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My B234F Powered 740 GLE Sedan

FreeEMSFred

New member
Joined
Nov 2, 2009
Location
Kiwiland
I've had this car for quite a while now, having originally bought it for the engine for a tiny sum of $900NZ from a tired and weary previous owner who had been stranded three times, blown a fuel pump, and been towed home by a truck due to lack of functional odometer/trip counter AND fuel gauge. I fixed the odo using Dave Barton's gears a few weeks back, and got a lousy 400km from 62 litres (must've nearly been dry). That sort of mileage is the price you pay for doing a burnout almost every day and redlining first and second gear where ever the opportunity presents itself. Twin cam engines are just like that. Love to be revved.

So I bought it for the engine... but it's too damn nice to scrap! So I'm doing the natural thing and keeping it forever. Seems logical. Logical, like falling in love, only with more passion and lubricants (only the best synthetics). I only have 9 cars including this one, and the 940 wagon will die soon in a way that somewhat follows in the foot steps of some other turbo brickers (more on this later!). That leaves only 8, pretty reasonable for one person, I think.

I have big plans for this car. A sleeper it will be. 500hp @ the crank is the plan. Should be cake considering the stroke and bore. I have a clean (and yet very dirty on the outside) 1994 940 squirter block in good shape to combine with the top end of the B234F (so I can not worry about it all the time), and the mandatory cross member and mounts, too. Yoshifab can supply the necessary parts, including rods, pistons, and cambelt stuff.

I juts have to figure out how to make the trans handle it, however linuxman has done quite a lot of writing up on how to go 9s on these tiny toyota transmissions. Big thanks to him for that! :-)

I have two 1041 940 axles with Eaton G80 guts. I have played with one of these a bit (read, sweet donuts in 940 B234F wagon (yes, got two of these engines, both running strong)) and really like them! Normal most of the time, welded when you need it. Not ideal for track use or windy roads, but great for skids and groceries. Might be OK at the strip, too. We'll see. In any case, one of these will go in fairly soon as the safety inspection sticker runs out on xmas day, the hand brake drum setup has monster play, and I do not want to be without this for very long, as I don't like parking my 240 wagon in public unsupervised.

The first iteration will likely be a B234F + TD05HR-16G setup as practice for the 240 wagon, as that's what I want to do to that. Once that setup migrates to the 240, it'll leave room for the big power build in this.

First things first, though, FreeEMS must do burnouts using this 740 as an embodiment. And so it will be done, before the end of January, unless I decide to do the 240 first. Makes little difference, except that this sees more day to day use.

A few pics for those now falling asleep:

My740GLEBadges.jpg


My740SedanSunroofBlueSky.jpg


My740SideViewShadow.jpg


My740RearWheelCleaned.jpg


My740SedanWithOldVersusNewTailLights.jpg


My740SedanRearEndLitUpInTheDark.jpg


My740SedanWithTwoMostlyGoodTailLights.jpg


MyTwoVolvosTogether.jpg




Such a sweet car! Thanks to Josh and Nick for recommending my first Volvo back in 2009, and Abe for helping me find one, and y'all for the wealth of info out there on this site and others. Great stuff :-)

Fred.
 
Totally forgot to update this thread. I've fixed up a bunch of stuff on this, got it street legal again, and running nice. Still some things left to fix up and improve, however it's fun to drive as is.

A few months back my sister got married! This car was the bridal car:

Volvo740SedanAtWedding.jpg
 
Damn that looks clean.

Glad to see you got new taillights as well.

Also, another person with the OEM Volvo visors!
 
Yeah, those wheels suit it perfectly IMO. I have 8 of them, now, but only 6 are mostly unkerbed. I plan to fit the other good two to the 940 Caravan and tow with this as a matching set :-)

Volvo940GLECaravanPhaseOneComplete.jpg






The other two I plan to get widened for drag slicks at some point. May have to ship to the states, or find some in the states to have done and shipped back, though, as the local place might refuse outright.

It looks cleaner than it is from a distance, but it's pretty good! And at the price, 900nzd, who could complain? A few minor body issues fixed, and a respray, and it'd look amazing. Interior is mostly mint, too, but various things are falling apart as Volvo dashes often do.

Yesterday I did some more work on it, and pulled the fan out of the dash (thank god it's not the 240 that needs a fan lol). This is what I found:


ClDTZnjUkAEcvCQ.jpg


ClDTvvcVEAAS5hO.jpg





Matt, by visors, do you mean the "monsoon shields"? To me visor is the thing above the windscreen you use to keep the sun out of your eyes :-) I have monsoon shields on four of my cars, three wagons and a 5 door hatch, and love them. Great for a rainy climate :-)

Fred.
 
Blower motor is back in the car, and tested on the bench to perform flawlessly at full speed, and any other speed between there and full stop. Updates:

ClMSaqXUoAAA2z5.jpg:large





Test rig: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/743958617766846464
Clean bottom: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/743966325161091073
Freshened up gasket: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/743966679575584769
New foam air seal: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/743972026063327232
New little drain hole: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/743972062067195904

And exceedingly boring video of testing the motor: https://youtu.be/SgUWnIPi4hA

Can't test it even on full speed in the car because a friend has the power stage module and is going to fix it. It was pretty toasted too: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/725263468555685888

ChCnR3mVEAA7ZFS.jpg:large




And for reference, they look like this on the outside: https://twitter.com/FredCookeNZ/status/727087277097111554
 
Gave the old girl an ATF flush yesterday. Out with the dirty brown stuff, in with the clear red stuff. And repeat until it comes out much as it goes in. ~13 progressively cleaner litres in bottles afterward. Peace of mind achieved!

Tomorrow I'm driving it half way down the North Island of NZ with this thing in tow:

C05_vhxUoAANBpM.jpg










The quality king single mattress will go on top of the blue sheet tomorrow morning after I'm done sleeping on it:

C06K8vOUUAAc0Lb.jpg









Five or six hours @ 90kph +20/-90. It'll be super weird being overtaken constantly, instead of constantly overtaking everyone. But I'll survive.

Should be a good maiden voyage for the 940 caravan behind the matching 740 sedan :-)

Hopefully I'll get a few more trips away with it in the coming months, too.
 
1077km on her first big out-of-town trip! Only issue was some brake run-out in the left front corner, which at its worst
had me wondering whether I'd be able to make it around the bend at the bottom of a long steep decent pushed on by:

C0-_YgoUAAETTqB.jpg









Which was only attached for 958km of the journey :-)

At one point a steep ascent caused a downshift into first at 40kph in the wet. Traction lasted a fraction of a second after
which it quickly redlined first spinning the right rear, then proceeded to shift into second and redline that too. I had the
stick locked in '2' otherwise I may have set a new wheel speed record for a single spinning 740 :-D As it was I estimate
the right rear was doing around 200kph, giving a 160kph ground-speed differential :-D I lifted off without too much delay
and rolled back into it more gently as if I'd let it keep spinning I think I may have ended up going backward :-D

So, next on the menu for this thing are:

G80 install (entire axle out of caravan into it, with half the mileage, no whine, and the G80 preinstalled!)
Front rotors/pads replaced (under thickness when I swapped them on from the caravan, but well improved over what they replaced)
 
New brembo "jumbo" 280x26 rotors and bendix metal king plus "heavy duty" pads:

C2r-Q0DUQAA9cQW.jpg







The existing rotors/pads came off the caravan's front end clip. When I pulled them off and put them on this car they were exactly at min thickness.

The ones I pulled off, the thinner/lighter 286x22 rotors (when new) that came off measured 19mm, a mm under minimum thickness, and were fully of rust pitting from storage at some point.

That was a huge improvement, and this one should be, too. Currently the left one is shaky when stopping. Yuck. Hard on the radius rod bushings, too, or whatever they're called in a Volvo.

I have a stack of small improvements lined up for this car, but these and the shifter bushings (which have gone AWOL) are top of the list. The list:

C2NL5d7UcAAFEMj.jpg
 
Slow reply, but: Thanks and thanks! :-)

So much has come and gone in only a few months, but here's today's photo for giggles:

DVoDsBFVMAAB4jT.jpg


DVoFVUTV4AAMcBL.jpg






Don't worry, I didn't die. :-)

It's had a MIG welded diff in it since December last year which was installed just before a drift event which I spent basically just doing donuts all day... OK, there were a couple of lame controlled power slides around cones etc, but it's quite tricky to do gear transitions with an auto while sideways. Gear transitions weren't an issue once it dried out, though, the B234F could only muster continuous wheelspin in first gear.

The MIG job was done in a rush the night before the event, or the one before that, or so. I must have left some slag in there somewhere. It must have found its way to between ring and cover. Hence blowing that chunk off.

Luckily I noticed the smell and drove it home quietly (70kph motorway, 30kph first exit on my side of the harbour bridge). Still, about 1/4 of the way from that exit to my place the pinion was able to slide back and hit the diff centre under decel. I've had that before in my ute, so I knew what to do: hold throttle gently open at all times, even when braking. Made it home carrying a precious cargo of 36 bottles of GREAT ozzy red wine:

DVoJGVIUQAA9b3Q.jpg:large






And here's a video screen cap from the drift day:

DRUtBUFUMAErYog.jpg:large






No stockish B230F could ever achieve that in a 1400kg odd car, that's for sure. The B234F is kinda borderline depending on the tyres. With good tyres it too would be no go. However the mission of the day was to nuke as many sh|t tyres as I could, and I got through 5 before the speedo cut out and I opted to stop and pack up. Turned out to just be a broken wire, but I thought some slag had destroyed the sensor, wrong.
 
MIG diff photo. A rough job, but not too bad, aside from cleaning up afterward...

DRPn7LKUMAIUJGi.jpg:large








I did run it up on stands and spray cleaners through it while spinning which carried quite a bit of fine stuff out, but some chunks must have remained and come loose recently. Oh well. Put about 500 fun km on it like this :-)
 
Dude, it's nearly 2020, not 1990 (that's the year of the car, not the date). They're only 2 mega pixel each, not the 16 they were photographed at :-D And only one of them is 2k wide, which any respectable screen should be able to display whether it belongs in your pocket or on your desk or on your knee. Oh wait, same one that was wasting space in the technical thread. Welcome! :-D

FWIW, I chose the two larger ones to be larger because in one case it was only 1k pixels wide, and in the other, the Volvo was small in the middle and the cloud was large to the left.

I'm also used to forum software that scales oversize images to the width of the available space inside the style format when placed inside the viewport of your browser in your chosen window size. But this one doesn't do that, so I don't publish 16mp images here :-)

Are you still using VGA? :p

EDIT: Can't complain about slow loading, either, even on dial up it'd be quick enough, only 400kB for one and 200kB for the other.
 
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