Oh the upgrades
Aug 15Otto – my volvo 240 DL sedan – since I haven’t posted in a while, has gotten the first of several suspension upgrades. I’ve finally decided it’s time to start, so I’ve started collecting the parts to perform this – culminating in new 
16″ VOXX MG’s (which is a 2 inch upsize) and Goodyear Eagle ResponsEdge (which is a stiffer sidewall, wider tire upgrade) to match my already running 25MM IPD Anti-sway bars and freshly installed Koni Sport (lowest stiffness setting) rear shocks and soon-to-be Bilstein HD front struts. B&G 1.6″ lowering springs (red) are on order which would go on at the same time that I get the bilsteins. It would be nice to get it all at once, but budget and availability issues (mostly availability) make me wait at least 7 days after I buy any components to have them. 
But patience is a small price for ride quality – which I will say might end up being a little more harsh but I definitely will have better control over rough Houston roads – considering that the car is so narrow and bouncy from the factory (if right now with fresh rear koni yellow shocks and ipd sway bar kit already feels great). It already handles like a sports car for the most part, since the front shocks which are only a year and a half old (KYB standard) and new bushings and mounts up front so I can only imagine what it will feel like when it’s all done – Houston roads, Otto will be nearly rally ready.
Other installations and repairs I’ve recently done include Installed new Hella 500 (driving lights), and retrofitted the AC to R134a – only a couple of simple but vital things were missing from the OEM conversion kit. The AC now blows a cool 45 degrees in the lowest setting, though the car is so well insulated that any sunlight coming creates a greenhouse effect. I use it sparingly because I’m still using the old R12 condenser which is tubed rather than flat as is needed for the smaller R134a molecules – but it generally does well.
The Hella driving lights are WONDERFUL – on top of adding an aggressive night time look – they increase my single lane forward visibility by at least 25 ft in addition to the 30 feet my normal and fog lights create without creating any unnecessary glare to oncoming traffic – except when on a gradual curve. They are wired in to high beams and independently to the parking light circuit – which also powers the foglights. All run on their own separate if not occasionally chained relays using the stock step relay as a main controller. I had to create new brackets both for the driving lights and for the hood latch support in order mount the lights behind my grille in an aesthetic proportion to the headlights – while not creating too much more obstruction to the condenser/radiator. The new brackets are aluminum bolted to the stock headlight fixtures and twisted flat in the middle holding the bottom and top of the lights – since this effectively created a new mounting area it had to be secured because my original idea allowed the lights to vibrate on EVERY bump and in high wind (highway driving) – this is very important since I’m stiffening the suspension even more. I replaced the original steel vertical spacer bracket with twisted flat aluminum 1″ to allow air to easily pass it – which freed up about 2 inches of air space in the middle of the area. The horns were relocated to a less visible and more effective position at the bottom of that bracket. All of this resulted in a cleaner than stock look for the area behind the grille. AND as an added bonus, the grille provides a blinder effect for the lights, where even though the lights are shallow parabolic reflectors, which make them a sharp straight beam, any scattered light is nearly not visible from a 45 degree angle. Before I replaced my rear shocks, however, there was a problem of bumpy roads (once I got rid of the vibration issue) making the beams bounce from low on the road to tree tops. No longer a problem since the back end is no longer a lever pivoting in the front.
A beautiful thing about all the lighting upgrades I’ve made, is that even with all front lights on (a total of 340 watts – 24.3 amps), the AC running, and sitting at a stop (or moving), the stereo cranked up to my personal limit volume – with four 4 1/2″ Infinity Alpha multi cone door speakers, one 3 1/4″ center channel, two 8″ woofers, and one 10″ bass tube — all of which will rattle walls 4 houses down with absolutely no audio distortion — do not make the lights dim AT ALL not even for a moment – not even when the AC compressor kicks on.
I guess I have the electrical safety overkill method down and working well with the 80 amp stock alternator, relocated (to rear) Optima red top battery, 2 farad capacitor and 4 guage wiring I installed a while back. Eventually, when I install a PC or Mac Mini in the car – with auto power controller for a proper shut down I will have to probably install a higher rated alternator maybe 100 or 120amp and additional battery – Kinetik power cell to replace the capacitor and supplement the existing battery (or replace the optima with another kinetik or optima yellow top-deep cycle) so that I can run all those headlights, with the A/C while getting maps with GPS, streaming music all loud and watching movies from home and browse the web while driving, idling or turned off somewhere.
I guess with all of this improvement, I’d better get a damn good alarm system and some better insurance. Though I’m pretty positive I can secure most of the stuff a little better to make it a little less detectable and harder to steal. One should remember, this is an 18 year old Volvo 240, not really a theft target by any means. In this case, insurance might be to strip the paint and make him look ugly on the outside to mask all the goodies inside. or not…
Another thing on the list of changes is to install turbo. But this is much lower on the priority list than everything else, especially since it comes with its own set of extra maintenance issues, considering how hard I already drive as it is. I’d say, in terms of older entry-level-luxury cars, this one’s in his second prime.
On other news:
I finally upgraded this thing to WordPress 2.2, and I’d have to say I’m liking the improvements… it gave me the necessity to upgrade all my used plugins which are even better now, though for some reason Post Teaser seems to make the whole thing hang and result in a 30 second time-out error. So for now, the posts are all in full on the front page.