Sitting down now drinking tea with mini Crunches, the smell of degreaser still fresh on my hands. Yesterday I bought some stuff at Pep Boys, and today I woke up with some things to do on my new-to-me Volvo. I initially wanted to do a detailing job, such as clean/protect the carpets, dash, seats, and wash the mats. The car is pretty clean as it is, but I just want to "sterilize" it, if you will :) Also, I just want to clean the whole car so that I can put my personal touches to it.

But first, I wanted to tackle the tailgate wires. All the wires on the left and right hinges are broken, just like in my 83 245 when I bought it. My license plate lights don't work because of the broken wires, so I really wanted to get that fixed, as I don't feel comfortable driving at night with no license plate lights and risking getting pulled over. Instead of buying a wiring harness kit (about $20 each), I just used male/female connectors. I used a needle nose plier to pull out the wires coming from the headliner and from the tailgate so that I would have a decent length of wire to work with. I then clamped the one female connector to the wire coming from the tailgate and clamp a male connector to the wire coming from the headliner. I connect the two and cover all metal parts with electrical tape. I do this for the second wire in the driver-side tailgate. I plucked out both license plate lights and clean the socket and lens. Voila! License plate lights work! I have yet to test the defroster, but I'm sure it will work :) I think this is a very effective way to fix the tailgate wires--no need to pull the headliner off. It's free, too! Well, the connectors cost me about $1.99 a pack :P I did this same fix on my 83 245GL and it never gave me any problems. However, I didn't use connectors, just twisted the two wires together and soldered them. The connectors just makes it look cleaner and a little professional :)

I pretty much took my time doing the driver-side tailgate, so I ended up not doing any detailing job on the interior. Next week I'll fix the passenger side so that I can get power locks to the tailgate and wiper fluid. Also, today I got the courtesy light to work. It turns out it just needed some adjusting or cleaning. I salvaged some things from my 83 245. I took the aux. thermometer (that was sooooo easy to take off!), aux. clock, some good fuses, and the belly pan. I had to degrease and clean the pan, hence my smelly and dirty hands :) I's still in amazing condition. My 89 pan is just hanging on, so I will take it out and put the 83 pan on.

So, next week I will clean the interior, put my dash cloth (came from the 83) on, and tackle the passenger-side tailgate. I also want to get the stock radio to work. I was told that the previous owner took out the aftermarket radio and reinstalled the stock radio before selling the car. I'm hoping it's just some unplugged wires. Anyone know how I go about tackling this job?