My driver side heated seat hasn’t worked since I bought the car, even though the light illuminates. All of the electrical connections seemed OK so rather than trying my luck with the donor heating element I decided to just swap the thermostat. Once installed it took a couple of whacks of the center console to get the button to work but, sure enough, I started to notice a nice warm sensation in my nether regions.

While the seat was out I took a look at the lumbar support and noticed this little I-shaped rod had detached from its mechanism. I crimped it a bit, snapped it into place and now the lumbar support works. Overall the seat is more comfortable and looks better since I also grabbed a fitted seat cover from the junk-yard.

Now if I can just get the damn headrest out I can put the top of the seat cover on. Working by myself I could not get that damn head rest off, even with my hands up inside the seat pushing the levers. I wrestled with that thing for like 15 minutes but it wouldn’t budge. I can only imagine what I looked like, slumped over the seat, humping away in frustration. Maybe I need to hire an assistant.

During Thanksgiving I had a chance to go to the local pick-n-pull near my parents house. There were three 200 series in there, as well as a turbo 940 and turbo 740, both turbos about 1994. There was a manual tranny in one of the 240s, but I don’t have the scratch to buy it. Instead I pulled the tan seat covers off of one, then took out the bottom passenger cushion. They charged me for the whole seat, but I didn’t need it. I’m gonna swap it into the driver side with a new set of springs. Above is my current seat, below is the “fresh” vinyl and slip cover.

BONUS: I drew a picture of a towering pile of cars and posted to my Flickr page.

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.
I cut a square of thin wood to size, jigsawed an inner circle and used sheet metal screws to mount it to the inner skin of the door. The screws were long enough to mount it but short enough not to scratch the glass. The door panels fit pretty snug; they’re insulated with a thin layer of sound-proofing foam and the wood pushes them out a little more.

Once in place, I drilled the original speaker surround to deal with the speaker mount offset, then used wood screws to mount the speakers to the wood. They’re now super tight and the sound-proofing keeps everything from getting lost in the door cavities.

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.

After consulting Dave Barton’s tach install post I realized I’d forgotten to pull the wiring harness that attaches the small clock to the tach from the junked brick. It’s obviously necessary to run the clock, but I think it might also close the electrical circuit for the tach.

Using a 27mm deep socket wrench I pulled the steering wheel off and pulled out the instrument panel. This gave me a chance to also fix the broken trip odometer. Good thing, because the gas gauge doesn’t work and it’s crucial to know how many miles I’ve gone since the last fill up. Once I’m over 250 miles it puts me in risk of being stranded on the side of the road, with crying children and a sighing wife.

I used some compressed air to clean everything, then installed the tach. Somehow there were two prongs sticking out the back, instead of the one I’d seen in the how-to. To connect to left or right? I chose left. I plugged everything else in, mounted the panel, hooked up the battery, and now not only do I not have a clock, or a tach, but the speedometer and odometer don’t work. What a disaster. Looks like I’ll need to dig in again soon.

UPDATE: Fixed!