Hi. I just came back from the Volvo dealer ... I had ordered an overdrive relay for my 1984. They told me that the order flashed back on the computer that it's no longer available, and it doesn't show another (superceded) part to substitute.
This dealer has always been very good about ordering parts for my old cars, so I don't believe that they're just not trying. Does anyone know some other relay (albeit not an "official" swap sanctioned by Volvo :-) that can be substituted?
Apparently my '84 falls into the earlier period of the AW7_, grouped as 1981-4 that uses one part, 1307793-8, differing from a later period, 1985-9, which uses 1347764-1 instead ['90-on uses 3523804-7]. Has anyone tried these later relays in an early AW7_?

I hate to think of the alternative! Since it's not especially unusual for this relay to go bad at least once in the life of the cars of this age (this would be the third one in the lifetime of my '84), this shortage will mean a *lot* of cars losing their overdrive gear in the coming years.

Permanently bypassing the control of the gear by either rewiring or blocking the solenoid (which isn't the problem here) is not good for me, because I use the button control a *lot* -- I'm always manually downshifting into 3rd either to hold the car back in traffic or to enhance acceleration in some passing situation where the ordinary kickdown effect (full throttle shift) would be too dramatic. Maybe that's why I've used up so many relays :-).

Anyway, any suggestions for a substitute would be appreciated before I resort to tearing the relay open and cleaning or resoldering. Not that I'm afraid of soldering, having hand-soldered what seemed like a couple of thousand LEDs for my external LED lighting project (in Rolling a couple of years ago). But for the money, I'd rather put in a new relay if at all possible.

Thanks all.