I've been driving my trusty 240 for quite a while now and over the years I have managed to keep it in very good shape. Right now the car is my 100mile/day daily commuter with 160k miles on the clock, but I plan to soon "retire" the car meaning that I plan to get another daily commuter and keep the 240 for weekends and short trips. My basic complaint in that the 240 is quite underpowered when compared with modern cars of its size. Even since early college one of my dreams was to put a V8 engine into my Volvo. The car is in excellent shape and I got an 18-month-old paintjob. Now as far the V8 conversion goes I have the following concerns.
I have the JTR V8 conversion manual and it seems to be pretty good. As far as I know from personal experience 80% of the conversion is getting the right parts and making the modifications to the parts long before you even remove the old engine from the car. My only problem is that I don't have the "space" to perform the conversion myself. Second thought is that I might move back to Europe within 3-4 years meaning that I might carry the car with me on the way back. Living for so many years in NJ I realized that there are MUCH more expensive things over here that the cost for converting to a V8. As far as Fuel Injection and Electric systems go I am very knowledgeable since I am an Electronics designer for a living and I won't have any trouble figuring out the transfer of the Chevy TPI system to the Volvo harness. As far as my cost estimates go I believe the conversion might go up to $4,000 for doing it myself or $7,000 if I pay somebody else to do it. I have heard from people that with $10,000 I can have a complete turnkey combination but I believe it's an outrageously large amount
of money for having a high-school dropout dump a $1,600 Junkyard V8 into your car and experiment on it on the same time. The JTR book estimates 40 hours of Installation and Electrical work without counting my personal effort to get the parts. Now by taking the above number and applying "Murphy's rule" I estimate 80!! hours at $40/hour ($3,000 Labor costs) MAXIMUM that I am willing to pay for a nicely done conversion. That's a month’s salary for some of us!!!!
I would like to know if my estimates are reasonable enough or even lower for the NJ area(I wished that), and I would like to know if anybody on the list has had personal experiences having a conversion done in NJ by paying somebody else to do it.
I need a trusty person who is honest enough to tell me that he can do the conversion for the above cost (or a little bit lower) and not somebody who is working on 3-4 cars on the same time and he is trying to work on my car on the "side".
Life is too short and I REALLY want to do this + that I want to show some of those $35k+ Luxury Ultimate Driving machines that an 18 year old Volvo at the fraction of the cost can kick some ass.
Please give me some insight/advice. I hope I will get some support since some people thought I was crazy for driving an 18year old car....and how much crazier I would more be if I want to drop a V8 in there....
Mike
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