Wife wore out the manual transmission in her '87 wagon and the rebuilders wanted $800 plus to go through it, so I looked around and bought another transmission. Just discovered that it doesn't fit my drive shaft. This transmission has a tail shaft with three wings and three holes designed to connect to a flex plate sort of coupling. But my drive shaft has a conventional U-joint with 4 hole flange to connect to a different sort of tail shaft termination. Are there two versions of that transmission? Are the tail shafts swappable? To complicate matters further, on the conventional setup, the flange looks like it'll unbolt off of the tail shaft, but the winged version looks like it's part of a unitary shaft/coupling assembly. In other words, the winged portion doesn't appear to be removable from the tail shaft itself.

Where are you located? I have an M47 driveshaft I pulled from a "parts garden". It has the flex joint still on the end (albeit a busted flex joint - you will have to pick up a new one). There are 6 bolts total - 3 in the driveshaft and 3 to hold it to the trans.

Send me a message if you are interested in buying it. I was going to fit it with new u-joints and a center support bearing for a super-quick-driveshaft swap in my '90 245 without disabling the car for a week.

Just swap the flange on the trans. it will fit

Not sure if the tail shafts swap out but can you get the driveshaft the was mated to the new transmission? Or look for another manual transmission drive shaft?
Dan

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, the guy that I bought the transmission from doesn't have the drive shaft and all the cars that I've found in the boneyards here have the same drive shaft that my car has. As a matter of fact, I can't figure out what sort of car this transmission came out of. None of the 200 series OR 700 series cars in my salvage yards had the flex plate connection. I'm wondering if this M47 came out of some other model of Volvo. Is that possible?

Anyway, I'm still without direction here about what I can do besides buy another transmission and re-sell this one. And these M47s seem to be pretty rare.

You will need a driveshaft from a manual transmission later model 240. I do not know if driveshafts would be interchangeable between models.

Automatics did not use this flex plate.
Dan

That brings up a new question then. When my wife wore out the transmission, I pulled out her back-up car, a 1993 with 80K on it that looked like it had just rolled off the line. Not an oil leak ever, not a single scratch in the paint or blemish anywhere in the interior, no crack in the dash, a rust free Texas car. Within ten days, she totaled it. Fortunately, it killed her so I didn't have to figure out an appropriate way to punish her for it. LOL. Not really. She wasn't hurt. Anyway, that car had an automatic and I was thinking I'd use that drive shaft but it has the standard coupling, not the flex plate type. Here's the question: can I simply buy a flex plate type of front shaft half from a wrecking yard on line and use it with the rear section of this wrecked car's drive shaft? Reminder: the M47 that I had intended to install has the flex plate tail shaft and the drive shaft in my possession is from an automatic and has the conventional U-joint sort of coupling.

Probably not, the two pieces are balanced as one piece and the orientation between them must be maintained.

You might be able to do this if you take the halves to a driveshaft rebuilder and have it balanced. If you do that you should consider replacing the U-joints while you are at it.
Dan

I believe (and I could be wrong about this) the rubber flex disc was first used on the 240 in '87 and from then on. So, in theory, that's what your car had originally.

In reality there are probably exceptions to this. But I think it's a safe assumption that after some point in the '87 model year they all had the flex disc.

I am surprised you can't locate the proper drive shaft.


--
'80 DL 2 door, '89 DL Wagon

Finally managed to locate a boneyard car that was right. Later model manual transmission - so it has the flex plate type of coupling. That was a LOT easier than finding the earlier M47 with the U-joint tail shaft. Man o man, those things seem to be rare as hen's teeth.

Thanks for all the help. I needed all of it. I've been working on 240s since 1980 and never ran into this oddity before.