(Warning: wall of text below!)

A couple years ago I had to sell my 244 to a great new owner due to life circumstances. I'm finally at a point again where I can consider getting back on the Volvo for life bandwagon. I'm not sure if many of you are familiar with North Dakota, but it's a bit of a desert for decent Volvos. The 244 I got previously was only available due to the passing of the gentleman who owned it. That's the same case now in what I'm about to ask. Not to make light of it, but I guess Volvos really are something you only can pry from a person's cold, dead hands.

So, a couple weeks ago, I got in touch with the brother of a gentleman who recently passed away and was holding an estate sale. Two of his cars, a 1991 940 Turbo and a 960, are being sold for what I think were reasonable prices. Here's the quick rundown on each.

The 1991 940 Turbo sedan used to be his commuter to a coal plant about 40 miles one way, each day. As a result, it has a shade over 307,000 on the clock. He left it on a battery tender and rarely used it after he got a Mercedes AMG. The interior is probably a 7.5/10 and the exterior is mostly clean. Pretty good considering. Allegedly, he parked it since the fuel pump (presumably the high pressure fuel pump) was either out or going out. For a lark, we tried to see if we could start it and wouldn't you know it, the thing started on the second attempt. The idle was low, about 500-600RPM, and it was shuddering, so I assume it has some issue with fuel delivery or air fuel mixture.

The other vehicle is a 1994 960 sedan. He apparently took turns using this when he wasn't using his AMG, but it had fairly low miles at a little over 116K. The back story on this was that he bought it from a dealer and the previous owner didn't change the timing belt on time. A couple of the valves kissed the pistons on this white block and he took it upon himself and a mechanic friend to do the fix. They replaced the timing belt, replaced the head and valves but the pistons were fine, so they were left as is (this is what I was told). Based on the packaging in the vehicle, he used Volvo parts, FWIW. One thing I noticed was that there was some oil dripping from the engine drain plug, while the transmission looked fine in that regard. The anti-skid plate had some darker oil pooled in it, but I'm not sure if they didn't take that off while doing the head job or if there's some sort of seal leakage.

It drove pretty well during the test drive. The only real disconcerting thing that popped up was that while accelerating from a start, first or second gear, what I could only describe as a turbine-like whirring would escalate in speed along with my acceleration. It was made even more obvious when I had the rear wheels on some icier spots. Some preliminary searching suggest it could be anything from a clogged a bad accessory bearing to a clogged PCV or a clogged ATF filter. I'm still not 100% on this yet, though. To it's credit, it idled smoothly and I couldn't hear a lot of valve train noise to speak of. Before I took it for a spin, though, I noticed that the rear wheel wells were very close to the tires. The brother of the deceased man said it always looked that way to him. By the time I came back, I noticed the rear end level was more where it should be, which led me to believe that the Nivomat shocks work.

He settled on $2,250 for the 960 and $1,000 for the 940 if they were purchased separately. He said if I buy the pair, he'd let them go for $2,750. I was inclined to think this was a pretty good deal,so I took it. My plan is to sell the 960 to subsidize the 940. Even though I didn't really get to take the 940 anywhere, I'm more comfortable with the B230FT than the white block six (especially given this example's history). Plus, it has more of that Volvo character - the 960 seems to have had the character bred out of it. If, for some reason, saving the 940 ends up being a bad idea, I'd just keep the 960 and figure out what to do with the 940.

Since I brought them home, I changed the spark plugs, oil, filter, ATF, coolant and water pump (an OEM that came with it), fuel pump and filter and checked for vacuum leaks or grounding issues (on the 940). The idle is greatly smoothed out, but I'm now in the process of fixing the driver side window sliders and it should be good to test drive.

As it stands, the 960 may need some overdue routine maintenance, but is essentially turnkey as is. The wife gave me her blessing regardless of which I decide to keep, but I'm still on the fence. Does anyone have any suggestions or input? My concern is that maybe I'm being penny wise and pound foolish by leaning toward the unconventional choice. Thanks in advance!