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Dave's new 155mph wardrobe mover / Reason #378 why the Cavalier won't be done soon

8K views 47 replies 17 participants last post by  Davey j 
#1 ·
Yep, more frankly brilliant decisions brought to you from north of the border! Up until recently the daily driver fleet consisted of Helga, my long suffering Swedish bit on the side who's been used and abused for the past 12 months / 30,000 miles and has proven to be utterly utterly brilliant and never put a foot wrong. I've also been running the Cavalier SRi as and when required however it's been puffing blue smoke, needs a clutch, won't idle well and generally needs some TLC. That along with the fact the old diesel V70 needs an Mot prompted me to weigh up my options.

Having decided my old workshorse would fail it's MoT miserably based on the fact it's been royally abused and during the aforementioned 30,000 miles and has had about £30 spent on repairs, I drew up a list of possible replacements for it. It had to be pretty cheap, reasonably interesting, big enough to fit all my crap in and be free from uber complex control systems and multi-link suspension and general nastiness like that. Aka, something from the 90's when cars were built with a degree of skill. Plus she stated under no circumstances was it to be another Volvo. Period. End of. Divorce meterial.

So, couple of weeks back I retired the SRi back to the garage and bought this...



:face:

It's a 1997 850R wank-o-matic with 142,000 miles on the clock and a stack of receipts that could cholke a decent sized horse. Recent wallet emptying shenanigans include four new Falkens, refurbished wheels, cambelt and water pump, all new bushes, all new brakes and a new Magic Tree. Test drove it in the rain, suddenly remebered how alarmingly quickly they could get you to 150mph and handed over some cash. A well thought out decision I felt. Ang, well... she'd probably argue that fact to be fair.

Anyways, no sooner had it arrived back home and I had a call from the garage where the old red shed was residing and being checked over ahead of it's Mot. To be delight, it needs a couple of bulbs, a balljoint, handbrake tweaked and an ABS ring. I immediately cancelled the funeral and proclaimed it was going nowhere. Ang, well she was less delighted to discover the driveway now houses two Volvo estates though has perked up slightly now that she's discovered the TRCS on/off switch and the Sport button. Basically they translate as to the "More tyre smoke" button and the "Where's the fecking fuel gone?" button?

Progress, we need progress... so I 'borrowed' Coo's machine polisher and set about doing the whole car. 3 days and severe sunburn later (tis a rather sizeable old thing!) and it was done though I haven't tackled the roof yet as that would be like curring the pitch at Wembley with a pair of scissors. I suspect I may have to hire one of those massive industrial spec floor polishers for that job. Another several hours were spent digging the splattered compound out all the door checks, window seals and off the driveway... the neighbours dog... the house... and that was that.





Only changes so far are a new thermostat which weirdly was the same job I had to do on that short lived Vectra GSi estate. Difference here is the Volvo took all over 5 minutes and the V6, well that was nearer 5 sodding hours. I've also fitted clear repeaters on the wings for extra scene points and cleaned my Ikea/Swedish pornp spec wood, alcantara and leather spec interior. I also nearly electrocuted myself whilst poking stuff with a multi-meter and in the process, the EML light came on to make it's displeasure known. Got that reset last night. I also managed to get the average fuel consumption up from 16mpg to a truly outstanding 29mpg. I now know why the man at the Shell garage smiles at me so cheerily.

On the other Vovlo front, it's MoT expires in a couple of days so I should really go and make a start to it though it's made it's feelings about the new car well and truely known by a) breaking down and b) seizing it's alternator pulley. Investigation revealed that, contrary to Angela's belief, Volvo diesels will not run on air and athat some funny fecker wanted £180 for a new tensioner and pulley. Not on my shift sunshine.



Baws to that plan. One BMW Z3 timing belt pulley later and we're back in business for less than £15. Though according to knowledgable men with beards on the Volvo club thing, it won't work. A 500 mile round trip to Cumbria yesterday would suggest otherwise. So, needless to say the Turbo has been shoved onto the back burner yet again whilst I play with the Swedish twins for the forseeable future.

:face:
 
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#6 ·
epic cars. Friend of mine has one of the most powerful ones in the UK and runs a specialist Volvo company. He let me drive his auto 850R when we went to Leman few years ago as i was the only one who didnt drink. Was far from standard and well it ate a 911 for breakfast :lmao:

Great Buy :)
 
#12 ·
Ah well... that lasted a long time!

Now away to deliver Team Volvo to it's new owner at Edinburgh Airport then it'll be heading south... a f*cking long long way south!

Hey ho, onwards and ever on. Anybody know of any decent, early Calibra Turbos for sale?
 
#14 ·
Too many toys/head ruling the heart/wasn't being used... so tentatively stuck it up for sale and then a man from Top Gear rang, bought it on behalf of Jeremy Clarkson and it's now en route to North Africa to be used in one of their forthcoming challenges. Once it's done, it's coming back to the UK and will be displayed in 'World of Top Gear' at Beaulieu motor museum for a few months. Unless they completely wreck it, which is highly likely.
 
#16 ·
Hmmm, given it's an auto 850R and current African temperatures are circa 38deg... "very cool" is something I suspect it won't be! In fact, I fully expect it to melt something significant by the time it rolls off the boat. They've already been advised to take the thermostat and throw it in the bucket and rig up a constant run fan. Fooking thing used to create heat haze driving to Tesco never mind Tunisia...
 
#22 ·
Thread revival...

Remember this... my beloved, near mint (well, ish...) Volvo 850R estate and that funny story about it going off to Africa with the Top Gear team to do things a Volvo 850R estate was never really designed to do.



Though being fair, this is probably deemed less abusive than Ang on her "got to get wine, Tesco shuts at 10" missions. Anyways, it'll be aired on the telly some time soon - new series starts in February. As for the question "Did it make it?" Not sure but whatever happened, it certainly went out with all guns blazing.

Now obviously having sold said 850R as it was doing 20mpg, could consume front tyres in a matter of minutes and was about the length off the Ark Royal... I ran the faithful old diesel for a while then got bored plus Shell were phoning daily to make sure I was ok. I felt bad for them and the local tyre bloke so figured I should do the right thing and buy something else to replace it, though not something that does 20mpg, consumes tyres and is the length of the Ark Royal. Noooo, that'd be REALLY silly yes?

Good...

So, erm...



Hmmmm...

Another frankly brilliant / appalling (delete as appropriate) idea. Let's buy a million mile ubercharged Volvo estate with 20 minutes MoT left. Seemed like a great idea so off I went, duely drove it home and used 10,000,000 litres of unleaded in the process then stuck it in for an Mot and it duely failed. A gold, low mileage T5 saloon happened to be sat doing fook all so it then donated numerous parts to the cause - top mounts, airbox, headlights, discs/pads, links, interior bits, boost hoses and so on and having removed my knee cap with a flying T5 spring, all is well. Great success!

I have no idea why I bought it... seemed like a good idea at the time but the fact it boosts off the scale and has Runway tyres makes for hillarious progress. I might end up getting attached to it like I did with the old, shit diesel estate and it might end up getting machine polished, some paintwork, leather interior, MOAR boost and the comedy handling and rubber dogshit tyres attended to. That or it'll be getting punted along with said diesel estate in the near future so Paris Hilton can get herself a Coupe Turbo and I can maybe finish the Cavalier.

That is off course assuming a yellow T5-R doesn't come up for sale soon...
 
#38 ·
I have no idea why I bought it... seemed like a good idea at the time .
Some people just like ice skating uphill. You are not alone. Cool cars, nice to drive but daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, I wouldn't own one for the fuel bills alone. That one I borrowed off Will Foy hurt my current account balance.
 
#24 ·
I'd be buying one pretty soon. They're getting harder and harder to get these days (as with most 90's performance stuff) and clean ones are starting to command strong cash. There was a standard white one, 100k... £3495. WTF! I remember they used to be £500 tops and ten-a-penny. On that basis, I kinda regret selling the green R as they're getting equally rare... though it'd need to really be a red estate with the Ikae spec cream interior or a yellow T5-R.

To the classifieds!
 
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