Here's my dilemma, I am new to the world of bricks, I am truly a rice bike mechanic and my car of choice has been cadillacs. my wife and I have decided that one of our land yachts needs to go. she does alot of around town driving and the damn thing needs alot of work, after spending alot of time under the hood and alot of $$ on gas over the years its time to sink the old ship. so what should we get??? a volvo, I have heard only good things so we have begun to check out some older (and cheaper) 240's. what a great car, all the safety of a caddy and about half the steel and aggrivation. we are definetly getting one. so heres my problem.....
there is one 81 240 in really good asthetic condition, she has 150000 california miles on the clock. the problem is it idles real rough and the auto tranny makes an aweful sound when you push it at all and it has the power of a drunk mule. sounds bad but when it was idling in the driveway i noticed that a 1/2" o.d. vacuum hose attached to the efi by a metal fitting was missing one of the two screws holding it in and leaking vac, when i held it closed the idle became smooth at the time i said "let us think about" since my knowlage of auto trannies is not a whole lot. now I am thinking it might have been the vacuum hose to the torque converter which would explain this brick performing like one. If the problem is thus i would be stealing this car for the asking price and found a new machine to love. I am not sure I want to replace a tranny on a vehicle so new to my simple noodle. If anyone out there has any idea if i am a lucky bastard or a cheap grease monkey with high hopes? and how heavy is a tranny off a 81 240??