Good afternoon, fellow bricksters! I had a stray 240 wagon follow me home
and we've decided to keep her. But she has some problems, so I have the following questions of the board and thanks in advance for your wisdom.
1. The front wiper motor only works on high, what does everyone think, switch on the column, or motor?

2. She puffs a bit of white smoke after warmed up, none on start up, am I looking at a headgasket? do I likely have a cracked head? if so, what should I expect to pay for to resurface and rebuild cylinder head?

3. She has tighter (heavier) steering than my '93 240 sedan and the ball joint boots are shot, should new ball joints take care of that? anyone have anything else that it could be (rack is dry and fluid is up, belts and hoses in place)

Thanks again for your sage advice, Greg

Update on the 'new to me' 240

It looks like the tight steering is cracked strut mounts, (you can see them strain and move when turning the steering wheel). I will do those and the ball joints. The main concern I still have is the water/smoke from the tail pipe. With the limited time I've had to look at her, she expels no water/smoke when started, but expells water (and it doesn't smell like coolant) when getting warm, then trace amounts of white smoke once warmed. I've looked for bubbles in the overflow tank, and don't see any, and the coolant level appears to be the same as before the 20 or so miles I've driven her. could it be something else?

It is normal for water vapor to condense and come out of the tail pipe as the engine warms up. Once at operating temperature this should stop. Dan

I had intermittent and high speeds working on my wipers but no normal speed.

I tested to see if it was the switch by trying to get the wiper switch in a different position other than the detente spots, in other words between normal speed and high speed, to see if I could get the wipers to run normal.

somewhere in between those spots I got a response of normal wipers, thus confirming the switch was bad, took the switch off my '86 parts car (soon to be scrap metal) and voila everything worked.

if not then it's probably the motor as previously stated
--
Bad Blue - '86 245 with 303,000 mi. (now for parts), Good Green 1990 245 with 178,000 mi., Blacky - '91 740 wagon with 180,000 mi., Mean Green - '94 850 with 222,000

1. Probably a bad wiper motor, but could be the switch. In my experience, it's been a bad motor. Not a difficult or long repair to R/R the motor.

2. I have this problem with my Volvos. Is your coolant level in the reservoir low? If so, you are leaking coolant. Check level before and after driving. Also, remove coolant cap, warm up car, rev it up, and check for bubbles (combustion chamber leak into coolant). Finally, but a coolant pressure gauge, install it in place of the coolant cap, and pressure test it to 10 psi for 2 minutes. If pressure falls, you have a coolant leak.

3. I don't know. Sorry.

Please follow up with us. Good luck!

Thanks, Mike for the guidance! I'll start digging into this on the weekend, but have a Cardinals baseball game to go to,so it may wait!