. Transformed the driving experience.

Long live the Brickboard!
--
Guid ('92 745 257k, '91 940 SE 278k,)

My 1975 164 was such a lovely car. Except that one day it started to flood out. It would just barely start and within 10 seconds, the #1 and #2 plugs were soaked, #3-6 were just wet.
Three months of tinkering and I got it to idle for 60 seconds. I opened the oil filler cap and looked at the camshaft; horrors, the intake valve for #1 was not moving! The spring was broken in 3 places and lying on top of the head, along with the keepers.
IPD gave me a new valve and keepers. The BB told me how to compress the spring with 2 long screwdrivers, and 30 minutes later the engine was purring like nothing ever happened.

Volvos might need a lot of TLC, but when they run, they make wonderful sounds :)

Klaus
--
Volvoless. Sold the R. There is now a void...

I bought a cheapie 1989 740T a little more than a year ago sight unseen. This car has taught me more about car maintenance than any other vehicle I have owned.

I knew that the price was too good to be true when the car kept stalling after like 10-15 minutes when it warms up - worst incident was when I held up early morning rush hour traffic one day. Lotsa unhappy people drove past me that morning.

Not knowing anything at all about car repairs, I figured that with the help of BB, I'd be able to get it going well.

The board gave me advice that it was likely a Hall sensor issue, but it could also be a clogged cat, ignition amp module, or even some relays.

I changed out the latter three which didn't fix the problem and then went to work on the first. Taking out the old distributor, I found a badly patched up Hall sensor and replaced it with a Bosch refurb unit from FCP that was practically brand new. The moment of despair came when I discovered that the previous owner or his mechanic had snipped off the connector that actually plugs into the black Hall sensor socket on the distributor, and directly soldered the wires into the sensor internally, liberally using lots of metallic epoxy so I couldn't trace the wires by colour!

By then, I had spent like 4 hours trying to get things going, largely cursing at the Volvo engineers who put a distributor next to the firewall, making my life really miserable. I remember saying to myself, "I don't care how but I am going to get this car running, tonight!"

I drilled three small holes into the hall sensor socket from the rear and hard wired the coloured wires. The first combination of wire positions got the car spluttering. Now I wasn't sure if it really was the wiring position or the alignment of the distributor that was causing the problem, and to compound things, I broke the brand new distributor cap by screwing it on badly a few times so that added another variable! (I fixed the cap with some quick set epoxy), so I mucked about with the distributor alignment a few times and then decided to try another wiring permutation. Now picture all this taking place at nearly 1AM in the morning in a basement apartment block car park, in a lock up parking car spot that's both mighty cramped, cold and dimly lit. I am sure that I was working on the car for such a long stretch of time that I forgot to eat dinner that evening.

I removed the distributor and desoldered the wires, and tried another permutation of wiring positions, and I got it right second time round! The car fired up, engine sounded smooth, and kept running without issues. That was an absolutely victorious moment for me in my history of DIY car repairs.

This was after six months of intermittent stalling problems and then just junking the car by the side of the road. The statewide roadside assist got tired of taking my calls - despite this not even being my daily driver.

This car has been an absolutely cracker to drive after I fixed this and all the other bad bits - a fairly massive lot of other fixes and updates. It still startles me that it's such a good car.

I'm lucky enough to be good friends with my mechanic... He doesn't mind me hanging out at his shop while he works. I pick up on alot of his tricks, and see how he works. I also take his advice when he says I'm capable of handling a job.

That being said, I've now done 4-5 head jobs, suspensions, and many other different jobs. The best repair was the head that I pulled off and found a 1/4" deep groove between cylinders 1 and 2. I put a rebuilt head on, and drove that 745T from Austin to L.A. and back over 5 days, pulling a trailer both ways. Sold it, made money, and the car is still in daily use as a delivery vehicle for a flower shop in Dallas!

AS for upgrades, the lighted window switches from a late model 960 into my 945T was the easiest and best bang for the buck (FREE!)

My alternator finally gave up the ghost after 24 years of service. Luckily, I had a spare handy. But in addition, I had to replace the battery and also decided to replace both battery cables and the alternator bushings.

This job made me nervous because I never did a repair this extensive before and electrical problems would be a pain to rack down should I screw it up. But thanks to the BB and Bentley, I tackled it myself.

Every connector was cleaned and greased before installation. The old alternator came out easily but the new one was hard to squeeze into the mount thanks to the new bushings. I even wrapped the engine wiring harness with shrink wrap and secured it with plastic ties. I routed the new cables carefully so no unnecessary tension was placed on them.

After triple-checking everything, I turned the key and braced for an explosion or pop or some other disaster. But the car fired up immediately and ran perfectly.

All excited and pleased with myself, I backed it out of the driveway to take it for its first drive...and backed into my neighbor's brand new white VW sedan that was parked on the street. Crap!
--
Mike F - 1984 244 DL - 265,000 miles
Original engine, transmission, drive train, alternator, starter
Undergoing reconstructive surgery with POR-15

Replacing the rusted out 940 oil pan without dropping the cross-member.

P.S. Did it solo at age 78;-)

--
Bruce Young, '93 940-NA (current), 240s (one V8), 140s, 122s, since '63.

Successful installation of a shiny "newer" transmission. The PO had a radiator failure and drove the car for 6 months with coolant in the tranny. I flushed it and got almost another year out of it before it gave me a ginormous RASPBERRY and died.
--
Harold Thompson '84 245 Virgos

Most gratifying repairs - hm. I'd say that fixing the heater blower motor ranks pretty high, along with replacing the rear trailing arm bushings. In both cases I almost felt like a proper mechanic when success (finally!) was achieved. All the more so as these two repairs are the closest we come to initiation rites in the 240 community.

As for upgrades, adding turbo sway bars, Sachs gas shocks and struts and 15" Virgo wheels meant a lot to handling. As adding remote central locking did to comfort.

Regards,
Erling.
--

Putting in a functional stereo to replace the DOA original one. Workingman's Dead never sounded sooo sweet. :)

-Ryan

--

Athens, Ohio
1987 245 DL 314k, Dog-mobile
1990 245 DL 134k M47, E-codes, GT Sway Bars, GT Braces
1991 745 GL 300k, Regina, 23/21mm Turbo Sway Bars

I've been driving bricks for 25+ years, have 3 presently, and am in the vast minority in that I don't do most of the work myself. It's partly because I have had access to really good indie mechanics whom I trust completely, and partly because, in general, I really don't enjoy working on cars. I intend to do more.
That said, the most gratifying repairs were: 1) installing ipd sways (because amazing difference in handling); 2) pulling and splicing new wiring sections in tailgate hinges on one; 3) running a new heavy wire around the hinge (solution: use heavy enough wire, wrap around a pencil many times to create 6" or so of telephone handset type of cord which will take constant flexing, and run exposed from ceiling to tailgate); and 4) adjust auto shift linkage so gear indicator correct (only because my mechanics, as well as top tranny shop, said needed a new part, but Bentley correctly pointed out only an adjustment issue). I've also taken out all seats and carpet way too many times to get rid of water from clogged AC drain, windows left open during overnight storm, or leaking water bottles in back seat. Nice to be able to R&R, but mostly a PITA.

I started doing most of the maintenance & repairs two years ago when I discovered I was paying for things, at the Volvo dealer, that weren't getting done or the mechanic would break something else or leave a scratch. For example, once I observed a mechanic get into my car knee first and, with his knee in the middle of the driver's seat, reach across to get something. I knew the wiring to the seat thermostat was bad before this. But he would likely have broken it again and I wouldn't have known about it until weeks/months later.

Other than oil & filter changes, which I've done myself for many years, I didn't do repairs because I didn't have the knowledge or the tools. The Brickboard and Bentley changed all that. I feel I have the confidence to tackle any job. Thanks. And, if I don't have the right tools, I acquire them as I go.

My first job on the 245 was the tailgate struts. A simple job, to be sure, but with satisfaction that I wouldn't get conked on the head anymore.

Probably the most bang per buck repair was on another car, a '93 Crown Vic. I did the water pump, fan clutch, serpentine belt, idler pulley, and belt tensioner. It went easier than I thought, everything is fine. Without the Brickboard I would not have had the confidence to do that job.

--
1986 Volvo 245

I like the tough dirty jobs like the rear trailing arm bushings, rear control arm bushings, or struts. The jobs you know you did something positive for your ride the first time you take it for a drive. Dan

Howdy,

Your post got me to thinking about all the repairs I've done through the years.

Without a doubt the most rewarding repair was not even on one of my own cars.

A friend asked me to look at a VW Rabbit that belonged to his father-in-law. Ever since new the car had a tendency to die unexpectedly. Everything except headlights would go out. Let the car sit awhile and it would restart as if nothing had happened. As the miles racked up this problem got worse and worse until it was an absolute danger to drive.

While it was in warranty the dealer would dutifully try to track down the problem to no avail. After warranty the man had spent hundreds of dollars at several shops trying to isolate the problem. He really liked the car but was about to dump it because of this problem.

It took me twenty minutes to find and repair a cold solder joint on the incoming power to the PCB on the back of the fuse block. The gratification did not come with the repair. Ten years later I learned that the old gent was still driving that Rabbit. ;-)


--
Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- I've taken to using mister because my name misleads folks on the WWW. I am a 52 year old fat man. ;-)

I would say, after all the crud I've done, new rear shocks have been the most gratifying, and one of the easiest repairs I've ever done on my 740T.
It drives like it's new (not that I ever drove one new), though I bet the entirely rebuilt front suspension helped that, it was a piece at a time and took over two years from time/budget constraints.
The best thing is that now, I can drive into corners and change lanes without compensating for the car seriously diving to one side. :D
And I have gone to the axe handle trunk struts. They just don't seem to last more than a winter or two here where it changes from 30-60F in the winter and 80-110F in the summer and they're not in my budget given how little I use my trunk.

-Will
--
1990 740 Turbo, on its way to stock specs, maybe beyond

High on the list of comfort vs. dollars spent: Add an aftermarket center arm rest, best bang for the bucks!

If your blower motor dies, avoid the "chainsaw" replacement method, do it right and pull the HVAC unit out... why? Simple, the last time I did a fan, I did it right and pulled the assembly, during inspection, I found a pin-hole coolant leak in the heater core. If I had used the chainsaw method, I would not have known the heater core was bad before the carpets got soaked in antifreeze!

Of course, your tail gate shocks are high on the list... if you've ever had a hatch try to slam shut on you, you know what I mean!

On automatic trans cars with OD issues, just do the OD bypass plate or grind on the OD solenoid to achieve the same result! With this one, you have eliminated half of the trouble questions on the BB!

jorrell

--
92 245 250K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently taking names and kicking reputations!

Hello,

All of them are satisfying, but this was my most and the most recent. After replacing all of the following - oil pan gasket, new plugs, new wires, new intake and exhaust gasket, a new exhaust from the intake manifold back, getting the rack rebuilt, put back in with new tie rod ends, and new brake rotors and pads on the rear. Turning the key and having Inga fire right up and purr like a piston slapping kitten on the first turn of the key. Yeah that was a cool feeling, and this is board made me sure I could actually do it, and do it right.

The guy who did the alignment on Inga after the rack rebuild came in all serious and said your steering wheel is upside down after the alignment. You are going to have to take that knuckle off and turn it around to get it right side up. I told him not a problem and thanks, but he was very serious and repeated the wheel is on upside down. Told him not to worry I would fix it after I got home. His boss laughed and said for him to ask how I was going to fix it. The kid said are you really going to pull that knuckle off and rotate it. That would work, but I was going to take off the steering wheel and rotate it 180 degrees. His boss laughed an told him that was how you thought out of the box. I was just thinking about how the BB would tell me to fix it.

Regards,

Paul

Now about those TAB's.......