The Wagon Life: Two Weeks In

"roflcopter" (roflroflroflcopter) 05/15/2015 at 09:00 • Filed to: None

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As some of you may know, I up until recently had an ‘85 Volvo sedan known around these parts as the LOLvo. It was a slammed, sticker-bombed, rusted, broken, pile of shit. I loved that car and having it was a great experience in bringing a car back from the dead and having something that completely exemplified my tastes and what I wanted out of a dirt cheap beater, but now there is a new Volvo in my life and these are my impressions after two weeks of ownership. Long read ahead, but hopefully it’s entertaining enough to be worth it.

While my last foray into Volvo ownership started in the front yard of a house with a car that had not moved from that spot in nearly 7 years and was a constant uphill battle to get that car running, driving, and eventually on the road, this story starts quite differently and on much more solid footing. After the LOLvo finally gave up for the last time(in my ownership at least) I knew I needed to find another car to be my main squeeze, the RX8 that has seen not much besides AutoX use over the last year was not a good example of reliability, efficiency, or utility that I needed for my daily driver. After toying with the idea of buying a new car with one of those newfangled warranty things and looking at quite a few busted up trucks for sale in my area I kept coming back to the RWD Volvo’s that had initially caught my interest years ago.

Before I begin how owning the wagon has been, I’d like to give a bit of a foreword about how I ended up owning this particular Volvo wagon aptly named ‘Mabel Flowers’ my the legally married lesbian couple from Tampa. After looking locally and finding nothing worth the money I decided to expand my search a bit more and came across the beauty that this article is all about. There were a few other options that kept popping up, mostly turbocharged and stickshift, that seemed like great choices until I thought about what I was really looking for: A reliable daily driver that would be cheap to fix. After reconciling myself to getting a more ‘run of the mill’ Volvo I placed a phone call to the number listed on a Tampa Craigslist ad for this ‘89 245 station wagon with a resoundingly bland B230F engine coupled to the venerable AW70 4-speed automatic transmission.

With finals in full swing I couldn’t do a whole lot as far as the car search was concerned but as soon as my last final wrapped up I was making phone calls and trying to plan the 6.5 hour trip down to Tampa to hopefully buy this car. Needless to say it all went quite well, the car was as described and I exchanged a stack of money for a freshly signed title. After a cursory inspection of the car my friend and I set off on the drive home, with me in a 3 owner, 200k+ mile, completely unknown Volvo that had supposedly never left the Tampa area in the last 15 years that the previous owner had been in possession of it. Surprisingly the trip was completely uneventful besides the brake lights giving out somewhere north of Gainsville.

Once I got the car home I knew I had to knock out as much of the work as possibly in the week before my summer classes picked back up. While the described issues were definitely present(no powersteering, no AC, no electrical in the lift gate) I found a few more within the first day. When the car was up to temperature and you had to restart it the vehicle would not idle for the first minute or so unless you kept your foot on the gas and the revs above 1000. I quickly diagnosed this as related to the oil spewing from the valve cover gasket and out the oil filler cap and ordered parts to replace the entire PCV and flame trap system in the car. While I waited for those parts to arrive I tackled the issues I didn’t need parts for head on.

The first day I was back at my place I had the wiring sorted out for the lift gate, new struts in place so it would stay up, and the entire car cleaned out(including pulling most of the carpet and wiping under it all. The promise of a rust-free Volvo wagon was true, I have yet to find anything worse than surface rust in rock chips. One other thing I learned quite quickly is that I should have bought a wagon to begin with, the car feels so much roomier and it fits my lifestyle more that I thought an 80’s car with no powersteering ever could.

Once the parts came in to replace the PCV system I took my next day off and got that sorted out, as well as replaced the brake master cylinder reservoir to get rid of a slow leak that was present. Now the car idles perfectly, starts first try every time, runs a lot better, and isn’t spewing oil at nearly the rate is was previously. I can’t even begin to express how much more enjoyment there is working on this Volvo that actually has tons of potential compared to one that you know it is just a matter of a few weeks until you’re under it again to fix some mission-critical system.

I have yet to run into any more issues with the car besides the ones that can wait a little while to fix. The brakes still squeal, it could really use some new shocks, the power steering and AC are still in-op, and I need to put a new exhaust on the thing. But it is serving its purpose quite spectacularly. I suppose I’ll get into the actual details about owning it instead of what all I’ve done to it now that I’ve bored you to death.

Having a wagon is an eye-opening experience. I had to deal with moving out of the place I’ve been in for the last year(and into an apartment with my GF) over the last week and being able to move furniture easily has been a life-saver. Between folding down the rear seats and the roof-racks I don’t think there is much of anything that I can’t get across town in this beast. I also find that the fact that it is a wagon forces me to take it way less seriously, it’s almost impossible to drive aggressively in an underpowered soccermom-mobile. While I personally really like the styling of these things, almost everyone I know that has seen it asks me why on Earth I would want to own something like this. I really can’t explain why I like it so much but I do know that I like the fact that I have a car that is extremely cheap to buy parts for, gets decent gas mileage, can seat 7(yes it has the rear facing 3rd row), and can also fit a full sized wardrobe dresser in the back. Oh and did I mention it even has heated seats?

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > roflcopter 05/15/2015 at 09:16

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I’m jelly bro. The one thing I regret about buying my VR-4 Galant is that I didn’t buy a wagon. Someday the gory of a cavernous rear cargo area shall be mine.

Mr. Van > roflcopter 05/15/2015 at 09:25

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I have always liked these. Even more so when I found that a 5.0/T-5 engine swap is practically a bolt-in affair. David Letterman and Paul Neuman had a couple built and said they were awesome sleepers.

TheTick247 > roflcopter 05/16/2015 at 16:02

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This sounds a lot like the ‘91 I bought about a year ago, except mine seems to have a few more issues. Pretty much all of the wear items in the suspension (shocks, bushings, ball joints, etc) need to be replaced. I’ve got some electrical gremlins to sort out, too. Since this is a “project” car I’ve not been pushing the repairs like I would otherwise. After I get it properly sorted I hope to turbocharge it. If that borks the motor I may go the Ford 302/5.0L route, including a t-5 and a ford 8.8” rear.

Did the tailgate wiring re-do sort out the brake light problem? None of my brake lights are working. Rear turn signals work, though so I know power is getting back there. I’ve got replacement tailgate harnesses ready to go, just haven’t put them in yet.