Dendy's 480 Diary

[Jaster]

Oli turned up once again at the weekend, this time with no lighting whatsoever on the front of the car. The first order of business was to replace a couple of blown fuses, but that didn't solve the problem. Next, we removed the nosecone to reveal a missing DRL holder (and bulb) and a fairly ruined wiring loom on the passenger side. This seems to be a by-product of the bulbs melting the insides of the clusters - eventually it becomes impossible to properly lock the bulb holders into place due to the deformation of the plastic, at which point they become liable to fall out, get caught in something (e.g. a pop-up mech) and rip the wires out.

Not the end of the world. I made up some new wires and connectors and soldered them to the remaining bits of the loom on the car and fitted a brand new pair of DRL holders and bulbs, after which the pop-ups came back to life and all was well again. The car is a '92 and appears to be of the variety that checks the impedance between the DRLs, and if it detects a mismatch, goes into 'Swedish Bulb Failure Indication Mode' and prevents the pop-ups from moving. By that logic, you could just pull out both bulbs and everything would work fine, and you wouldn't have to worry about DRLs blowing.

Another interesting electrical observation: Oli and I have been using identical LEDs in our DRLs for a while, and both of us have been experiencing a very high frequency of fuses blowing and taking out the front lights. The LEDs in question are these:



I know some others here are using (or have used) them, so bear in mind that they may cause problems. Fuses tend to go when switching the headlights on or off, so my working hypothesis is that they are shoddily built and briefly short out when switching between 21W and 4W modes, which would go some way to explaining the fuses blowing. I haven't confirmed this directly, but Oli is back on ye olde filamentes and has had no problems yet (other than continued melting of the clusters).

Since we had the nosecone off I fitted some new gas struts to the pop-ups. I highly recommend doing this - it doesn't take long and makes a big difference. Oli reported that the headlights were shaking when driving (responsibly) at speed, and just a couple of weeks ago I replaced one of his pop-up motors that had given up, both of which suggest that the struts weren't up to much. Sure enough, the old ones were doing absolutely nothing whatsoever when I took them out, in fact they were so useless that the motors would have had to have been exerting extra effort just to pull them open. The headlights open up much more sharply with the new ones, and don't move around at all once they're up, plus the motors are no longer solely responsible for holding them open. Like I said, quick and easy job to do, and if nothing else it will extend the life of your motors.



All back together and working again. Hang on a minute, what's that car doing in the shed? That doesn't look like my GT! More on that one later...

[jamescarruthers]

More on the grey car please!

[jifflemon]

^^ what he said ^^

Plus, I think it's time we sourced or made our own versions of 21w/4w LED bulbs, of a known quality.

[jamescarruthers]

Yes I agree. Ideally missing out the bulb holder all together. I think your lenses will still be likely to get damaged if you have an LED bulb running alongside a corrosion based DRL toaster in the clusters.

[Jaster]

think it's time we sourced or made our own versions of 21w/4w LED bulbs, of a known quality.

Yes I agree. Ideally missing out the bulb holder all together. I think your lenses will still be likely to get damaged if you have an LED bulb running alongside a corrosion based DRL toaster in the clusters.

I've made some initial enquiries and proper ones seem to be hard to come by. Plenty on eBay and I've tried most of them, and found them all wanting. Spree on here had some decent ones by all accounts, not sure if he's still around though. No mention of the 480 on his website anymore either (http://spreeled.moonfruit.com/).

More on the grey car please!

^^ what he said ^^

Ask and you shall receive! The grey car is a recent addition - I got it from a chap who said that he had intended to restore it, but had been offered a Morris Minor instead and only had room for one car. It reminded me of my first car (same year, same colour) so I decided to take it on. It's an '89 F-reg, but was registered in early January and all the date codes on it are '88, so I'm going to think of it as an '88 car!

I seem to have a habit of buying other people's second cars - my GT was bought new as a weekend car and only did a few thousand miles every year, and this one is much the same (at least as far as the mileage is concerned!). I did have a certain "what have I done" feeling as I drove it home. It's only done just over 60k miles over the course of three decades, but judging from the condition my guess is that the original owner kept it in a garage and took it out once a week for the express purpose of driving into as many lamp posts as possible, and then drove it back home while beating every plastic part of the interior with a rubber mallet and furiously slashing at the upholstery with a stanley knife. Whatever floats people's boats, I suppose. Fortunately it was looked after very well mechanically and everything is where it should be, just not necessarily attached properly or in one piece.

I had intended to work on it over the winter, but the other half has taken a liking to it and wants to bring it to the Hampshire meet next month, which means things will have to move forward a bit more quickly. Here's what it looks like right now:



And here's a view underneath:



I checked the dipstick and it was barely showing anything, so I thought now would be as good a time as any for a bit of servicing. First of all I got in touch with James, who is of course the expert around here when it comes to re-commissioning these early cars. He pointed me in the right direction for the consumables and supplied some other useful information, and I got started.

From my initial inspection of the sump, I thought someone had put gaffa tape between the plug and the pan in lieu of a crush gasket, which might have explained the lack of oil in the car. However, having shoved a camera underneath it actually looked like some kind of silicone sealant:



I've heard of people doing things like this to leaky cars but never seen it in person. In my imagination, a previous owner got home one night after a quick spin around the village to demolish all the local telegraph poles, and noticed a leak coming from the sump. He thought to himself: "well I've just put new silicone sealant around my bath, and an oil sump is basically a bath for an engine, so let's do the obvious thing". Anyway, whatever the original thought process, the oil was very much un-contained. I didn't bother getting the Pela pump out since the plug was going to have to come out anyway, so up on stands it went:



Here are some pictures of the old plug, which interestingly enough did actually have a gasket on it, and the underside of the sump. Plenty of strange gunk visible on both:





I fitted a new plug with a Dowty washer, and then off came the old generic filter and on went a proper Volvo one (the logo gives you better MPGs and ten extra horsepower):



...and in went the new oil:



Old oil on the left in the picture below, just over 3L out of a nominal 5.3L capacity came out. Lucky I didn't decide to take it for a long drive...



Next came the spark plugs. The old ones were fairly corroded and not the variety that James had recommended so probably worth doing. Getting to the two on the right side of the manifold is great fun:



Here's everything put back together, including new bulbs on the front. Incandescent DRLs until I work out what's going on with the LEDs:



You may notice the charger on the battery - the battery warning light on the dash tends to fade on and off while the engine is running. Haven't got round to investigating that yet, but I suspect that the battery itself has seen better days. I also added some coolant to the reservoir because I was feeling generous, and it was pretty much empty.

After a quick charge I tried to turn the engine over and it sounded pretty awful. I wondered if perhaps there was some more serious problem that I had missed, then remembered that it is generally accepted to be standard practice to re-attach the HT leads to the plugs after changing them

After sorting that out it started up straight away, and sounded quite a lot better than it did before. Interestingly, this engine has a more conventional ignition sequence than the later cars - all the others have that distinctive 400-series noise when they start up, kind of like how any other car would sound if the battery was flat or the starter motor was about to explode, but this one just springs into life straight away.

I took it for a quick run up and down some hills to make sure everything was in order and took one more photo for good measure:



The driving experience is interesting. The GT is buttery smooth, quiet, refined, and has all the power you could ever need. This one is more like a superchanged lawnmower with above-average handling. Certainly not complaining as they are completely different cars - if I wanted to go on a long journey in comfort with some exciting driving when I arrived I'd take the GT, whereas if I simply wanted to scare myself to death on the local A-roads the ES would be just the ticket. It doesn't feel like it's really lacking in power compared to the GT either, it just delivers it very differently. No doubt this largely due to the early engine, which seems to be quite different from the later 1.7L unit with the Volvo manifold, and of course the lack of a cat on the exhaust.

It'll be heading out to some shows this weekend along with the GT as a sort of 'before and after' exhibit, and I'm hoping to get most of the refurbishment done in time for the Hampshire meet. Amongst other things it'll be getting new bumpers (retaining the non-matched colour theme) and a new interior, including most of the plastic bits.

[dcwalker]

Fantastic! Well done on getting another one...

If a 1988 E-reg in white with black bumpers turned up, I'd be very tempted for the same reasons - first one I had. Mind you, Martin's is tempting as well, but will Lee kill me if I suggest to her I want another one?

Hope to see you at the next meet Will, whichever 480 you are in!

All the best

David

[jifflemon]

I fitted a new plug with a Dowty washer, and then off came the old generic filter and on went a proper Volvo one (the logo gives you better MPGs and ten extra horsepower)

This is absolute FACT

then drove it back home while beating every plastic part of the interior with a rubber mallet and furiously slashing at the upholstery with a stanley knife

I'm desperate to see some interior shots! Your such a tease!

[Jaster]

I've been travelling so not much time spend on cars (or the internet), but here are a few pictures from my phone. More interior shots will follow in due course!

Remnants of Happy Meals past under the front seats, including an un-opened sachet of salt shoved under the handbrake for emergency sodium withdrawals:



View from the back seats, rather comfy actually. I wonder what the longest production steering spacer is...



This is just the tip of the iceberg, but little things like this irritate me. Missing bits of plastic, sticky tape residue, pleb-tier mis-matched aftermarket head unit with missing surround etc:



Side note, the top slider in the above image is a 3D printed one from Shapeways. It's not bad and cheaper than the rubbery ones from Skandix, although still not quite up to the standard of the originals. I'll do a more detailed comparison on the three varieties later.

Interesting driver's mirror:



If you look closely at the top left you might just be able to make out that it's a second mirror attached to the original mirror underneath. It's not clear in the photograph but while driving it gives a strange combination of magnification and distortion, much like the funny mirrors at the circus. Nearly killed myself changing lanes on the motorway a couple of times when I was driving it home before I realised what was going on.

Also a quick workshop update:



Turns out that Dowty washers aren't up to a whole lot on 480s. The leak was reduced but not stopped completely, so I temporarily removed the oil and fitted a new crush gasket (just plain old copper, as per tradition) and actually used a torque wrench rather than just guessing. So far this has fixed the leak, touch wood.

We took the cars to the Blenheim Festival of Transport last weekend, and Oli came along for the ride. Here's the invasion party assembling in Oxford, not often you get three 480s in a row on the road outside. Pretty sure the neighbours think I have a disorder of some kind:



The palace is about 20 minutes up the road:



Shortly after we got through the gates we were stopped in our tracks while thirty or so Teslas came across the road to get to the arena. I've noticed that they always seem to turn up in force at events such as these - a little bit odd since once you've seen one Tesla you've seen them all (although they'd probably say that about Volvos), but I suppose they have to come to shows in huge numbers now as I can't see a Model X being preserved in 30 year's time in the same way that we look after our cars, for technical reasons if nothing else.

Anyway, we eventually made it in:



Turned out that it was mainly clubs so we ended up with all the other 80s and 90s reprobates who'd turned up on their own. Nonetheless it was a good day out, and all three cars actually got a fair amount of attention.

[jamescarruthers]

Glad to see you've saved another one mate!

My Dad had a 480 in this colour in the mid 90's, which is‎ where the obsession stems from. In this colour it can sometimes look a bit dowdy but that red strip really livens it up.

Confession time: after speaking to John de Vries, I'm happy to do away with the non-body coloured bumpers in time. He said it wasn't his intention to do this but rather Volvo's cost cutting and, I think, trying to make it fit the company look‎. So, expect red all over from me as time goes on.

Agree on the different driving experience. The early 1.7 does go very nicely with its pointy cam. You have an oval shaped throttle body which opens a second chamber at large throttle inputs which is why you end up with an extra little kick in the back if you go full throttle.‎

Good luck with it all Will and do keep us posted, it seems a great save!‎

[jamescarruthers]

Glad to see you've saved another one mate!

My Dad had a 480 in this colour in the mid 90's, which is‎ where the obsession stems from. In this colour it can sometimes look a bit dowdy but that red strip really livens it up.

Confession time: after speaking to John de Vries, I'm happy to do away with the non-body coloured bumpers in time. He said it wasn't his intention to do this but rather Volvo's cost cutting and, I think, trying to make it fit the company look‎. So, expect red all over from me as time goes on.

Agree on the different driving experience. The early 1.7 does go very nicely with its pointy cam. You have an oval shaped throttle body which opens a second chamber at large throttle inputs which is why you end up with an extra little kick in the back if you go full throttle.‎

Good luck with it all Will and do keep us posted, it seems a great save! What is the chassis number?‎

[Jaster]

Since we have a meet coming up, I thought now would be as good a time as any to start pulling things apart:



I've had a few persistent electrical problems that I really wanted to get sorted before doing another long journey, particularly in the dark. They are:
- O/S DRL only works in bright mode
- Only two of the four rear DRLs do anything at all
- No 'headlight mode' rear lighting whatsoever
- O/S pop-up comes up, followed by N/S about five seconds later. Usually a few fuses blow at this point, as per next point
- Switching on the headlights causes either the DRL or Front/Rear/Parking/Fog fuses to blow, every time, without fail.

I've actually been driving around with a ziploc bag of fuses in the centre console and replacing whatever blows every time I switch the lights on. I can pretty much do it by feel alone now. Anyway, I thought that such persistent fuse blowing was probably indicative of deeper issues, and now is of course as good a time as any to sort them out.

The first thing I did was replace the LEDs in the DRLs with incandescents just to rule them out. They've caused problems in the past so it seemed sensible. I had a look at what circuits corresponded with which fuses, and which blew in what order when turning certain things on, and decided that there maybe the foglight circuit was at fault. My N/S front fog got pushed back into the bumper when I ended up in the verge after the brakes failed, so I decided to start there.

In we go...


Looking down, there's the foglight and its cable, possibly trapped against a piece of metal...


Yep, there we go:


If you look closely you can see the bare wires. Note how NedCar helpfully placed a blade-like piece of metal right behind the foglight, ensuring that if it gets pushed back into the bumper at all, the wires will be cut nice and cleanly and short out on everything in sight.

I'm not that bothered about having working foglights this weekend, so I cut the cable off just above the break and sealed it off for now with electrical tape. The foglight needs replacing anyway so I'll make up another wire, hopefully re-using the old connector, when I get round to fitting another one.

Eliminating that problem helped a bit, in that both headlights raised happily and the fuses blew in a different order. Still nothing at the back of the car, though. I took the bulb holders out and drenched everything in contact cleaner, and cleaned some gunk out of the channels between the big metal 'traces' (best word I can come up with) that I thought might have been causing problems. Still nothing, and by this point I was getting low on fuses (remember, every time I switch the ignition or the lights on, they have to be replaced!

I decided to do an old-fashioned smoke test, and started putting higher-amperage fuses in places that they had no business being placed. The rear lights on my car have a 10A fuse, which blew instantly. 15A, 20 and 25A all lasted longer, got incredibly hot, but still blew. By this point I was getting quite frustrated and starting to resign myself to coming to the meet in just the ES, but I had a couple of 30A fuses I hadn't tried yet. What's the worst that could happen?

I opened all the doors and the boot, stuck a pair of 30A fuses in the two positions that were still blowing, and switched the ignition on. A few seconds later, I noticed smoke coming out of the boot. Good enough for me! I turned the power off (quickly), and started removing the boot trim. Took the spare wheel out as well, not sure it'll be much help if I ever actually need it but nice to know it's there nonetheless. Doing all that exposes the wiring loom, which runs left to right below the rear light clusters if you're looking forward.

Hanging down from the loom I discovered this:



I was reasonably certain that I'd found the problem. This is the first piece of wiring that I've found with a sticker mentioning a successful test pass, so that irony certainly wasn't lost on me.

Here's a zoomed-out shot:



The burnt out bit is in my hand, and you will notice that the loom side is pretty bad as well. I tidied up the loom side with electrical tape and left the other wire unplugged for now, pending a proper fix with actual 21st wires that are capable of conveying genuine electrons and heatshrink to cover the joins instead of tape.

Here's another close-up of the burnt-out bit with the pass label:



Again, classic NedCar quality. After that, I put the proper fuses back in and all the lights started behaving appropriately, front and back. Big relief as it's been bugging me for months and with winter approaching not having working lights isn't really an option.

One more problem though - I deliberately didn't mention what the wire in the boot was for, so well done if you recognised it! I went for a quick drive after getting the lights working and noticed that the ABS light wasn't switching off. I didn't really mind as the ABS light only came back to life after I repaired the instrument cluster a few months ago so it was a nice novelty, but at the same time it's hard to overrate having working brakes. Took me a while to make the mental connection, but the wire I cut is of course for the N/S rear wheel sensor. Why on earth this caused such problems for the lighting fuses I don't know, but hopefully I'll just be able to join the wires back together and the ABS system will come back to life.

Finally, one of the things I like about aircraft electrics is having breakers rather than fuses. Never really understood why they aren't used on cars, but I'm sure there's a reason. Either way, I went through all of these fuses in the space of a couple of hours while troubleshooting:

[jifflemon]

Finally, one of the things I like about aircraft electrics is having breakers rather than fuses. Never really understood why they aren't used on cars, but I'm sure there's a reason.

*cough*

You mean this sort of thing?

Glad you got to the bottom of it though!

[Jaster]

That's fantastic - exactly what I was imagining. I've ordered one to see if it will fit since they look a bit taller than usual. I wish I'd known about these while I still had the problem!

[Jaster]

Quick bit of brake maintenance before the meet tomorrow. The brakes felt uneven and not particularly effective on the front, so I thought it might be worth sticking in some new pads. The old ones actually had plenty of life in them but were of unknown origin, the new ones are Pagids and feel much better. Will probably think about the discs at the next service interval.

Looks like the N/S rear ABS sensor is totally cooked so I'll have to make do with standard brakes for the time being. Not the end of the world, my first 480 didn't have it and it never bothered me!

[Alan 480]

Looks like the N/S rear ABS sensor is totally cooked so I'll have to make do with standard brakes for the time being. Not the end of the world, my first 480 didn't have it and it never bothered me!

fairy snuf (the SS1 doen't have it either), except that the ABS light MUST come on, then go off for your MoT

if no ABS system then OK, but otherwise , . . .. .. . .

[Jaster]

First post/forum login for a while, seems that the forum has really come back to life since the mail server problem got fixed so plenty to catch up on which is nice!

Here's the current situation with regards to Scandinavian(ish) cars in Oxford:



The grey car has been upgraded to daily driver status for Katie, who saw sense and sold her 21st century Fiesta. Some of the proceeds from that will go towards a trip to the body shop to clean up some of the bashes and scrapes before they turn into serious rust, but hopefully nothing to major. Mechanically everything is going very well, with the exception of the alternator. One battery died in the cold weather before I realised what was going on, but fortunately alternators are easy to come by so that was a quick fix. I was even able to re-purpose an old battery that was no longer able to crank the 9-3 but works fine in the 480, so that's a bonus.

Just enjoying the usual stationary traffic in central Oxford:



My MOT is coming up and a few days ago the car decided to do this:



I could hear the relay clicking rapidly as the passenger light tried vainly to lift itself out of the bonnet, so the first thing to do was to pull the relay out and re-flow the solder joints between the two boards, indicated here:



These are the joints that tend to go bad first, and 99% of pop-up relay related problems can be solved by re-flowing them along with any other suspect joints. It's a big board with a lot of mechanical and temperature-related stress so worth checking if you're having problems. Very easy to fix so even if you happen to have spares, keep the original for future repairs.

This improved matters slightly - the N/S light would come up a few seconds after the other one (most of the time), but would do so with a horrible grinding sound. Both lights have been raising and lowering quite slowly for a while with a variety of odd noises, which generally means the gas struts have gone. I can do a gas strut replacement blindfolded, but somehow I haven't done one on my own car yet, so no time like the present...



...Damn it! This happened while taking out the N/S cluster. It's always been the tighter of the two to get out, and I suppose it had finally had enough. I thought about carefully putting it back with a small amount of glue for the MOT, but by the time it came out it looked like this:



Oh well. They're pretty badly faded and I've been meaning to get some replacements from Joep for a while anyway, so I suppose that's going to have to come forward. In the meantime I've got a spare set of clusters that will do.



Nose cone off, terrible quality photo. Left it hanging from the washer jets due to unwillingness to faff with the jubilee clips on the hoses. Sure enough, the old gas struts were doing absolutely nothing so lifting the lights (and holding them there) was purely on the motors, which isn't a healthy state of affairs at all. After fitting brand new struts they popped up sharply on the switch with no unpleasant grinding noises, so problem solved.

Anyone know what the pipe in the photo below is for? I see it every time I remove a nose cone and it always puzzles me:



While I was in there I decided to address the wiring issue on the fog light mentioned in my previous post. Unfortunately the connector had sheared off the back of the foglight itself:



So no-go on fixing that for the MOT (fortunately not technically needed anyway), and I only have spares of the older-style fogs with different connections so that will happen at a later date.

Finally, the passenger door card had come loose and was preventing the door from opening easily which I know from previous experience in other cars is an MOT fail so I took it apart and re-attached as necessary. Quite a pleasant way to spend afternoon all things considered:



A few days later, here we are at the Swedish Car Clinic ready for the MOT:



A few things didn't get done in time so we'll see how it goes. At least I got a lift home in another 480!

One more thing, I'm currently in possession of James' legendary blue folder containing the complete set of Green Books for all 1.7L engine types as well as the rest of the car:



There's an incredible amount of information in these things, and I'm going to try to get as much of it digitised as I can while I have them. I'll make another topic for that in due course in case anyone has any sections that they'd like sooner rather than later.

[Alan 480]

the 'pipe' is the inlet for the air filter

I can only assume it points up to try and keep most of debris oot ???

but it shows you should NOT attempt to wade through puddles in a 480

[Jaster]

the 'pipe' is the inlet for the air filter

Funny. Whenever I've seen it I've thought "that looks like the air intake, but that seems like an odd place to put it so it's probably something else". I'll show myself out.

[brinkie]

Ah, the famous popup headlight issues. I was working on my competitor's car yesterday. Competitor as in, thanks to him I am no longer the only 480 driver in town
A low mileage 480 S 2.0 with all sorts of typical 480 problems: oil drinking 2.0 red dipstick engine, intermittent dashboard failures (fixed of course! Ha!), popup headlight failure ... except for wheel arch rust! Never seen such tidy original arches. Anyway, yesterday was a good time to fix the headlight issues. Someone had disconnected both popup motors, but upon reconnecting, nothing happened.
First checked the relay: OK.
Shorting the relay contacts: happy flipping headlights. Wiring and fuses are OK.
Then the microswitch in the bonnet lock: stuck in open position. Fixed that by taking the lock out and applying a lot of WD40.
Hooray, the headlights work again... grinding noises from the right headlight motor... Stuck.
Took the headlight assembly out, found the gas strut doing nothing at all. Luckily I had both a spare motor and a set of new gas struts (changed the other as well) in my treasure trove. Sometimes I surprise myself...

Just wondering, how do you take the popup motor out? I always remove the nose cone and then take the popup frame out completely but some people claim they can take the motor out without doing that.

[Alan 480]

Just wondering, how do you take the popup motor out? I always remove the nose cone and then take the popup frame out completely but some people claim they can take the motor out without doing that.

N/S (UK), left nosecone in place, not tried , yet, the O/S