My hat's off to you. Original owner of two 83s! I don't think I've ever been in financial shape to own one, much less two new Volvos. The investment obviously was the correct one.

I'm not really sure about non-cruise cars having the pickup coil. The way it is fitted to the back of the speedo head, you can't really miss it anytime the head is pulled, and I don't recall working on a cluster without one, yet I follow all the posts helping folks install or procure cruise from the junkyard, with the warning not to forget this little item.

You are right, Haynes does not discuss the little parasite box for the service reminder. You probably didn't have trouble with yours - it is set for 30,000 miles; supposedly when US of A wanted you to change that lambda sond. But they made the little devil so you had to take a cover off of it to reach the reset button. That, and the contortions you need to get to it probably discouraged a lot of dealer techs from sticking to the program.

I thought I remembered blue wires, but the Haynes shows red wires on the 83 schematic. It is called the "lambda switch", item 63 up by the cluster. You can see the lamp it turns on if your Haynes is like mine, with that big chapter 13 supplement - figure 13-199, the left-most lamp. Bentley has a picture of the box in their emissions control chapter, p. 253-13. My 83 owners manual describes the lamp, its reset interval, etc., on p. 7 and again on 56. I think the cute little gear box that sets a contact every 30,000 miles was a pain in the butt when it was new and a pain now. Chances are tall yours isn't plugged in! I took one apart just to see what made it tick, but that was 5 years ago. Nothing high tech.

Man, not one, but two new Volvos!

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Art Benstein near Baltimore Crrrrazy Ray's!