Rescue Car: R1

[Alan 480]

I reckon I have a tensioner bolt (somewhere) but from dim memory it had a square end vs the round end??
will try and dig it out . . . .
liberated from a two litre

[dragonflyjewels]

Thanks Alan !

[Alan 480]

'tensioner' details

80mm M6 bolt
block is 25 x 15 x 10mm with 8mm hole at right angles, any use?

[MisterH]

Wow it certainly looks like you've got your work cut out there, a very damming itinerary I must say. I haven't really done anything with the lights on mine with the fixes you recommended, as with my driving test next week, I don't really want to be pulling the interior apart (again )


At least the engine runs, but what of this Megafuse recall you speak of?

[jifflemon]

'tensioner' details

80mm M6 bolt
block is 25 x 15 x 10mm with 8mm hole at right angles, any use?

Sounds a million times better than the current one!

[dcwalker]

Well done to all involved in this project - rescuing the remaining 480s where possible is a must!

Those rear arches look excellent, which makes the whole exercise easier from the start.

Reading through the entire thread, I was going to say that I have spare wheel caps that should fit, but then noticed them in the rear door pocket. Jeff, I have a spare headlamp relay if that helps? I appreciate we'll want the auxiliary gauges if possible, but I also have a spare cubby box that went in that space on later models if you want to tidy the dash up meanwhile.

If I can assist in any way I will - just give me a shout! I will also try to look in on you and R1 when next we head south...

David

[jifflemon]

Well done to all involved in this project - rescuing the remaining 480s where possible is a must!

Those rear arches look excellent, which makes the whole exercise easier from the start.

Reading through the entire thread, I was going to say that I have spare wheel caps that should fit, but then noticed them in the rear door pocket. Jeff, I have a spare headlamp relay if that helps? I appreciate we'll want the auxiliary gauges if possible, but I also have a spare cubby box that went in that space on later models if you want to tidy the dash up meanwhile.

If I can assist in any way I will - just give me a shout! I will also try to look in on you and R1 when next we head south...

David

Yes, centre caps are now on car! Headlamp relay would be much appreciated - have just found a cubby box in a job lot of S spares i bought. As much as I'd like to aim for perfection, I keep having to remind myself that there's a very tight budget, and half the fun of a 480 is doing some of the minor jobs! For example, I *really* want to be peeling off the lower quarter protection film as it looks nasty, along with Various window stickers. However, in tact protection film is a good indicator that it's still original archwork, and stickers = originality.

It's been an interesting voyage of discovery - Never realised, for example, that rear quarter trim panels came without speakers OR pockets. Must be an early car thing. I've led a sheltered "turbo life" eh?

Oh and if you ever venture South, my castle is your castle!

[dcwalker]

Yep, no rear speakers in the early cars - hence Volvo produced the ones that replaced the rear cubby boxes as there was no existing side-panel cut-out. I think you'll find the wiring is already there and just stops...

Will drop relay into post for you, no problem.

Agree with you re the rear arch stickers - and it's amazing how much they clean up with some t-cut (as I discovered on Nilani by accident...)

I shall try to make your castle my castle in the not too distant future!

David

[MisterH]

Yep, no rear speakers in the early cars - hence Volvo produced the ones that replaced the rear cubby boxes as there was no existing side-panel cut-out. I think you'll find the wiring is already there and just stops...

Will drop relay into post for you, no problem.

Agree with you re the rear arch stickers - and it's amazing how much they clean up with some t-cut (as I discovered on Nilani by accident...)

I shall try to make your castle my castle in the not too distant future!

David

That is odd as my September '88 car does have speakers in the back, or am I misjudging to which you refer, as the speakers I am talking about are the ones next to the back seats and forward of the lower seat belt mounts

[dcwalker]

Yep, no rear speakers in the early cars - hence Volvo produced the ones that replaced the rear cubby boxes as there was no existing side-panel cut-out. I think you'll find the wiring is already there and just stops...

Will drop relay into post for you, no problem.

Agree with you re the rear arch stickers - and it's amazing how much they clean up with some t-cut (as I discovered on Nilani by accident...)

I shall try to make your castle my castle in the not too distant future!

David

That is odd as my September '88 car does have speakers in the back, or am I misjudging to which you refer, as the speakers I am talking about are the ones next to the back seats and forward of the lower seat belt mounts

The change came in mid-1988 I believe. My car was a February 1988 model (on an E-plate), with no rear speakers. I remember enquiring after the ones for the cubby boxes at the time, taking a deep intake of breath at the price and decided the cassettes sounded well enough just in the front!!

Mind you, thinking that through, it's odd a G-reg car has no rear speakers...although the 480s were sold in relatively small numbers so I think there was quite a lot of "old stock" taking time to be sold and registered. Hmm...

David

[MisterH]

Yep, no rear speakers in the early cars - hence Volvo produced the ones that replaced the rear cubby boxes as there was no existing side-panel cut-out. I think you'll find the wiring is already there and just stops...

Will drop relay into post for you, no problem.

Agree with you re the rear arch stickers - and it's amazing how much they clean up with some t-cut (as I discovered on Nilani by accident...)

I shall try to make your castle my castle in the not too distant future!

David

That is odd as my September '88 car does have speakers in the back, or am I misjudging to which you refer, as the speakers I am talking about are the ones next to the back seats and forward of the lower seat belt mounts

The change came in mid-1988 I believe. My car was a February 1988 model (on an E-plate), with no rear speakers. I remember enquiring after the ones for the cubby boxes at the time, taking a deep intake of breath at the price and decided the cassettes sounded well enough just in the front!!

Mind you, thinking that through, it's odd a G-reg car has no rear speakers...although the 480s were sold in relatively small numbers so I think there was quite a lot of "old stock" taking time to be sold and registered. Hmm...

David

Yeah I think mine is a MY89, in Sept '88, but without things like Cat for example, its odd how there are so many discrepancies...

[dekkb]

Sorry, been something of a chaotic day, shall do full update soon. However, one thing I had with the car, was that Deja-Vu feeling; I'd seen it before I was sure.

Yup, the car's already a YouTube star!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWd7kdGSbUA&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-eE4lWiaDI&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db9HBOUMz44&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v37suTHfrRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnReRWZhGo

Its proven a handy bit of reference material already, and it's good to know the history!

I think I've seen one of these before, so I just watched all four. Bad move, it's like pulling teeth Good to hear about the progress being made etc, It's kicking me into doing some work on mine again, which (everything crossed) might actually have a garage to live in this winter.

[jifflemon]

So, I left you last time with shiny bottles, and an alternator roughly working as volvo intended...

What I forgot to mention, was that our beloved electrician cut through the level sensor wiring (lord only knows why!). I carefully removed the sensor from the bottle, cleaned the connector,


de-pinned the plug, with hopes of saving it....



Only to discover the sensor was actually duff! have lobbed it back in temporarily, I may have a spare one at the workshop.

So, temporarily refilled the coolant with water, ran the engine up, and wow.... my once clean bottle was filthy. Normally I'd just whack a chemical flush in and be done with it, but it's not MY money I'm spending, so we go old skool.....

Nose cone off, Radiator out, reverse flush it with the hose pipe until it runs clear.

Then I move to the car to reverse flush the pipe work, thermostat out, instant gasket cleaned off (sigh!), clamped off the small hot pipe, reverse flushed the main ones, until once again, they were running clear.

Then I tried to flush the small one. Not a chance. Nothing, nadda, zero....

So, do you remember in the Video, "the electric water puimp was constantly running with the engine off"? Well, to "fix" it, they removed the pump and joined the hoses together....... With this








For anyone interested, the flow rate of a giant pencil, is, surprisingly, nill.

Pencil removed, more flushing happened, and I'm now needing a trip to B&Q to get a temporary hose connector.

In fairness to the dynamic duo, the pump *may* have been running all the time because the timer relay had been replaced with a standard 5 pin relay, which could have caused the symptons (as well as causing a MASSIVE permanent drain on the battery, even after the pump was disconnected. So for now, the relay is removed and we add a timer relay to the parts list - Although, to be fair, I'm not too sure the engine needs the auxilary pump.

Speaking of troubleshooting electrics, as you know we've got lots of fun there...

The O/S headlamp goes pop tastic if it's connected, auxilary lamps dont work and we've a few other things to troubleshoot. As such, and to make life easier, the relay box is now here...



and in a similar chaos inspired working method, we've also had the dash out.



And you knows those people that hit the top of dashboard to "make the infocentre work"? Well, here's what eventually happens....



I think I've a spare thats a little less knackered (but still knackered) so can try and make one good from two!

[dcwalker]

Always frightens me when I hear about people whacking the dash-top It's not how things should be, of course, but sometimes people don't seem to allow for how alarmingly fragile certain areas of our cars actually are...

Good luck with repairing that! Sorry, don't have a spare of that part of the dash.

Headlamp relay is on its way

I just love that pencil! At least it stayed in place - it could have gone galivanting off around the system, point first, until it did some serious damage!

Many years' experience has led me to never be surprised at anything the 480 throws up. It has also led me to never be surprised at what people, in their frustration, have done to them!

David

[jifflemon]

So, as part of pulling the radiator out to flush it, that meant removing the nose cone.
Removing the nose cone meant removing the lights....

So, lets make the front lights a little better, as the dynamic duo have worked their magic here too..

I present "the lens repair"



Yes, it's horrific. wouldn't be half as bad if it were flat! no saving that one I'm afraid. Ideally, we want a pair of news lenses from Joep, but thats 75 euro's of our budget gone. So, a rummage through my secret spares, and I found a fairly decent one. By no means perfect, but much cheaper than 75 euros!



Now we all know that the rear lenses can suffer degradation, and that you can with judicious use of wet'n'dry paper, patience and polish, bring them back to life. Well, same applies to fronts. And so we did.... Better than before, but as the fronts suffer from being blasted by road grit, the lead a much harder life than the rears. It's a bit of improvement, but I'm worried about taking too much off....



The black background doesn't help - shows up all the imperfections!

here's the same lenses against a white background



Not perfect by any sense of the word, but usuable and better than before!

next up - The cases. Well, they've got the oh so usual melting marks. However, we can improve them slightly. A little bit of a rub down, a little masking...



And apply some chrome paint....



Next job is scraping all the old glue off to get a decent surface to bond the lenses back on to.

So, onwards we go. As the sanding paper is out, the obvious next port of call is.....

These:


Ok, probably only "obvious" in my chaotic mind.... As you can see, the left one has already been attacked with the wet'n'dry. The other soon followed, and it wasn't too long before they looked like this:



I also tested and replaced the multitude of blown dash panel bulbs; and by multitude, I mean 4.



that's 2 heater panel bulbs, 1 heated seat panel bulb and 1 cigarette lighter bulb.

Sadly, also disocvered the keyhole illumination bulb hold was missing add that to the wanted list

Finally we move to the rear. I put on my big boy pants and very, very carefull started to remove the rear lenses.

centre panel first, revealing the welding repair done by the dynamic duo's father. Was paint too much to ask for?





as you can see, the NS lense is broken along the top. I'm guessing our you tube friends tried to lever it out. There's a LOT of sealant holding them in...









Very gentle pressure, and a nice warm day meant that soon we looked like this:



I also removed the rear hatch seal and horrific tailgate wiring....

How much sealant was used?

[Alan 480]

to be honest I also use the black mastic sruff to try and seal the hatch seal onto body/trim!!

AND along top edge of the lights, then smoothed out / wiped with a finger covered/dipped in white spirit

this seems to have cured some leakage as I can make out where the water had been running down the back of the lens holder.

howeverI spent ages today with watering can and result..... no leaks, but sadly the water WAS coming in last week so no idea how / why it comes in with rain but not with watering can? unless it is just that sustained rain fall gives enough time for the water to find it's way in.

[jifflemon]

Apologies for the delay in updates; Its the end of financial year in "real work" and that means I'm little bit busy!

Work has been progressing on R1 though; When I left you last, I'd pulled the rear lights out. Well, the NS light was possibly beyond saving, so I dug out my spare (again, not a pristine £600 savings job, but slightly more usable than the current one).
Both lights were then treated to a flat down of the outer lenses, which revealed a lot of surface pitting. So, I decided to give them a coat of 2k Lacquer...



Not too bad! Here they are mocked up on the car (awaiting lense seals before final refit)





The more observant amongst you will also notice that the top half of the boot area that had been repaired got de-rusted, primed and painted black too...



I'm deep into the wiring at moment, which is never fun. As you know the relay box was living in the footwell, as I started to try and trace and undo the work done by the youtube twins.

First little victory was getting the popups working. Someone had replaced the popup relay with this:



Which is NOT a pop up relay (its the blue relay from the end of the fuse box). Replacing it with the one from Henry, did not however, fix the issue. I dug deeper, and found that the other missing relay (front row, middle, to the left of the red relay holder), should actually be a 5 pin change over relay (that doesn't use one pin - nice!). Replacing this resulting in this:

Pop up action (right click and open in new tab)

next on the list were the continuously running headlamp washer pump, and the lack of Aux driving lamps on flash/full beam.

perusing the wiring diagrams, both circuits are controlled by the CEM. So, lets go have a look.

Sadly, I was not the first person here....



snipped and then scotch-locked wiring added (and thus, removed by me!)



As crazy as the dutch are, I don't think they'd have run the loom through that wiring like that...

The plugs to the CEM were, lets say "interesting"







Thankfully, the green rusty ones are an extension circuit that can be removed and thrown in the blasting cabinet....



however, the electrical gods were still not pleased with my efforts, and the problems persisted, despite joining the wire and cleaning the terminals.

The CEM has a self diagnosis function - cool! First time I ran, it started to test various circuits, then errored at one step. By the time I'd found the reference material (which is here), I'd forgotten which step it was at - to be fair, I was using a french version at first and was doing my best to try and remember 35 year old french lesson stuff! Anyway, no problem, we can just run it again. It errored at the very first step, which is, essentially, dead CEM.

Now, it's very important in projects, not to let things get you down. Its one of the reason I work in my chaotic way - there is, a sort of order to the chaos.
Never do too much at once (To easy to become depressed at the scale of work required)
Enjoy the little victories (that's what keeps you going)

So, when I hit a big problem, I need a little victory, something to soothe and calm the nerves...

So I cleaned the engine bay!



Airbox is out because it gives better access to the gearbox/subframe, plus its easier to clean it....

[jifflemon]

Things may start to slow down a little on R1 now; For those that don't know, I've got R2 to play with. This needs to get MOT'd and gone ASAP, as R3 needs collecting very soon!

[Jay-Kay-Em]

Excellent progress!

Rear lights not too shabby at all, wise words about the "little victories" and the airbox amongst the dishes made me laugh

"The importance of the three R's"

[MisterH]

Those lights are nothing short of miraculous! If one of mine wasn't cracked I'd try and do a similar thing. How did you achieve that, 2K lacquer I saw mentioned