Bumper

Well I didn't get to the auto recycler yet, but I got the estimate back from the auto shop the insurance company told me to go to. It's a whole $280.00. This is a lot better than I was expecting. I'll deal with this in the spring time when the snow is gone and my car should look nice again.

Stupid other drivers

I love snow, but apparently Troy doesn't know how to plow their streets which means that parking is few and far between at best. I left my car in the snow because I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and I didn't feel like losing my parking spot. A day or two later I noticed that the front and back of my car had been cleared. I thought this was pretty cool since it ment less work for me. It turns out that whoever cleared my front broke one of my little headlight wiper nozzles which incidentally also holds the actual wiper blade. Ok so casualty number one. I'm upset but from the looks of it not too hard to fix. Friday rolls around and it's time for me to get my car out of the snow. I go out and start shoveling the side of my car and when I reach the rear of my what do I find? Someone hit my bumper.

Now I'm pissed.

I know it's a 13 year old car and the paint isn't perfect but that bumper was. I looked at the car behind me and found out that the person who hit me remained parked behind me! I did the whole leave a note thing, but they haven't called me back and let's face it they aren't going to. Good thing I got the police report before he left.

So now what? I'm not sure. There is an auto recycler up the road that claims to have my bumper so we'll see how that pans out. If nothing else I could probably learn how to paint and restore a bumper.

It never ends

As with most projects that I start I always end up finding another. This time was no exception. While I had the wheels off my car I decided to take a look at the flexible brake lines and was horrified to find that the two lines that went to my front calipers had huge gashes in them.

I figured that since I was on such a performance kick and the front OEM rubber lines were $50 a pop from the dealer that I would upgrade to stainless steel braided lines.

Replacing the front lines was easy, it took a little PB nut blaster but they came off with out any major trouble. This sadly was not the case with the rear lines.

I ended up having to fabricate 3 of 4 hard lines for the rear of the car after trying for 3 days to get the flexible lines off with no avail. This required a bubble flare tool which was harder to get than I expected, but a small auto shop near me came through and got it with minimal fuss.

These are the lines I needed to remake.

Lower transmission mount

As I said before I was having some clunks during shifting. The other mount that is prone to go is the lower transmission mount. While mine wasn't completely gone I figured that as with the rest of the work I was doing it is better to get it out of the way now. Again the job was easy as pie.

Front motor mount

The last few weeks out in Michigan began to reveal a loud thud upon shifting. Since I had the car up on jack stands and the wheels off I decided I should look at the front motor mount. Well upon inspection it was obvious that the current mount had failed.

The sketchy part of this operation is lifting the engine by the oil pan. This is accomplished by using the edge of the pan.

Here is the old mount notice the oil splatter all over the place, another time though.










Here we see the old and new engine mounts pretty obvious which is which right?










Ta da all installed and cleaned

Rear sway bar

Continuing our handling upgrade we have the rear sway bar. This does the same thing as the front bar. Now it is important to note that Volvo did not put a rear sway bar on the 855s with a naturally aspirated engine. This little upgrade was left for the Turbo, T5-R, and R versions of the 855 line up. The trailing arms are the same between the different models so the mounting points are there which makes this upgrade as easy as the front if not easier.

Again IPD came through with good directions and it was only my shear idiocy that made me attempt to put the one end of the bar in the wrong spot which it obviously didn't belong. This job only took an hour or two and that was mainly because of stubborn bolts.

Front sway bar

So as I said a long time ago there aren't a whole lot of engine upgrades that I can easily do with a naturally aspirated engine so that leaves visual (cosmetic) and handling upgrades. One large component in vehicle handling is the sway bar also known as the anti-roll bar (further explanation).

This job was pretty straight forward the directions that IPD included were excellent for the most part, a little hicup now and then but overall the job was easy. I took my time, so I forget how long it actually took but I know it wasn't a multiple day project. I also took the time to replace my end links again an easy job.

My only complaint with the IPD links is that they are harder to tighten than the OEM ones because griping the stud is harder since there is no torx insert on them which the OEM features.


Since I'm paranoid when working under the car I had it supported at 4 points. Two jack stands on the front lift points and two hydraulic jacks on the center jacking points. The blue scissor jack was used to lower the rear of the sub frame.






Look at that she lowered just fine. You can also see the old sway bar with it's stupid non replaceable bushings.










Here we can see the new bar and end link, so pretty.

Snow!

Well we finally got a good amount of snow. Someone shoveled my front out so it looses a bit of the effect but here you go.