welcome to wacky Wednesday's where
everyone has a chance to show off their car mods and here's this week's winner,
this is my 1998 Volvo 740, the Volvo 700 series was developed back in the 1970s
and a model debuted with the Volvo 760 coming out in 1982, the 740
came out in 1984 as a cheaper alternative, eventually becoming the most
popular car in Sweden together with a Volvo 240 through the 80s and 90s, this
is the GL model which is the most basic version of the 740, glt and GLE was
also available with more features as electronic windows, turbocharger, and a
16-valve engine, this car has the classic volvo b230F also known as the
red block engine, which is a 2.3 liter inline four-cylinder engine with
cast-iron block pistons and a aluminum head, this engine is rated at 110
horsepower being delivered to the rear wheels, the F model features an o2 sensor
known as a lambda sond on Volvo's electronic direct injection and a
catalytic converter, carburetted models were also available as well as the bosch
k-jetronic mechanical fuel injection this is my beater car, I Drive it almost
every day to and from work, at 31 years of age and 275 thousand miles, it doesn't
burn any oil and rides better than many cars I've driven being over 10 years old
with less than half the mileage, this is indeed a real tank of a car, gas mileage is
acceptable and I averaged at 23 miles per gallon mixed driving, however I do
mostly highway and freeway driving in stop and go traffic it averaged at been
between 15 and 19 miles per gallon, which is about the same as my 1989 Cadillac,
the interior of the 740 is classic for 80's Volvo featuring a lot of black
and blue plastics, seats have cloth and are wide and plushy,
legroom is plentiful both for front seat and rear seat passengers, the rear seat
is very spacious and comfortably seats three adults, the interior storage is
completed with a glove box and a center console, the rear seat
passenger has two seat back pockets, the trunk is very large and easily takes the
luggage that four passengers might bring or a subwoofer, this
car is equipped with a central locking locking or unlocking the driver's door
will automatically lock or unlock all doors including the truck, the same
applies if the driver locks from the inside, the locks automatically
release if some try to open the door from inside the vehicle, the
instrumentation is very classic for a 1980s Volvo, to the left we'll have the
fuel gauge followed by an analogue clock followed by the speedometer, the RPM
meter, and finally the engine temperature as we speak this car has four hundred
eleven thousand and 561 kilometers, that equals to about 275,000 miles, on the left
side of the steering wheel we have the light selector, heated mirrors,
fog lights and rear fog lights, also on the left side is the blinker lever as
usual complete with controls for hi beams and
cruise control, on the right side of the steering wheel we have the wiper lever
which controls for wipe speed, windshield wash,
as well as headlight wash, we also have the ignition key, as most cars sold in
Sweden during the 1980s this one is not equipped with air conditioning, however you
could get it but it was at a hefty price instead we have a fan controller and the
heat slider, which is graded from little to a lot of heat, below the heat and fan
controls we have the radro which is obviously an aftermarket one ,and a
little storage compartment as an ashtray and behind the ashtray you'll find the fuses,
this car is equipped with an automatic gearbox four-speed with overdrive, not
very rare for this car but certainly not common in Sweden, in the center console
we have the switch is for heated seats, a handbrake, completed by the storage
compartment, as most things inside this car the windows are fully manual and so
are the mirror adjustments, one thing definitely worth mentioning is how easy
this car is to work on, everything is very easy to reach and very easy to fix,
and spare parts are dirt cheap, let's say you needed to do some work on the engine
or something mounted on the firewall normally you would have to stay bent
over for quite a long time, which in the long term is unpleasant,
well worry not this car has a solution, just these 2 hinges up and the hood
will do this
quite an extraordinary feature, let's say you need to replace some bolts behind
the instrument cluster, well not a problem, I got all these things from the
local junkyard costing me about 2 bucks and I only paid $730
for the entire car in the first place, driving the 1998 volvo 740 is really
straightforward, I would say it's what you would expect from driving a
40 year old rear-wheel drive car, it's a little bit like driving a small american
land yacht steering a smooth
pretty much effortless, you need to apply a lot of
steering wheel action for something to actually happen
the ride is soft but a lot of body roll, acceleration wise
having only 110 horsepower engine together with the car it weighs 1,500
kilograms, it's pretty slow but as I said before
it's nothing that you wouldn't expect from a 30 year old rear-wheel drive car, this
was and is still a car that's popular among young drivers and first car
ownerships driving at this as I said very easy,
however you have to keep in mind that all the weight is on the front wheels,
the rear axle is very light so if the roads are slippery you can
actually feel that the rear end wants to drift and
during wintertime it's very easy to get the the rear axle to skid, I
got myself a 30 year old Volvo because I wanted something reliable, cheap and easy
to repair on my own it is a neat and fun little car with lot of
life left, thank you for watching, well that was
this week's video and to have your car mod shown on my channel here, check this out
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell
