I almost did the same thing, Jay - reshape the stock grills and glue to the outside - but I had a set of Sony bookshelf seakers sitting around doing nothing, so I stole their grills, which are also steel as opposed to aluminum and just happened to be the perfect size.

Not saying speaker depth is shallower, I'm saying that for some odd-ass reason, Volvo made the door panels different in '93 only. The top strip of vinyl that protrudes, does so 1/4" less on the '93 as opposed to the '92. Don't know why. I'll try to take a better pic to illustrate.
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Sean - now frolicking in the Land of a Thousand 240's (aka, Fredericksburg) thrice a week.

I have to disagree with you, Ken, at least in the case of the 240. The magnet test is not always valid - some stainless alloys are indeed magnetic.

I know the window scraper trim is not plated because I have buffed/sanded/cut the hell out of it and it's solid, no plating. Same goes for the old-style hubcaps. I believe the drip rail trim to be the same metal though I've been far less destructive to that.

The hubcaps fooled me - they were magnetic so I assumed chrome plating. Nope, they're solid, it's not always easy to tell.

I know a lot of plastic got chrome plated on a 240, and maybe some mild steel on the headlight and grill surrounds for some years. I also believe the trunklid emblems to be nickel or chrome plated aluminum during some years. Even though it's most commonly believed they were anodized, I have tried stripping the "anodizing" off of these emblems with a sodium hydroxide bath and have not observed the expected reaction. While I'm not especially familiar with forms of anodizing other than decorative - for instance, hard anodizing - sodium hydroxide usually strips anodizing off in seconds. I left an emblem in the solution for a couple minutes with the only notable reaction being in a scratch on the emblem that went down to bare aluminum. To me, that - and the color change between the top "layer" and the bare aluminum - points to plating rather than anodizing...for some years' models. Volvo obviously changed the method of production over time because starting in '92 many 240s got poorly chromed plastic emblems - yuck.

BTW, thanks! You're one of the few that share my love chrome and support my retro-efforts.

As for the aluminum not matching, not a problem, I've got something in the works and will post a picture if it goes as planned.

Also, you said you were going to e-mail me some pictures of your project I think - the e-mail function on Brickboard seems to be screwey at the moment so just in case you can't retrieve my address it's: seancorron(at)hughes.net

Thanks again, Ken.
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Sean - now frolicking in the Land of a Thousand 240's (aka, Fredericksburg) thrice a week.

Andrew, I'm trying to figure out what you're asking. Let me throw information at you and you can pick out what you need.

For the drip rail trim I taped off the side of the car and a few inches of the roof and brushed on gel paintstripper. After about an hour I took a bone scraper and some 0000 steel wool and scraped off the powdercoat/paint. That's it, really.

The window scraper trim was removed from the car - quite easy, just pry carefully straight up until free - and the rubber taped off rather than removed to avoid distorting the metal any more than necessary. Then more paint stripper, more steel wool and scraping, followed by a LOT of buffing with an emery compound to remove scratches - very few of those - and then a short-cut to a green chrome polish for high shine. It's actually almost impossible to futz up the polish on a metal as hard as this stainless.

The rear quarter window trim was a pain! I began by trying to leave the trim on the car and scrape off the paint/powercoat. Too hard. So I tried to get the small strip at the bottom off without removing anything else - big mistake, it bends easily and was NOT meant to come off like this. So after goobering up the first side, I drilled out the rivets on the other side and removed the whole piece of trim from the window. I unclipped the bottom strip, polished, then attached the whole thing back to the car by tapping the holes vacated by the rivets for screws. Now I can remove that trim piece at will. It's coming off soon for the next phase of my project...

Hope that answered your question!

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Sean - now frolicking in the Land of a Thousand 240's (aka, Fredericksburg) thrice a week.

If you have crank windows, good luck! These late speakers were only used in cars with power windows. You'll still need a very shallow depth speaker to clear both the window crank and the window frame on the inside of the door.

The late cars give you a bit more room by allowing the speaker to stick out of the door further on the inner part of these speaker surrounds. You may not be able to use these without some modifications on your 87 door panels.

I know I fought with it long enough in my 87...
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::: Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 92 244 ::: 90 745GL ::: 90 745T ::: 84 242DL ::: 90 745T Parts ::: Used to have : 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 91 244, 88 244GL, 88 744GLE, 82 245T, 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 88 245DL, 89 244DL!

Thanks Art! Quite the complement considering your posts are some of the most informative and well-illustrated ever to grace the Brickboard.

I'm just happy to contribute something new to the collective knowledge base, especially when that knowledge would have saved me time and frustration had I possesed it beforehand.
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Sean - now frolicking in the Land of a Thousand 240's (aka, Fredericksburg) thrice a week.

Oh, you ought to see what my Volvo-dealer friend is doing in his spare time! He's spending his daughters' college funds on a total best-of restoration of a '75 164E!

At this point the car is going back together- new 240 sunroof clip welded in, 240 door posts, hinges, latches, and late model doors, bright red paint finished beautifully.

The door and quarter window trims he has done almost exactly what was done here: polish all the black off the chrome or aluminum trim. But I will take issue with the premise that the aluminum will never shine. It just takes polishing with very fine grits, and a lot of work.

A nice effect that can be achieved is to save the black anodizing in the inner part of the quarter window frames but just polish the face of it. Looks very nice when done this way. Note that removing these to polish requires drilling out a rivet in the corner.

The cars do look impressive with shiny trim all around the doors and roof- really this is what they were designed for in 1975 (1967, really, with the 140). The black trim accents in various forms came much later. It's nice to see a dramatic change in appearance, something that really sets the car apart, with such a simple improvement that anyone can do, given a bit of time and hard work.
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::: Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 92 244 ::: 90 745GL ::: 90 745T ::: 84 242DL ::: 90 745T Parts ::: Used to have : 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 91 244, 88 244GL, 88 744GLE, 82 245T, 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 88 245DL, 89 244DL!