Unverified Ownership 1989 Volvo 740GLE Estate - It's time to haul... Stuff.


SAEF.

As somebody said on my Facebook, Volvo electrics are as bad as everyone thinks Fiats and Renaults are...

Unlike myself while growing up, these lights are not grounded.
 
So. Electrical woes.

For the most part everything works well, until you get to lighting. If you indicate left the rear wiper does a single sweep. If you indicate left with the headlights on the whole cluster of lights at the front left pulses, the wiper washer motor pulses and the rear wiper starts running constantly until you turn the headlight off and back on again.

First port of call was earthing points, this involved pulling out the airbox, which was broken and replaced with a slightly better one.

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This reveals the washer bottle:

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And this earthing block, handily tucked up in the rear wing where it's a bastard to get to with adult sized hands.

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Grotty as a fuck, so pulled out and sanded with 240 grit.

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Really the spade connectors need replacing or dunked in something corrosive, but the best I could do was wedge sandpaper into them.

I then did the same to the block on the other side, beside the battery. I actually took the battery out to admire the fact my battery tray still exists. Rare on a 740.
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I also went about pulling out a lot of superfluous wiring, left over from the days of the car having a radio/beacon/alarm system.


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This was just from the area ahead of the bulkhead, I think most of it was alarm system. In multiple places the factory loom has been hacked into for earths and lives. This is probably why after reassembly the electrics were still just as fucked as before...

I had a wee meetup planned with fellow shit car folk in Perth, and the idea of driving for that long with no radio wasn't appealing so I was looking at getting one fitted.

The original radio cassette was fucked. I stripped it down and cleaned it and had a nosy for dry joints and shit, but I don't know enough to make head or tale of anything that's not obvious. The audio cuts in and out with loads of background static and pops and cracks like something is shorting out, smacking the head unit causes changes to this. Something is loose, but I'm fucked if I know what.


So, a local Volvo enthusiast I know gave me a deck from a '87 GLE he'd broken some years ago.

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Ah. My car has a different setup whereby there is a head unit and then a seperate amp down by the driver's knee, so incompatible wiring. Bugger.

Not to be deterred I ordered a conversion cable to DIN off eBay.

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Ah. This has the right connector but is still wired for the non-amp system. Bollocks.

I consulted the wiring diagrams.

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The top setup is a fairly standard radio install, naturally my car doesn't have this, it has the lower one. Unless I fancied butchering all the original loom connectors off it would be easier to just run new cables entirely for a standard basic radio setup. Hmmmm.

So, I had a generic radio cassette in the Acclaim with pre butchered wiring which I knew was working. I also had a proper Triumph radio cassette in the flat which I'd never been bothered to fit because somebody had cut the wires really short for some reason.

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So, the Triumph unit had it's wires lengthened. You don't get to see the hideous mess I made of soldering them...

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This then replaced the generic unit in the Acclaim.


Said generic unit...

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Was then free to go in the Volvo. I then discovered the solid core wire I'd bought was the perfect size to snuggly jam into the Volvo's stock connectors...

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So rather than run whole new speaker cables I hacked into the amp connector for them, and took the live and neutral from the head unit connector. The whole thing was then wedged into the hole in the dash using self adhesive sound deadening foam and finished with the original Volvo outer trim.

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Not too out of place for an '89 car really!


Naturally the driver's side speaker is blown and is super quiet and tinny but some tunes is better than no tunes. I also made the meetup, despite accidentally draining the battery by leaving the engine bay light on for two days...

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I didn't realise that 1989 was already in the awkward stage for electrics, with the amplifier and proprietary connections for the radio.
 
I didn't realise that 1989 was already in the awkward stage for electrics, with the amplifier and proprietary connections for the radio.
If anybody was gonna' do it then it'd be Volvo.

It's mad they didn't just instantly go bust, the amount of trim and engine options for various markets and minor production changes across the 700/900 series cars is insane. My car, being an '89, is last of the pre-facelift cars so features various bits from either side of the update, the Haynes has a seperate wiring diagram specifically for '89 cars. :ROFLMAO:

The aux belt had started squealing and it didn't take long to work out why...

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Mmm, rounded.


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Replaced, but still wrong. There should be a tensioning system like this:

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However it's all missing so the nut is just tightened against the slide. Y'know, like a normal tensioning system... The PAS pump has the same setup but the only bit missing was the long bolt.

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I happened to find a suitable thing in a cabinet I was decommissioning at work and it found it's way in to my pocket by accident or something...

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I also replaced the oil cap seal as it was leaking, just a tiny bit...

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I also cleared up the boot a bit...

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Put the interior back together.

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Also pulled the rear wiper motor out as it running constantly with the headlights was pissing me off and I can't find the route cause...

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Other than that just been piling on the miles. Such an easy car to drive...

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Oh this sounds like fun can't wait to see the repair process.

EDIT: I forgot to hit page 2, pardon me!
 
My employer spotted(Nissens)! :D

Tis a Mk3 Polo radiator destined for the Acclaim.

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UNISEF radio sounds like a meme man charity thing

It's a weird thing. The internals are 1990s onwards but the chassis is straight out of the 1970s. Presumably somebody found a stash of NOS chassis and threw them together as cheap head units.

Oh this sounds like fun can't wait to see the repair process.

EDIT: I forgot to hit page 2, pardon me!

The best sort of repairs are ones where you remove functionality from various areas of your car.
 
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TIPEX mudflap text restoration. Also, a friend donated a set of hubcaps so I now have a full set.

Replaced the blown driver's side speaker. Stock ones are riveted in, because fuck you.

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You'll not that they're also not round, the top and bottoms are squared off to fit behind the grilles. This means off-the-shelf generic sizes don't fit. I went a size down rather than slightly too big.

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Chopped the original speaker surround to bits

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Drilled holes in the old frame and screwed the new speaker into that.

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You can actually get adaptors, but I was doing a long trip the following day and needed banging tunes pronto.

Also the door mirror glass fell out

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I went out to the car one morning and the mirror was facing skywards for some reason. I didn't think much of it, readjusted it and set off, half a mile down the road I set off from a set of traffic lights with great vigour and the glass just flopped into the road and shattered into a billion pieces. Closer inspection showed some scuffs to the plastic surround so it looks like somebody knocked it just enough to loosen the glass. I got a replacement on eBay for something like £7 delivered.

I was also tired of the lack of instrument lighting, only half of the main binnacle illuminated. Everything else was completely dark. I enlisted help from somebody who also has a 740 to aid me in checking bulbs.

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I assumed there would be some circuits dead, but nope just dead bulbs. About 6 of them!

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I also faffed with the wiring a bit and got the electric aerial functional again. A lot of cleaning then brought the 12v socket back to life.

The following morning the car was loaded ready for a 5hr drive to Scarborough for holidays and I found the radio was completely dead, having been completely functional the night prior.

I pulled the whole lot apart again and managed to get the radio working but only on one speaker. The driver's side speaker is completely silent, even rigging up a different speaker to the wiring doesn't work and there seems to be quite a bit of electrical interference from the radio itself. I think it might have shorted somehow in the rat's nest of bodged wiring stuffed behind the dash and cooked something... I need to look, but it's dark and cold and shit now...

There is also a bit of a vibration from the drivetrain at certain rpms. I know there are a few bushes/bearings etc in the propshaft that can cause issues so that'll need a prod.

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It still runs!

In related Swedebrick news, my 1000€ 945 passed Finnish MOT without faults or demerits a few weeks ago, and now is ready for a roadtrip to Lapland, with LED bar and studded tires.

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Heater started only working on max speed, so I set about digging out the resistor. Started looking promising when I pulled the glovebox out and all this shit fell into sight.

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Ugh, hacked about wiring...

Anyway, resistor was easy to remove and it's not exactly mint.

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So these seem to be NLA, and loom adaptor converting to the later 900 series seems to be NLA, and the later 900 series resistor seems to be NLA... Oh, and the fan itself with the wailing bearings seems to be pretty much sealed for life, and also NLA. Getting everything working is going to be good fun.

While there I noticed the passenger side carpet was very wet under the mats...

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The foam underlay was sodden.

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Oh God more fucking redundant wiring...

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Well, carpet has to come out, which means...

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Was nice knowing you interior. Cut the foam padding out and peeled back the carpet. Passenger side floorpan is shagged the bitumen style sound deadening is doing a stellar job of holding it together. Not surprised, the driver's side is similar.

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I threw down some baby powder to show evidence of water ingress.

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After a few days of rain and around town driving the only signs of water getting in is a dribble through the fresh air flap in the A pillar, so hopefully the windscreen/heater matrix isn't fucked. There really isn't a lot of water getting in when the car is sitting still though, so I assume most ingress is coming in when the car is actually being driven.

Oh well, at least I got rid of this...

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That's Discovery levels of insulation foam holding moisture, I'm getting flashbacks.

Disappointing that none of the parts are available, does Volvo not have a classic division? Are they trying to pretend these cars never existed?
 
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I would have no troubles sourcing a fan resistor. I see the same part for all the 700 and 900 series cars though.
 
Skandix also has parts available.
 
Skandix is really handy for finding OEM numbers for classic volvo and saab parts.
 
Skandix also has parts available.
This is where I get my info, for the most part. Kind of a pain in that my car, being an '89, is a transitional model between the pre-facelift and facelift cars and has a lot of mixed up bits in it's DNA!

Basically before a certain point (around 1989) non-aircon cars had a resistor that looked like this:

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This is now NLA. There is one second hand one on eBay, for £50. In Lithuania.

Skandix (and others) sell the later version for a mildly eye watering 114 euro:

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However you need an adaptor cable, as thus:
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Which is now discontinued. Now, given there was an adaptor cable there must be a way to DIY splice the wiring to accept the new fitting, I just don't know exactly how to so this. I need to study the wiring diagram (another thing that's unique to 1989 models!)

The resistance is actually printed on the covering of the old resistor pack. 1.9ohm, 0.9ohm and 0.6ohm. Presumably this is for limiting the voltage for the 3 lower fan speeds with top being full whack. Looking at it I reckon they're just fixed lengths of wound wire encased in a moulded insulator of some sort. With this in mind I have to wonder if I couldn't just make my own resistor pack using the base of the original and some appropriately rated resistors...
Obviously this will require some thought as I am, what can only really be described as, electrically retarded.



In the last few years it seems parts for 700/900 series cars has really started drying up - mostly in terms of trim, electrical bits and pre-facelift 700 series specific stuff. I imagine as the cars age and are now starting to need more 35 year old parts replaced stocks of NOS stuff are now running low for the first time. Certainly they don't have the retro/classic appeal like the 200 series, values have just started to rise with nice low mileage estates leading the charge, so aftermarket support is limited.

It doesn't help that a lot of surviving cars simply get crushed rather than broken for parts as they're not really seen as worth the effort by scrapyards.
 
I remember going to the local scrappie with my dad to get a resistor pack for his Rover 400 because those were crappy and burnt out. Unsurprisingly, the replacements didn't last long so we got some ceramic power resistors online.

See if those have a wattage on, that's important so you don't start a fire. Power resistors with similar or matching values should be easy enough to find new, I can't stress enough that the wattage rating is super important.

Edit: Or you could replace the speed control with a DC PWM speed controller, you just need to see how much current the fan pulls at full speed so you can get one rated for that current. Either that or do what the PO did with my Discovery and say bollocks to speed control, chuck the lot in the bin and fit a thermal circuit breaker on/off switch.
 
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