13 The 850 T5

At 3 months old Our baby boy was taking up a lot of space, cramped trips got me thinking about a large family estate. It had to be big enugh to swallow the load, powerfull enugh to be fun, and rearwheel drive.

Option 1) Ford Scorpio 24V Cosworth. Looks odd on the outside but was a great all round car.

Option 2) Vauxhall Omega 24V, Great cars but pricy and tales of cambelt issues..

Option 3) Audi A6 (100) Avant V6. Great cars but costly..


So we went away on holiday for a week crammed into the sierra, I looked at every passing garage trying to spot a Scorpio but to no avail...

We got back from holiday and I was imediatly on the NET ready to commit a couple of grand to a late Scorpio...

Then it happend.. I spotted a Volvo 850 T5 on ebay that was cheap...

Ok, it's front wheel drive, but it's a volvo so should fulfill the other catagories...

It was soon sitting on my drive...

12 The Black 2.0 4x4

The problems with the XR4i meant that I was on the lookout quickly for another family car. Ebay once again came to the rescue....

A 1993 Black XR4x4 2.0 ( Yes I had vowed never to own another 2.0 ) was on in the next town. I got outbid, but an email to the vendor resulted in the car being dropped off the next day ( baby toby was only 2 days old! )

It looked clean apart from the rear arches, had all the toys late cars had, drove nicely, etc... £190 well spent... I put my cosworth wheels on, and my nice cosworth leather steerng wheel to tart it up a little...

Well I spent £190........

Alarm bells started ringing when the water level kept dropping, my heart sank. This time i decided that a convertion was too much work, the car was needed. I bought the necessary parts from Fraud, and asked a freind if he colud help ( he likes his twinks ) , I set to work without him as he was commig down from glasgow ( 100m ) ... And was just about to start puttig it back together when Neil turned up, good job too! he took a look at the Cylinder head and spotted the tiny crack that was the cause of the problems.. We had a spare head, but still struggled to get it back together, tensioner was loose, thermo housing snapped, rocker cover leaked, PCV was lose... But in the end it all went back together...

The car ran better, used virtualy no water but smoked on startup still ( worn rings I guess ) but overall was useable.

Then I decided it was too small for the family and it had to go, fortunatly it had reached my theoretical Value For Money which is 10 Miles for every £1 spent... I had Spen ~£300 and covered 3000 miles..

Even more fortunatly, someone in the North East wanted it's diff for his Locost Kit car. And agreed to buy the whole car for £250.. I wanted some of the trim off the car so agreed on a price of £225 delivered.

I had no time to remove what I needed before setting off, It's amazing how much of a sierra interior can be removed whilst driving............

And it was gone!

11 The XR4i

Initialy I was going to purchase just the engine from this car.

But then, I said to the wife...

"I have bought another engine, it's comming with a few other spare parts too!" AHHEMMMM

This 1983 XR4i had been converted to 2.9 TwinTurbo ( I wanted just the engine realy ). Unfortunatly the standard XR4i Type 9 gearbox was not up to the task and had blown up.

The car looked great, the interior was super and the body looked fairly good and it sounded AWESOM... However Shortly before delivery, I had made up my mind to forget teh TwinTurbo route for my project and instead had a 24V engine winging it's way to me..

I found a buyer for the Turbo engine, hauled it out and sent it on it's merry way to Luke..

The 24V engine came with a cheap 12V too... That found it's way into the 4i and I had a running Driveable 4i :) cool...

The Blue twincam was sold, and the 4i was pressed into service, just a week or so before my Son was born.

One thing I forgot was the gearbox top cover, I had been told it would be an idea to inspect the box before fitting, but I forgot to do up the top cover bolts...... Fortunatly no damage was done.


Then on the way to visit the newborne the oil light started to flicker..... OH F....

The car was taken off the road, the new Black 4x4 bought....

I finaly sold the car to a M8 ( TAPS ) for £40 excluding the wheels... he's converting it to 24V THUNDER SALOON replica.

Unfortunatly the car appears to have hidden it's rot well, and Tpas is finding more than either of us envisaged! Still it's got a great interior, and is relativly solid.

So my 4i foray was over.

Blue TC2

Read Part 1


So.

It was all physicaly togehter.

Electricly I had to splcie together the 2.0 loom plugs and the 2.9 engine loom. This was made more difficult due to my official diagrams not covering the 1990 spec cars. A day sitting on the kitchen floor had it all done and bound with medical tape.

With that fitted up it was time to start it.... Nothing not a squeek. even directly trying the starter did not seem to work. My m8 from Glasgow turned up and after a few bluffs we had the starter turning with a jumper wire and the engine fired and ran great. But we still could not get it to start on the key. Then neil checked one of the loom plugs I had disgarded and it had an extra pin that I had not used. This turned out to be the starter inhibitor not present on the older cars.

So it now fired and ran, but only once per ECU power up?????? That was finaly traced to a power feed that need not have been there, no idea why but once gone it started evey time.

Then there was the road test, initialy it seemed good. The revcounter was still the 2.0 4pot one so was overreading. But otherwise the car flew! it was using the shorter ratio 2.0 diffs so was much quicker off the mark than the standard 2.9.

There was a noise from the front drive, I was going to have to fix the front cross shaft mentioned earlier.... That required the sump comming off and replaced. That was duley done ( a bit of a pig of a job ) but by now I was starting to loose interest in the old girl.

With the next car on the driveway an a question "Do you wana sell one m8" saw the days of the TerribleTwincam numbered. Within a week it was gone to a fellow round the corner, and he sold it on a couple of months later... Where is she now? Probably a baked been tin.

And that was that one. I lost ~£100ish on it.... I vowed never to have another twincam.

The Blue Twincam....

CAR 10

I won this one on ebay, after getting rid of my Black 2.9 4x4 (CAR 7) I had a couple of months off car ownership.. Then this cuaght my eye in Lancashire. 1990 2.0DOHC Xr4x4, Spax Suspension, rear RS valance etc... Looked nice.

£400 and a trip with my M8 ( listening to hitchhikers guide to the galaxy on tape... ) to Lancashire saw it purchased.. It looked good, it seemed to drive ok. It had a years MOT! So things looked promising. 180K+ on the clock did not overley worry me.

Troubles were on the horizon though...

First thing I noticed was a bit of smoke on start up, and then the water was dropping in the headder tank. Things were looking bleak for the head/head gasket. Then I noticed a large hole in the drivers side sill, and one behind the front wheel on the inner wing. How did it pass an MOT? A question I asked the vendor, and one that he was a little off hand about! And he denied knowing any problems with water loss and the acution not mentioning it.

I got nowhere trying to chase the vendor, so welded up the holes and started to draw up plans. New head gasket? or new engine?

Meanwhile, there was a chirping tapping comming from the front end.. Similar to on (Car 7)

The chirping was from the front propshaft, confirmed when the engine was pulled out. After many conversations and the mention of cracked heads, timing chains, ya ya ya ya ya... I decided the best course of action was to put in the 2.9V6 from ( CAR 6 )

After a bit of fetteling and a clean up the lump was ready.


As you can see there is a fair amount of space without a twincam engine in there. Plenty for the V6!

Physicaly the engine went in without a major hitch, I did shatter the transmission cross-shaft retaining ring, which would later come back to haunt me.

But everything else went to plan, the Ashley exhaust was crap fitting, and the prop was a nightmare but otherwise! :)

Next installment!

The Grey bitsa 2.9

F384 FRH

Noisy?

I should says so!

Originaly offered on Interford by one of the users for £200 with a nice stainless exhaust, I was tempted but had not realy got the space.

However, when he then said £0 but without the exhaust... I was on it like a dog on heat.

I had a spare exhaust so off Me and M8 Richard went to find the place in South Shiled.

We turned up and imediatly set about fixing up the exhaust, unfortunatly the downpipe studs on the passenger manifold had sheared... So that made it impossible to get that pipe to bolt up properly and eventualy was held in place by stainless steel ties.

We then put the dash back together as that had been partialy taken appart, refitted the wiper stalk but had not indicator stalk.

Then we tried to start it, which did not happen at first, actualy took about 30 minutes to get it going.. As i said LOUD! the leaxing exhuast was very loud.

I then had to drive it the 60 miles home without trying to draw too much attention ( the car was safe, just not quite how a Police man would want it to be though).

The noise was not to bad on the flat open roads, but going up hill was deffaning....

Made it home safe and sound though.

I put a replacement manifold on, sorted the exhaust reasonably and fitted the rest of the car back together.

It was free due to extensive rot in all the doors, but the shell was very good.

I was then in a selling mood and got £185 for it!

4 weeks of ownership payed off!!