Thank you all for your notes.

I've decided to clean up the lenses I have.

I'll use oven cleaner and/or steel wool and/or wet sanding with increasingly finer grades of emery cloth and/or rubbing compound.

Brighter bulbs and/or heavier wiring are options after that.

Many thanks to those who posted the reference to Daniel Stern's site:
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/relays/relays.html

I could clean the lenses in place, but the're not fully glued on any more - I think that time did that, I didn't! They're also pretty well scuffed up and yellowed. I want to get the assemblies out and clean up the lenses properly, then glue back together with silicone RTV or something similar.

I've found that first I need to cut off the rusted bolts & nuts that are holding in the headlight assembly. Darn New England weather, rust shows up in all kinds of places.

The nuts turn, but the bolts turn with them, and there's no room to grab the bolt tip w/a Vise-Grip while using a wrench on the nut. In order to save the components I have, I think I'll need to carefully cut off the nuts and bolt tips, and replace with nice long stainless steel ones when reassembling.

I figure at least one weekend per side, assuming the usual amount of other non-Volvo activities per weekend.

I wonder if there's a reasonably easy way to make a set of Golf/Jetta II (86-92, I think) work... they're pretty decent lights IMHO, nice glass lenses, and since I've got a couple sets, I might try and make them fit some time. Toughest part would be the surround since the inner side of the lens is angled out, I think the buckets will bolt in fine though. Hmm...

-Chris

Will quad rectangular lamps fit?

I'm OK with wiring and even some electrical detective work to wire up 4 bulbs instead of 2.

How about the parts fit, and any modifications needed to put quad rectangular ones in '86-93 240s?

You can get new lenses from www.lampsandlenses.com
I replaced my head light lenses for $35 each lense.
Work great

Installing 7" round e-codes into my 89 took an honest 2 hours and $100. The hard part was making it look good with my custom grill surounds. I used all the original bolts and 2 of the orginal mounting holes. I had to drill 1 hole on each side. To me this was a safety issue. I didn't care what it looked like as long as I could see at night. My old plastic headlights weren't faded. Just some water inside was enough for me.
Good luck
Justin

I would think the cheapest option would be to find some good used headlights. The lenses on my 89 have not yellowed at all. I don't know if they changed the lenses at some point, because I have seen some with yellowed lenses around here but they are the exception.

E code lights would be nice but there is so much traffic on the roads these days, I almost never get to use my hibeams. The plastic lenses are fine for lowbeams.