starting my folvo build (among other things)

rust is evil... ask my 88 TC...

your car is mint, in comparrison lol.. I'd rather fix your blue car than go through all the headaches i've got headed my way.. After my front end is done, i still have to reconstruct both mounting locations for my gas tank straps, patch or replace my trunk floor and fix part of my trans tunnel on the passenger side.. I need to stop poking around with a screw driver

Head update.. should be able to pick it up monday. According to the machinist himself, it's been milled and just needs to be cleaned up. They knocked the cost of milling the head off for it being delayed, which is only 45 bucks, but who's complaining lol

I got carried away with the debit card and spent too much, so I have to wait until next week to pick the head up.. thanks, summit :banghead: . So, I ordered rings, bearings, gaskets, water pump, head studs, rod bolts and a bunch of AN line (already have a ton of russel AN fittings). I started tearing the motor down and was surprised how good of shape everything was in. I've seen lower mileage motors with more wear on the bearings. I tore into my trans tonight, to see if it's worth trying to save (3rd grinds pretty horribly). I've been thinking about using the tremec 6 speed I picked up for next to nothing a couple years ago. I'm not sure what I want to do yet, I've already got a ton of headaches to sort through, especially with eliminating all the unwanted/unneeded wiring (prc, abs, premium sound, hvac, etc etc). Plus, it'd bea shame to render my almost brand new clutch useless. But all in all, I've unfortunately been neglecting the car itself for about the past week, because I had a slight change in how I want to anchor my tubular clip to the car. I'll be building a 6pt cage and the upper tubes of the clip will pass through the firewall and tie into the cage, behind the dash. Don't worry, I'm not cutting up a mint dash. It's cracked in a couple places, so I'll either fiberglass the top or I'll wrap it in black tweed. I'd love to just wrap it in tweed, but I'm not sure if I can do ot with all the contours and curves. Tweed isn't all that user friendly, but I love the look of it. Plus, I think the brushed cluster surround would look perfect against black tweed. Anyway, before I start the clip, I want to have the cage in and done, which I need the material to build, so that's on hold until after I get the head.

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If the tweed won't work, and you don't really want to fiberglass. you can always get a dash cap. I've heard good things about the dashcaps.com caps.

Fiberglass would be the last resort.. i'd be a little iffy cutting into a $140 dash cap lol. Tweed is the route I want to go, since my shifter boot, shifter surround, switch plate amd console lid are already covered in black tweed

Got my block fairly cleaned up and gave it a quick hone. I need to find my ridge reamer, you can clearly see why. It's not a big ridge, but it's big enough
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Got my pistons, rods and crank all cleaned up, sprayed with pb blast and wrapped in plastic. Took my block to the car wash, cleaned it like a madman. Sprayed water through all the oil ports and water jackets and wow was there a lot of gunk and sludge in both. Sprayed it with a can and a half of pb blast and wrapped it in plastic and an old blanket. I'll unwrap it and put it on the stand when I have everything to assemble the complete shortblock (still need an oil pump and have to clean my pan up and paint it). Right now, I'm focussing on stripping some weight and wiring. I pulled up whatever wiring diagrams I can find and started pulling my prc and factory radio/speaker wires. All I want left in the car is my power driver seat, power windows, power mirrors, power door locks headlight, tail light and marker light wiring. Everything else, I want to rewire(to simplify things) or do away with completely. The MS1 will be completely wired in with all new wiring, with the exception of the injector harness and all the plugs(with 3" of wire left on them for me to be able to solder to my MS harness). I've even grabbed some relays and plugs from a mustang, so I can run a standard ford fuel pump relay. I need to get a new charger for my laptop, so I can start putting together a (hopefully) good enough tune to get through the initial start-up. I'm starting to get the itch to start rushing because I want the car done, but I'm fighting it back, because I don't want to change any of my plans and take any "shortcuts."

Forgot to mention, I'm doing away with the entire hvac system. I saved a couple pieces of my heater box before I tossed it in the fire pit. I'm going to make a simplified system that's all mechanical and only has defrosters and floor heat, which will be selectable between defrost only or defrost and floor vent. All together, it'll weigh about a quarter of the weight of the old heater box and all the vent plumbing. I have a small, 12v blower that pushes about as much air as the stock blower motor set on "medium."