My Volvo 244 Turbo Project

What an awesome project (the car and the building - love the sleeper factor of the car too. Keep us updated :)
 
nice project but still..............YOU OWN A F*** SUPERMARKET FOR CARS......

How cool is that......even if you were doing the worst crap in there in car projects like restoring a pink opel corsa i would still give you a 10/10 coolness factor!
 
I bought the supermarket actually because of practical and financial reasons :)
Last year I decided I needed a garage badly, because working on cars in the backyard is no fun for a lot of different reasons.

Now this building was owned by a friend of mine who is going to move to a place far away, so I got a good price because he just wanted to get rid of it. He even made a profit out of it but I think it was cheap enough, it didn't cost me much more than what building a garage here at home would have cost me. Also it's only about a 5 minute walk from my house, or 1 min by car.
2nd reason is if I ever get sick of cars (unlikely), I can sell it without having to move. Likewise if I ever want to move I still have my garage. I could even move in there if I wanted to :)
The 3rd reason is I have *a lot* more space than I would have had if I'd built a garage at home. The upper floor is about 3500 square feet and the basement about 2000. Meaning I have more than enough space for anything I'd ever want to do. My girlfriend is also thinking of starting an online shop so we'll be using it as a warehouse for her as well.
All this extra space means I can rent out the space that I don't need. Ideally I'd want to rent out garage space to friends to have a common garage with all tools and machines you could ever need. They pay rent, and the building would pay for itself meaning I have a huge garage for free!
I'm not allowed to rent it out just yet tho, but I will of course be after I make the final payment.

There's also a huge parking lot outside that's also completely mine, and people have actually shown interest in renting parking space from me for their caravans and what not.

So there you go, it was not a very hard decision to make :) The only drawback is the distance. If for example I need to fix something at home I have to go to the garage and pick up some tools, but I can live with that. Or I could just buy a $30 toolbox to have at home, then that problem would be gone as well.
 
Maybe moving to Sweden is a good idea...

Pretty sweet that you own such a large place. If you owned a Wal-Mart on the other hand, you'll be crazy.
 
Maybe moving to Sweden is a good idea...

Pretty sweet that you own such a large place. If you owned a Wal-Mart on the other hand, you'll be crazy.
Just make sure you move to the middle of nowhere ;) Because everywhere else things are a lot more expensive.

A Wal-Mart would be something for Jay Leno I think. I haven't quite reached that amount of cars (and cash) yet, and probably never will :)
 
I... want... Your ... Garage..:sad: :D . Well, I'm moving to another garage as well ;) . Nice work :thumbsup:
 
That's fantastic. I love the project (I love Volvos, I was on the verge of buying a 760GLE earlier this year).

I absolutely dig the supermarket though, that's just brilliant and inspiring me to buy some old project cars. The problem for me is that the house I've bought has little to no space for that sort of thing.:sad:
 
Wanna send me a 531 head and an M90? :wicked: Come on, I know you wanna....
 
Wanna send me a 531 head and an M90? :wicked: Come on, I know you wanna....
Hehe, those are amazingly hard to get even here. Or perhaps not that hard, I come across them quite often but people know they're worth money and a 531 usually costs $300 or more and a M90 usually over $700. I'll probably be needing one of those tho, not sure how much power the M46 can cope with.

I just bought a 405 head that I'll be using. Strange enough those are a lot cheaper even tho it's pretty much the exact same head except the spark plug holes are bit more centered on the 531, and the 405 obviously has injector holes. I got it together with an H-camshaft for about $150 :)


Anyway a small update.. Yesterday I started preparing the car for the trip to my friend to get the welding done. It's quite tricky because we have a lot of snow and I need to make a 10 mile journey in car in its current state (with amongst others the sunroof and interior removed).
So I finished up a bit in the engine bay, put back all the belts and such. Mounted some headlights and a drivers seat and put the car back on its wheels. I'm still waiting for the throttle wire, it would take a couple of days because the place my guy orders from didnt have it in stock. Amazingly enough it cost just $10 :blink: I'm just hoping it'll fit ;)
Unfortunately no new pics because I lent my camera to a friend.
 
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I found some old clips I made and decided to give google video a try :)

I mounted my camera to the steering wheel, it's not quite straight but that's because I didn't have any proper way for mounting it so you'll have to live with that ;)
So this was with the carburettor engine a short while after I bought the car. The "knocking" sound you hear when idling in the first clip is the exhaust system that was vibrating against something, I fixed that after filming this.

I didn't go any faster because I had accidently put in 96 octane petrol instead of 98, and also the road was quite bumpy. I was driving around without front bumper and headlights so I didn't want to take it out on the bigger roads ;)
Also note my leet driving skills.. I keep changing gears 500 rpm lower for every gear :glare:

0-160 km/h
[gvideo]1917187963566553583[/gvideo]

90-160 km/h, what I'll be using a lot to overtake other cars
[gvideo]-7865376610058944523[/gvideo]
 
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we need more project threads over here, its great fun to read I think :)

i once made one...

http://forums.finalgear.com/showthread.php?t=5969


i agree we need more of them, they're great to see different approaches to deal with a problem and from time to time you find great tips in them, which you won't find on normal information sites

update as you go plz ;)
 
Wow thats quick dude:blink: . My speedgauge cheats 30 kmh+ (I have short diff), so I reach 100 In no time :lol:
 
Hehe, the performance isn't bad at all for its age I think.. First time I experienced the turbo I was like WTF!! I had only had 100-ish HP cars until then, I never imagined such a small turbo could make such a huge difference.
I really can't wait to start working on the new engine and see how it performs when I'm done. It's not gonna be slower, thats one thing thats for sure ;)
 
Absolutely awesome ... so good to see folks from all over the world wrenching on rare finds. That "garage" of yours is incredible .. I see ALOT of potential with that building. Good job and keep us updated.
 
Well today I bought myself a new toy, a small sandblaster cabinet :)
That's gonna be a great help for freshening up parts. It's not that big, about 2x2x2 feet, but I can take bigger stuff to a friend who has a gigantic cabinet, his would easily fit a complete rear axle.
I need to buy some small stuff before I can test it out, the air hose for the pistol was too short and the seal for the bottom a bit too small, I dont wanna risk having all the sand run out.

It's not sa small as it looks on the pic ;)
076010_c.jpg
 
Nice! I wanted to buy one, but than I saw the price... So I dicided to make one, but not a cabinet. Work in progress :) . But its gonna be very powerfull, and I can sandblast a whole chassis with it.
 
Nice! I wanted to buy one, but than I saw the price... So I dicided to make one, but not a cabinet. Work in progress :) . But its gonna be very powerfull, and I can sandblast a whole chassis with it.
The price for this one wasn't that bad actually, I paid about $250 for it but I think it'll be well worth the money :) The guy with the huge cabinet built it himself and it cost him over $1500 only for the material.

Here's a pic of another friends setup, he just built a sandblaster tent in his garage when he needed to sandblast most of his 69 Charger :)
pict0430.jpg
 
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