Its been a while since I was last on brickboard. Before anyone yells at me I want to use the parts I already have here to do this project, so I cant do overdrive yet. I just need to put a 4 speed box into a 71 142E. I assume I use a cable to actuate the clutch. Can I use the front driveshaft from a 122? Anybody have some suggestions to make this job successful? Please and thank you in advance

I've also done a few auto to manual swaps on 140s. Can't recommend it enough, changes the whole personality of the car.

What parts do you have?
Biggest suggestion, though not always practical, is to have a complete donor car. Makes it easy to see what goes where and what parts are required. Yes you will need a clutch cable.

I don't think a 122 bell housing will work with the cable operated fork. Not sure about the 122 driveshaft. The front section of an automatic driveshaft will definately not work.

Finding a proper pedal assembly is much easier than trying to fabricate the automatic assembly to accept the clutch pedal.

If you have the parts, the conversion is pretty easy.
--
'60 544, '68 220S, '70 145S, '72 144E, '86 745T

I did my first, of several, auto to manual conversions in stages. I replaced the pedal box first. About 3 weeks later I changed out the tranny and related parts. I seem to remember that the pedal box took me longer to do than the tranny - was my first pedal assembly r/r. If you have all the parts lined up prior to doing the conversion, it goes pretty quickly. The trickiest part of the whole process is making sure you have the correct tranny flange for the end of your driveline.
I've got extra pedal boxes, tranny cross members etc, if you need them.
Cheers!

Think Twice!!! According to someone I once knew who worked for Volvo at the time, exactly TWELVE 71 Es with automatic transmission were imported to the USA. They didn't use just any BW35 either. It was the uprated version from the 164 police package, with different valve body and much firmer shifts than usual.

I have seen two of these cars---one was gold, and had been converted to a stick, the other was blue/grey and still had the auto box. It is very unlikely that either of them still exist.

If you are going to do the conversion anyway you will need the pedal cluster, clutch cable, clutch kit, 140 bell housing, clutch fork, flywheel, pilot bearing, gearbox with the long stick, (top cover can be swapped onto a later one) transmission crossmember with mount, and the correct 140 driveshaft. (flange sizes must match your gearbox and rear end. Flanges can be changed but it's a pain.)

I'm willing to believe that only twelve of the 1971 142Es were brought into the States with the BW35 because I have one of them, and people who know these cars are always surprised to see mine with the "X-Automatic" badge on the trunk. Then they usually make comments to the effct of, "How could they put such a crappy transmission in such a great car!" The transmission in mine was in great condition and worked precisely as it should, but no matter how good and how rare, it still turned the car into a sluggish lump. The BW35 went to the dump on the premise that there was already enough misery in this world, and the M41 that I replaced it with makes me smile every time I drive the car. The swap was actually not particularly difficult, even for me who had never done anything like that before. In fact, it was rather a fun project. The trickiest part was dealing with the wires some Volvo genius designed to go through the pedal housing: probably the same fiend who designed the heater fan installation in the 200 series. I was lucky, of course, in that I could pull all the parts I needed from one donor car.
Bob S.

I did the switch on my 72 142 and learned a few lessons. The pedal switch was time consuming but not to hard. My 142 had a smaller diameter drive shaft than the m40 from my donor car (73 145). Origanally everyone just told me to switch the front end of the shaft. Obviously I couln't do that because my origanal driveline was to small. I could not switch out the flange on the rear axel to accept the larger drive shaft (I couldn't get the old one off at first, when I did the splinds did not match so I couldn't use the flange.). I ended up switching out the entire rear axle. What I learned about the axle switch was that I didn't need to remove the half shafts to remove the axle like the book I was using said (even though I did).
My only screw-up with the whole switch was that I didn't strip the donor car as much as I wish I would have (kicking myself now for not having some of those parts I left on the car before sending it to Island Recycling).

Good Luck