We've been lurking here for a while checking out the amazing builds and decided to post up a little thread about our project. My brother Alex and I are working on what could most accurately be described as a g-machine Volvo 242. It's not domestic, it doesn't have a V8, and it's not being professionally built, but we're pretty sure it still fits the mold. The car was originally my brother's project (I had my own), but we realized that it's a much more rewarding experience to share time on one car. Everything is being done in our garage with spare time and funds.
Since no one likes huge blocks of text with no pictures, here's a quick pictorial run down on what we have so far.
The victim: an 1982 242DL. Note the two-door configuration. Among us Volvo wackos it's generally considered the most desireable of the 240 body styles.
The car sat in a stripped condition for a couple of years before we decided to really move it to the front burner in December of 2008.
Moved the firewall back 6" and fabricated a new transmission tunnel.
Minitubbed the rear end and built a new parallel four-link.
It came stock with a fairly anemic single cam 4 cylinder, which was promptly tossed as the car got stripped. The new engine is a three liter (183ci) all aluminum DOHC straight six from a 1996 Volvo 960.
Tacked up a divided inlet equal length tube header. 1.5" sch40 with ~25" primaries and a 9" collector. The flange is specific to the turbo and falls somewhere between a T4 and T6.
Happy Holset is happy. Factory remanufactured HX50. Came off some Cummins powered dump truck. Compressor maps indicate that is tops out somewhere around 700hp.
60mm HKS knockoff wastegate.
We decided that a turbo just wasn't cool enough, so we added a blower to the mix. Eaton M90.
Mounted some carbon/kevlar buckets.
Tacked in the main hoop. The whole cage is being made from 1.75" .095" mild steel DOM.
Mounted the intercooler. It's an eBay special with a 4" core.
The wheeltubs were originally measured out to tuck something like a 285, but we recently got a new set of wheels that throw a wrench in those works.
BBS E28 race wheels. Three piece, single lug. 335/30R18 on 18"x13" ET25 rears and 285/30R18 on 18"x11" ET20 fronts.
It's currently sporting a T5-WC five speed with a custom adapter plate that I put together. With the kind of power we hope to be making it won't last very long though, so the latest hare-brained scheme is to cut out the 4-link and install a complete C5 Corvette rear end. They're cheap, available, and seem to be pretty stout.
That's pretty much the story so far. If you guys don't totally disapprove we hope to be posting up more updates in the future.
/Karl and Alex Buchka