Hi all. I have a 66 or 67, (it's in storage and I can't remember the year), 122 2 door and I was wondering if anyone has tried placing a 122 2 door body on a 73 or 74 140 frame? I have 1974 144 with a rebulit engine, power steering, etc. Is is possible to strip the body off and set the 122 on it? I was going to put the rebuilt FI engine into the 122 but started looking at the power steering, axles, etc on the 144 and wonder if it would be easier to take everything off the 144 and put it on the 122 or just place the 122 body on the 144.

Your thoughts

Steve

You haven't spent much time underneath either of them......

One of the big things about Volvo safety is the rigidity of the unit
body construction. If you go cutting them up, just about no matter how
you put them back together they will never be as stiff as they were
originally. Like the other guys said, there are a lot of things you
can change between them (B30 is pretty hard in a 4-cylinder car)
to make them "newer and still old" but you pretty much figure out which
platform you want and stick with it.
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Thanks for the info guys. Sounds like I'll pull the FI b20 and mate it with an OD tranny I have and put it in the 122. I want power steering and air on this thing so I guess I'll break it into steps starting with the engine/tranny/driveshaft swap and worry about the axles and steering next.

Then..........upgraded electronics.

Thanks again.

Steve

FI B20 and OD tranny in the 122 will be easy.

AC and PS will be harder.

PS is entirely unnecessary (and may be very difficult due to component location).

AC, well, there is room but it will be a bit of a fabrication exercise too.

--
Mike!

Yeah.. these cars don't really have a body on frame style of construction. They're more of a body which incoporates some frame rails of sorts, and then to which a front subframe which houses the steering and suspension components and to which the engine mounts to that connects to the body. And then in the rear, the connections for the rear axle are all connected to the body/frame, and not really interchangeable with 140 series stuff. That being said, you can switch around the engines as you please basically, and you can probably swap front subframes with some custom work. I haven't heard of anyone doing it on a 122, but i have on 544s and such, so yeah. A thing to pay attention to though would be that they have different wheel bolt patterns, and if you swapped the front, you'd probably want to swap the rear end or something if you want it to match as well. I can't help you too much with swapping parts and what not, and what swaps easily and what not, but I think I laid out at least some useful information for you and other people to build on... Good luck! Feel free to ask any questions and I'll tell ya what I can =D.

Peace!
--
Kyle - OVT website and club Official Portland/Corvallis, OR - 1968 142 - current setup: 71b20b SUs, m40, part. stripped, custom CAI, 4-2-1 FI man., Simons exhaust... IPD sways +more

No frame, in either case.
--
Jim McDonald