The I Worked on My Car Today Thread

whoa · Post by **whoa** » 10 Apr 2010, 20:02

What did you do today? Do you have any little tips to share?

Me:

Clear-coated the tail-lights. They looked way chalky, so I had sanded/polished them last week with eh results. I sprayed on a polyurethane, UV-filtering clear-coat and now they look good. Not new, but better than the rest of the car, so good enough. And that's just leaving the sprayed-on finish alone. I might see if polishing it makes it even better.
Pulled and lubed the climate blower. Well, I lubed the easy-to-get-to bearing. We'll see if that gets rid of the glove-box birds.
Cooling system maintenance: replaced the thermostat and most cooling hoses (didn't do the heater hoses or the little turbo one). There is no reason to buy a long Torx socket. Just remove the fuel line from the rail, and a regular socket works perfectly. But damn, those bolts are seized in there. I removed the hard to get to one first, thinking there's no need to put extra stress on it by removing the other one. But then, removing the other one I felt like the bolt was very close to breaking; they really seize up in the block. And of course they are not bolts that are heavily torqued in. New bolts and plenty of anti-seize for the install. I will give them a quick turn back and forth every now and then.
Not something I did today, but a couple of days ago I re-glued my sunroof shade liner, using some 3M spray adhesive I got at Home Depot. But the first hot-ish day, it came unglued. Anyone know a good adhesive for this?

Post by **jblackburn** » 10 Apr 2010, 21:45

The question is where to put this so other people'll add into it. Hmm, I'll leave that to Matt.

I spent about 4 hours on mine today.
-Reconnected the PCV hose that fell off the intake. Good 45 minutes there.
-Took out the PTC nipple and cleaned it, then fought with the 2 connector hoses for close to an HOUR after dropping the elbows into the depths of the engine about 20 times. They're not on completely, the stupid hose is too short, but they're ON and that's good enough for me.
-Seafoam treatment, and then a good high-speed drive. I just used the existing vacuum line from the tree to suck in the Seafoam fluid, and it worked fine.
-And finally, changed the oil. Managed to get some all over my arm when the plug came out - WOW that's hot!

After everything I've done to it the past few weeks, it's definately got some of its guts back

Post by **matthew1** » 10 Apr 2010, 23:30

What to do with it!? Why I put it on the Home page of the site and Tweeted about it, naturally!

I didn't do a thing to my Volvo today. Family's in from out of town. I need to get on those control arms/c.a. bushings.

zhenya · Post by **zhenya** » 11 Apr 2010, 03:09

Let's see...

Today (well, yesterday, now) I changed the oil and filter and proceeded to make a huge mess when the drain plug fell in and plugged the drain on my oil filler pan and overflowed when I looked away for a few moments. One tip is that puppy training pads clean up an oil spill quite nicely! I'm sure there are cheaper options, but we had a bunch of these left over and they worked great.

I also installed a poly upper engine bushing and lower transmission bushing. Both of these were worn fairly badly. I would not call the change astonishing, but it's a nice tightening up of the car in general with little downside.

In the last week or so I have also installed my new (used) Columba wheels with fancy Michelin Pilot Exalto PE2 ultra-high performance tires, converted to the lug nuts to studs, re-dyed the gray exterior trim using a product called Showroom New, and had the driver's seat lower boltster professionally re-stitched! Oh, also replaced the rusting tail-pipe tip with a new one painted flat black to match my black and white color scheme! I also bought a new Craftsman jack today to replace the $20 one I bought 10+ years ago. I can finally jack up this car in what I'd consider to be a relatively safe manner.

Getting a look under the car today, I don't believe that I actually have a RMS seal leak. I think that fluid is a very small coolant leak. I am leaking a small bit of oil from the turbo lines, and also under the timing belt area back towards the firewall. I have no idea where that is coming from.

boksalg · Post by **boksalg** » 11 Apr 2010, 05:31

whoa wrote:[*]Clear-coated the tail-lights. They looked way chalky, so I had sanded/polished them last week with eh results. I sprayed on a polyurethane, UV-filtering clear-coat and now they look good. Not new, but better than the rest of the car, so good enough. And that's just leaving the sprayed-on finish alone. I might see if polishing it makes it even better.

I've tried to do this for a long time now; my rear lights are ALL WHITE, well, if I spray water on them, I can see the off color..
I tried hydraulic oil, sanding slightly, and polish - but they always get white, dull, and coarse after about a week.

Even bought the Turtle Wax Headlight restoration kit - with four sanding papers in it. Sanded one for an hour by hand - about 20% improvement, then the next week - almost back to bad.

Got any tip? What sanding paper are you using? I think the TW kit contains 400, 800, 1200 and 2400.
If I cant sand it with a power sander, I think I will have to buy new... All four...

Post by **vegasjetskier** » 11 Apr 2010, 06:41

I put new front brake discs and pads on the wife's PT Cruiser. The discs were rusted badly from the salt air here, resulting in a vibration in the brake pedal and causing the whole car to shake.

Installed "booger bushings" in the shift cable to tighten up the feel. It's much better now.

Also installed two Harbor Freight solar battery chargers to keep the battery up while the car sits (we usually just drive my car). I painted the plastic housings flat black first so we wouldn't get reflections in the windshield. Damn cheap plasic warped all to hell from the heat.

Well, at least the solar cells are putting out power.

I didn't do anything to my car because, well, it's brand new. Average fuel economy so far: 50.6 mpg (US).

whoa · Post by **whoa** » 11 Apr 2010, 08:11

boksalg wrote:Got any tip? What sanding paper are you using? I think the TW kit contains 400, 800, 1200 and 2400.
If I cant sand it with a power sander, I think I will have to buy new... All four...

If they look good wet, then clear-coating them will help a lot. I used this:

http://www.autobodytoolmart.com/u-pol-c ... 15130.aspx

If that doesn't work, there is someone selling upper 850 tail lights in good shape on volvospeed...

XxJenoxX · Post by **XxJenoxX** » 11 Apr 2010, 16:15

Well, today and yesterday, I went to an AWESOME junkyard and...

Replaced both rear deck speakers
Check out my front brakes....CANNOT diagnose that damn grinding, STILL!!!!!!
Changed the oil
Cleaned the flame trap....again....
About to guinea pig my dad's truck with seafoam, and if it lives, we will do the vacuum line or brake booster method on mine
Did the airbox thermostat mod
Dad managed to throw a code trying to start the car, forgetting that the air hose and MAF weren't attached (hey, why do I suddenly have a massive vacuum leak? Duh.)
Pulled apart my ashtray and lighter assembly and ran a voltmeter on the wires to determine that my missing wire was the ground and not the hot wire, so we grounded it out to the chassis and now my lighter socket works! Yay!
Lubricated the strut tower bushings so that they'll stop squeaking, at least until I can replace them

My #1 tip for all of this involves the flame trap. My pcv is clogged and we cleaned the flametrap and discovered that this was a HUGE part of the problem. Cleaned it again today, and because of the fact that it is finally breathing the way that it should, it's sucking a lot of carbon deposits back into the flametrap filter. So I would highly reccomend that after cleaning a badly clogged flametrap, you clean it weekly or so for a while, until the carbon deposits slow down a little bit. Just did mine last weekend and it was already getting clogged again. Hopefully the seafoam treatment that I may be doing tonight will help to stop this issue!

whoa · Post by **whoa** » 11 Apr 2010, 17:10

So the new hub didn't fix the grinding noise, huh? Here's one thought. There is (on my car anyway) a flimsy metal dust shield behind the hub/steering knuckle that is supposed to be near the backside of the rotor but obviously not supposed to hit it. When I replaced an axle I ended up bending it a little to where it made a grinding noise on the rotor. Since you've done so much around there, you'd probably have seen that, but I thought I'd mention it.

Today, no work, but I did get fresh rubber from Costco. Potenza RE960AS -- the only tire they had in stock that fit my wheels, which are, oddly, 15-inch, and so take 195/65R15 tires. Their computer wouldn't let them sell me tires that are not on the list of OEM sizes, but they worked around it. Now I'm wondering what the story is behind these (Volvo) 15" wheels. Not the sportiest choice, and there's nothing on the original Volvo invoice about special wheels.

Post by **VCA** » 11 Apr 2010, 17:40

whoa wrote:Today, no work, but I did get fresh rubber from Costco. Potenza RE960AS -- the only tire they had in stock that fit my wheels, which are, oddly, 15-inch, and so take 195/65R15 tires.

Great tires. I have them on the S70 and the 960. Excellent all-weather traction, grippy and fairly long-wearing. You won't be disappointed.

This weekend: find and fix the vibrating noise from the glovebox at idle [I *hate* NVH], interior cleaning, and install a bluetooth phone module for the month-old Kenwood navigation radio I put in my car (Now I'm fully handsfree. Whee!).

Last weekend: T-belt, tensioner, idler, and waterpump + oil change for the S70.