1996 Volvo 854R (850R sedan) California "yard find"

In September of this year I finally broke down and decided that I needed something more than a NC Miata as my only vehicle. I decided that I wanted something I could park on the street and not be paranoid about, but that was also still kind of cool and unique. I have had a few Volvo P80 chassis cars and they have their quirks but when you have them dialed in, they are phenomenal daily drivers (maybe aside from the gas mileage) so I kind of had an eye for one from the start.

While perusing Matthew's Volvo Site I stumbled across an old classified ad for a 1996 850R for $1500 obo. Hmm, and it's just over in San Jose 15 minutes away! Same owner for over 20 years, 168k miles, well-maintained until the wife got sideswiped by a box truck while driving and parked after that...some interesting modifications (Bilstein suspension, 3" downpipe, EST exhaust, etc). Sent him a PM and the car was still available, so went to look at it.

I met the guy, who was super cool, and the car started up and drove relatively well, but it looked even rougher in person than the pictures indicated. Asked if he was firm on the price and he said "honestly, if you don't buy it it's going to be donated, and this car deserves better than that...

Looked up the going rate for the "we buy junk cars" guys ($1000), offered him that, and picked it up the next day.

She'd seen better days, but she will see some good days again...

The PO had it registered as non-op, which in California is its own headache...suffice to say I had to go to the DMV, twice, for 3+ hours each time to get everything sorted.

I also had to get it smogged. THIS had me paranoid as the car has a 3" downpipe with a CARB-compliant cat kind of jankily welded in. I've heard rumors about how exacting the smog guys can be so I took it to an old-school shop in an older part of town with a "free retest if you fail" policy. Well, much to my surprise the car passed! He didn't look a whole lot at much of anything and the car legitimately passed on tailpipe emissions so that was a big weight off my shoulders.

While casually starting to drive it, though, I poked around and made a laundry list of stuff I had to fix:

• Coolant leak from surge tank
• PCV system torn apart and leaking
• Weak battery
• Shot motor mounts
• Shot suspension
• Shot tires
• Extremely scary looking rubber fuel hose to rail
• Excessive turbo flutter (failed CBV and/or TCV)
• Occasional no-start (fuel pump relay was first guess but found out the hard way later)
• Driver's seat power adjustment not working
• Other crap I am surely forgetting

Knowing exactly what I signed up for, again, at this point (putting $10,000 into a $1,000 car to have a $5,000 car) I took a big sigh and ran it up to my detail guy to see if he could make me feel a little better about my purchase.

He made me feel a bit better.

So, given that I now live in an apartment and don't have a great place to work on stuff anymore, I took the car into DIY or Die Tech Shop (local hourly lift/tool rental shop) to do the majority of the mechanical work that I knew of it needed at the time. I'm not a fan of paying an hourly fee just to work on stuff, but man having a lift beats laying on your back on a cold Wisconsin garage floor to do everything.

Given the car's mileage I ended up replacing basically everything in the cooling system, which opened up a can of worms with a leaking aftermarket heater core...I did this job before in my '98 V70 and it went perfectly fine, but it seemed like something was wrong with the O-ring mating surface on the Swedish Car Parts heater core this time as I had a slow drip whenever the system was pressurized. I tried two sets of O-rings and various levels of torque at the coupling but the leak just wouldn't go away. Eventually I called their customer support to ask what they could do and they sent me bigger O-rings...how nice...I took the whole thing out again and replaced it with a Behr which hasn't leaked a drop.

While leaving the shop after that round of service, the car randomly stalled and died on the way home. Puzzled, I pulled over and poked at stuff under the hood. I found that the vacuum line from the TCV to the intake tube had come disconnected. "Hmm, I don't think that would be serious enough to make it stall, but we'll see." It started up again! That's that, I figured.

That wasn't that.

A week later the car just wouldn't start at all. It took me a little bit of troubleshooting to figure out that the fuel pump had given up the ghost. The car was parked on the street in front of my apartment, and of course I had JUST filled it up with gas. I hoped that my neighbors wouldn't kill me if I spilled gas everywhere, held my breath, and started gathering the parts.

Side rant: Volvo direct had the best price on the OE fuel pump, but I tried to order them and they rejected my order based on VIN# despite it being their own supersession of the NLA part number that they told me was the correct one and...it was a huge headache. I wanted to get the car going ASAP so I gave up on the OE idea and ordered an Airtex for a hundred bucks from RockAuto.

I wasn't thrilled to get a fuel pump in an opened box that looked like it had been test fitted in a dirty tank...and with receipts in the box from someone else's repair job, no less! But, I needed the part, so I took lots of pictures in case it didn't work and went to town making a mess in the street in front of my house. I spilled gas all over the place which got me a couple dirty looks from passers-by, but ultimately got the job done in about two hours (hardest part being careful removal of the old clamp ring and fuel line disconnects).

Next thing I got around to was the suspension. The blown Bilstein HD/Vogtland combo the car came on rode like total garbage and was too low, so I switched to Bilstein Touring shocks with H&R springs, which is a well-liked combo on SwedeSpeed. I'm super glad I made the swap; I got some ride height back but kept it looking good and the ride over road imperfections was a huuuuuuge improvement. I also replaced the busted up headlight trims on the front end which really helped make the car look a bit better, and upgraded the front brakes from the smaller 280mm setup to the 302mm since the stock brakes just felt...insufficient.

Spotted a kindred spirit while out and about later that weekend too.

So, getting close to having this thread caught up right now, the weekend of November 4th I was planning to drive from the SF Bay Area up to Portland for an event (just to do the drive once, see the scenery, get a feel for the distance, etc). I was originally planning to take my Miata and had booked the trip long before buying a Volvo was on my mind, but...as I closed in on the date I realized that it was going to be, like, 40-50 degrees and raining most of the time I was there. And that's not Miata weather. Did I trust this Volvo that I had driven out of a back yard two months prior? I figured it would be an adventure if nothing else, and went on my way...and thankfully, the car made it the whole way there and back without skipping a beat! (I did blow a rear speaker though which was not fun for the drive home.)

FWIW, before I left I also replaced the front grille with a slightly nicer one to freshen up the car a bit more cosmetically. Some Portland shots:

That's a sweet car, thanks for saving it

Run_Away said:

That's a sweet car, thanks for saving it

It's a flaw of mine but I just couldn't let it go to scrap, it's a real R...I'll be a hundred times upside down in it by the end of all this but I will have touched pretty much every fastener on the thing so I guess there's that.

Okay, so that catches this build thread up to NOW (this is what I get for waiting to start one). After going on a fun little detour related to that blown rear speaker that Tom Suddard and Keith Tanner rescued me from, I am back to focusing on the next steps for this car.

The pink elephants in the room are the sideswipe damage on the driver's rear quarter panel, and the totally trashed hood. My intention is to have the car repainted at some point soon; the hood is unsaveable so I need to find a replacement, and I need to figure out if I want to have one shop handle the bodywork and paint and hope for the best, or if I should have a really good body guy fix the quarter panel damage and then go with a Maaco special or something for the paint.

The Volvo-savvy among you will also have noticed that this car is missing the correct R front valance and rear spoiler. Sadly, the valance is long gone and my attempts at purchasing a replacement have only ended in would-be sellers disappearing. I do have the original rear spoiler, but to be honest I never felt like it matched the 850's lines all that well.

Luckily, I Have Ideas.

Instead of trying to find an incredibly fragile R front valance, I am just going to knock the fog light holes out of the regular 850 valance I have (they are marked on the backside so dealers could cut them out to install add-on fogs) and add a 960/S90 front lip. I happened to see a picture of this done on two other 850s once and was like "hey, that looks really good!"

For the rear spoiler, this is what the stock one looks like, for reference. It's not an offensive piece, I had just never loved it all that much:

While poking around the interwebs I stumbled across this pretty crazy Indonesian modified 850. I was trying to figure out what spoiler he's running and realized "hmmm....that looks an awful lot like an E30 M3 Evo spoiler!"

I decided that I liked the lines of the base spoiler a lot but not the Gurney flap, so I found an eBay seller offering repops of the E30 M3 non-Evo spoiler and e-mailed them to ask for measurements. Go figure, the width is a PERFECT fit for an 850 trunk lid, so I went ahead and ordered one. The $150 investment isn't that bad so we'll see how much I like it compared to the factory style piece side by side.

I have some pondering to do on the paint work stuff so my next steps will probably be to pull the front valance and knock out the fog light holes, and test fit the 960 lip I got from the local Pick-n-Pull. I might go out in search of a nicer hood this weekend too.

Also, just a shout out to this Indonesian 850 build in general. This has given me all sorts of ideas...

I hope you stopped by IPD when you were up here. 

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

I did not! It didn't occur to me until late in the weekend unfortunately. I'll be back though and I will come up with an excuse to stop by (lord knows I've given them enough money, might as well see the place).

I am just now noticing that some of my images are not working on mobile for some reason. Will try to fix that tomorrow.

Your pics in your first posts aren't working

docwyte said:

Your pics in your first posts aren't working

Check now and let me know if they're all working, I figured out the hosting problem last night but was too tired to fix it so just did it now.

There is a odd rear suspension bushing thing to check on these, dealer called it "delta links".  Its a aluminum cast bracket, with a bushing, the bushing has a steel tube, that steel tube will rust / expand and then the aluminum piece will start to break.  Common issue.

   I had a yellow t5r long time ago, great car, actually used it to tow my  race car.

Always loved the 850 body style. Boxy but with the right touches they look perfect. 

Also, that 5 cylinder wail is flat out awesome. How does it run with the automatic?

TED_fiestaHP said:

There is a odd rear suspension bushing thing to check on these, dealer called it "delta links".  Its a aluminum cast bracket, with a bushing, the bushing has a steel tube, that steel tube will rust / expand and then the aluminum piece will start to break.  Common issue.

I am well aware of the goofy rear suspension on these and the headaches involved...previous owner took this one to a hack mechanic for an alignment who managed to snap off two of the delta link bolts used for setting alignment and said "sorry, nothing I can do"  also needs the new rod end/bushing unit things at the tip of each delta arm. I am a big DIY person but it's going to the local Volvo indie for that work...

kevinatfms said:

Also, that 5 cylinder wail is flat out awesome. How does it run with the automatic?

As much as I would love for this one to be a manual because of the cool factor, we never got any kind of manual 850 turbo in the US, and the automatic is genuinely well-suited to the big turbo engine anyway. You can stand on the accelerator and it just stays at peak boost the whole time as it runs through the gears.

Love this!   Love to see 'saving from scrap' builds

I had an 850 T5 wagon (260 ish hp?) and acceleration was definitely adequate. If you could handle the torque steer it was about all you'd want in an FWD car. It sounded great too, even through the factory intake and exhaust. With the Bilstein Touring shocks you've got it should handle and ride great; that's what I put on mine, though in stock height springs, and I loved the handling and ride.

I love P80's and have bought my fair share of sub-$1k examples (mostly of the GLT flavor). 
 

but man, the blown out suspensions, the rattling interiors, the awful PCV systems... who am I kidding I know I'll get another some day

straight pipe when?

Its always nice to see an old interesting car getting saved.  I haven't owned one yet myself, but I do work for the Volvo Truck company and I got to take a trip over to Sweden once.  I found this well kept wagon right in the airport when I landed in Gothenburg.  The Volvo Musuem was pretty fun to visit too.

Super jelly. Wished I got several of the ones I COULD have got, though didnt. 

Sigh.

Got to the Pick-N-Pull this last weekend and robbed a silver 850 of a bunch of parts I need. Also grabbed a front lip from a 960. Swapped the hood right at the Pick-N-Pull to save having to dispose of it myself.

Spent today test fitting and trimming the lip for the 850 bumper so that it's ready to go after I have the car painted. In the mean time I'm going to sand some of the scuffs out and reinforce a few areas that are starting to crack.

Finally starting to feel like real progress on this thing cosmetically.

Nice job!  That is looking great!