My Black Brick

When I first bought the brick I tossed the cardboard speakers and plugged in a cheap set of Kenwoods. They never fit quite right, as the holes in the speaker panel don’t align with the holes in the speaker. They were only able to attach to the door panel, as the screws didn’t match the holes in the sheet metal. I mounted them with only 2 screws each and had crappy sound out of the crappy deck.

When I got a new deck I went through the torturous process of rewiring all 4 speakers. I pulled the door panels out, sound-proofed with RAAMat and closed-cell foam and installed a wooden frame for the speaker.
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I pulled the instrument panel again and figured out the problem with the tach install. I had posted to the BrickBoard and a reader pointed out that I probably forgot to plug into the circuit board. He posted a picture and sure enough, that was the problem.

Now that I have a tach I can see this car doesn’t rev very high at all. The only time it went over 3k RPM was today driving 65mph up a long hill with overdrive switched off. I see now the B230F hits peak torque of 136 lb/ft at 2750 RPM. No wonder the red block engine last so long. There’s no pressure.

I figured I’d take my mind off the fact that I may not have a job in a few weeks and finally install the tach I pulled from a 244 in a VA junkyard this summer. While I love the big clock in the Volvo instrument panel, I’d also like to see what’s going on with the engine. Unfortunately I now have no clock, no tach, no odometer and no speedometer.

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I started installing sound dampening last weekend and continued yesterday. After doing a bunch of research I decided to go with RAAM Audio’s RAAMmat BXT and Ensolite closed cell foam. It’s been pretty messy but it’s making a big improvement. I’ve done both passenger side doors so far and will be reinstalling the front passenger side speaker today and hope to see improvement is sound.