Every 240 I have owned has experience problems with the heat in it being too hot or too cold. This is the classic symptom of failed heater control valve. The problem is that replacement valves are hard to find and can be pricey.

I had read here or in some other forum about how you can use a valve from a VW Rabbit as a replacement. I checked out Rock Auto and found I could purchase the VW valve for around $12 plus shipping. Being the cheapskate that I am, I went ahead and ordered one.

When it came, I realized that this wouldn't be the simplest operation since the VW valve was in-line while the Volvo 240 valve routed at 90 degrees. So, after poking around behind the center console on my car, I decided install the valve on the passenger side where it was a little easier to route the hose through the valve. I figured I'd just replace the original valve with an elbow. The only problem with this is that I would need a longer cable. I decided that a simple lawn mower throttle cable might do the trick.

The Parts:

Here are all the parts I needed to complete the project: VW valve, lawn mower throttle kit from the hardware store, elbow & hose clamps.




VW Valve modifications:

The VW valve did need some modifications. Prior to removing the old heater valve I first measured the amount of travel provided by the lever on the dash. It amounted to be around an inch and a quarter. The VW valve had a much larger travel than that so I had to drill a new hole in the arm to give me the desired travel. I also needed to modify the mount for the cable housing. The result looked like this:



When reassembling, I found that when the valve was fully closed, the control arm on the valve extended too far for the passenger console kick panel to be re-installed so I had to trim the valve control arm.


Here is where I planned to install it:




Elbow goes where the old valve was:




Here it is installed:




Attachment to the slide controller on the dash:



I wanted to reuse the cable sheathing end that was clipped to the controller. This makes under the dash installation clean. So to do this, I cut the end off of the original sheathing and then drilled it out so I could fit the new sheathing in. A little epoxy and it was good to go.

All this took me around 3 and a half ours to complete. It worked out pretty well and provides better heat control than what I had. Total cost was around $35 (valve $20, cable $12, elbow $3).