Suppose you wanted to cook yourself a burger. It would make sense to go to the grocery store, buy all your ingredients that you need, then bring them home ready to cook and sit down to watch latest F1 race in Montreal.   Replacing individual parts can be like putting duct tape on yout car: its...

Continuing on the path to keeping my old Volvo on the road, it was a logical step to replace the distributor cap and rotor. While I was at it, I thought I might as well replace the seals. How hard could it be? Well, in most cases, you never want to start your car project thinking that. But in...

How do you define a “new” car? In my family, any new car is simply younger than the outgoing car. Our 2005 Volvo S80 was 5 years old when we bought it, and that was our newest car in the family fleet. I personally don’t like the idea of needing to go into a dealership and bargaining for a new...

I replaced every single component in my A/C system in my Volvo XC60 and my 940 to get them to work. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way when trying to find the root of the problem. If you’re lucky, your A/C system can be very cheap to fix. But the key to this is, you have to know where to look....

It’s become a relatively common sight that my 1991 Volvo 940 GLE ends up on jack stands in my garage. I think age is starting to catch up to the old guy, but believe it or not, it has never left me stranded in a parking lot or on the highway. If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, it’s not that...

My car seems to be a never ending case of replacement. Not that this is a bad thing, because otherwise I wouldn't have anything to write about. But in the case of the engine, I've been slowly changing all sorts of things to bring it back to what it used to be. I have been chasing what I think is...

A crank position sensor has a very important task: to ensure that the engine computer knows where your engine is positioned in its cycle. This will allow the computer to properly time the ignition. If your crank position sensor isn’t working properly, your spark timing might be off and cause your...

Last week, I posted about understanding wheel spacers for RWD Volvos. In case you might be wondering no, I am not planning on joining the hellaflush stanced car club, but instead simply changing the offset of my car to allow the installation of a new set of wheels. In order to install my set of...

Now that spring has officially arrived, it was time for me to pull out my summer wheels and mount them on my car. As I have a 1991 Volvo 940 GLE, you’ll know that it’s not the easiest task in finding a wheel upgrade for RWD Volvos. If you’ve got a RWD brick and want to put some new shoes on your...

A lower steering column joint in a RWD Volvo can be a major contributor to odd noises from the steering, as well as an indirect feeling between your steering wheel and the road. I was tired of hearing a clunk every time I turned the wheel, and also feeling like there was more slop in the steering...