White Volvo 340 F7P Project

[max shearer]

Right, well ive not made a thread for this before but ill try piece one together with the limited photos i have, however a lot of work is due to start on this within the next couple of months so this should become alot more exciting.

to start my best friend bought this from a guy in essex and had it for a few months, he then decided to move to Australia so i bought the car off him. it started life as a 1.4 which i had rolling roaded at 29BHP :bf:

 

[max shearer]

more about the car,
it has 13' minilight wheels
yellow tinted head lights
zero interior
fiber glass bucket seat
OMP steering wheel
i put a four speed gearbox in with welded diff as is suited the 1.4 better rather than the five speed
lowering blocks on the rear
40 mm springs on the front

 

[max shearer]

first off a bit of a clean up,
re painted the interior with house paint :cb:
and pollished the wheels lips with autosol and a cotton wheel
and rewrapped the headlights to freshen them up a little

 

[max shearer]

Next, more lock required
i first put on the off the shelf more lock track rod ends which surprisingly made quite a difference.
before and after

since this picture i have modified the hubs to give even more lock, say the lock on the photo is 45 degrees it is now more like 65/70. i will get a photo of how much lock it has now

 

[max shearer]

Pully bush everything.
so next on the front end i literally polly bushed everything, and i mean everything
and fitted coilovers on the front which consisted of cutting the old struts out of the hub and welding coilovers in, with silvia s13 adjustable top mounts which i had to redrill the turrets for them to fit and gave all the hubs, wishbones, control arms and arb a clean up and paint while i was at it

 

[max shearer]

next the biggy, the engine conversion
so when i first bought the car i quickly went and bought a f7r engine (when i didnt have much knowledge of the f7p/r range)
anyways i rushed into buying it as it was cheap and came with some of the conversion parts.
after much research i came to the conclusion i had bought the wrong engine :bi:

so yeah i bought the megane F7r 714 engine which due to having a chain driven oil pump means it takes alot more work for them to work in the volvo, so that was sold !
i then came across a guy who was selling his volvo 340 project which he had given up on which was a white 3dr 340 with lots of spares and bit on bobs on it so i went to Edinburgh and bought that
so the engine was in place on that car so the plan was to complete the engine conversion on that car then i can take it all out and put it into my car so that my car was off the road for as little amount of time as possible.
so there it was got the engine running sweet and pulled it all out
out with the 29bhp engine

obviously cleaned the hell out of the bay before i started anything

the two engines
ill do a little write up of whats consisted in putting the clio engine in
alot of the parts needed are for the 1.7 340
flipped inlet manifold
1.7 clutch
1.7 oil sump
1.7 bell housing
1.7 engine mounts
1.7 alternator and bracket
1.7 starter motor
1.7 clutch cable
spigot baring
and various 1.7 and 1.4 water hoses
and a custom chopped and changed loom buy a very clever guy on the volvo page

i get the old engine out and the new one in place and turning over in about 4 hours, easiest conversion ever
then on the the niggly bits making it look acceptable chopping and lengthening the loom and wrapping it all and trying to tuck it all away
while it was on the ramp i also put solid gear box mounts on rear engine mounts solid and front engine mounts polly bushed this is to stop the engine and gearbox moving as the propshafts on the 340 are very weak so any movement increases the chance of ripping the prop apart (touch wood i havnt broke any props yet but i have 3 spare for when the inevitable happens)
so obviously took it for a test drive when i had finished (with no exhaust)

 

[max shearer]

made and exhaust for her
used the williams tubular manifold chopped the flange off the down pipe bought 1 3.5" to 2.5" cone and aload of 2.5 inch bends and a length
i have one box in which is about 1ft long however i flanged the last bit of pipe at the end so i could bolt another box on at the back if it was too loud, which it is too loud so i do need to do that at some point

 

[max shearer]

then something catastrophic happened i hadnt even took it further than around the car park where i work on the car yet and then it conked out, and wouldnt start again, tried bumping it ... No tried charging the battery as it had been sat for a while ... No, new start motor ... No
braker bar on the crank, seized solid

so thought i would take the head off

it would hand crank with the head off with the braker bar but obviously it should be that hard
so anyways engine out, still have no reason why the thing seized
until i got a new engine and took the 1.7 sump of that engine to swap over and the oil pump was sat in the sump along with the bolts, so the guy who i bought it off didnt tighten the pump in properly, this engine lasted 11 miles, which im quite impressed it lasted 11 miles with no oil, and lets just say them 11 miles weren't an easy 11 miles .
so what do you do with a seized engine ??

Yup, when life gives s**t, set it on fire

 

[Adey]

this is so full of win it hurts me i dont have one!

 

[DaveL485]

set it on fire

Thats brilliant

 

[Adey]

out of interest do the gearboxs and axles take a decent amount of abuse on these?

 

[max shearer]

out of interest do the gearboxs and axles take a decent amount of abuse on these?

well as i said i put the 4 speed in when i had the smaller engine as the ratio was better but i do need to put the five speed back in, ive never had any issues with gearbox or axels as the prop is the weekest point, however some people have made a custom prop and then started to eat gear boxes (also have 3 of them spare)
the best thing to do is to put the volvo 360 running gear in it which uses a torque tube instead of a prop which apparently is good for 300bhp+
this is what im going to do when i go through all my props and gearboxes

 

[Adey]

good to know, cheers

 

[max shearer]

so thats it for now i do have a lot of plans for this so will make a conscious effort to take more pictures and do more detailed write ups along the way.
here is aload of pictures because everyone loves pictures

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Great car and thread @max shearer ! Nice to see the alternative options to use up some of the old Renault tat we know and love.

OMG even I'm wondering now @Adey why you've not already done this... :bk:

 

[Brigsy]

Seen it a few times was in teesside for a while ? I think the previous owner moved overseas. Decent project

 

[max shearer]

Seen it a few times was in teesside for a while ? I think the previous owner moved overseas. Decent project

this still is in teesside bud,the previous owner was my best mate kurt he had it a couple of months and decided to move to Australia so i kindly took it off his hands

 

[Sparkysparks]

Love it. I missed the boat on these big time. Drift tax...
Your right in thinking that they had F blocks in them. Which means all the renault engines can go in (with a little work)
my vote is Megane 225 engine.

 

[Adey]

megane 225 engine is a completely different kettle of fish but has the same engine code. made for the 6 speed which has a different bolt pattern. though strangely the block does have the meat available to redrill for the 5 speed so that you could use one..........

 

[Sparkysparks]

But they do have an F block in them in some form or another, and if the mounts are there for those, then something could be sourced to make them fit. Gbox n all, I think anyway. Well not gbox in this instance. But as you said, could be redrilled for a rwd box