Racebrick's Volvo 240 race car

This build started in 2008, when a friend and I bought a 1986 Volvo 240 from a guy in Madison Wisconsin for $500. After reading about the 24 hours of lemons in grassroots motorsports. The car was maroon in color with a b230f in front of an m46 manual transmission.  The car ran, and drove, but did not stop due to a failed brake line.  We trailered it home, fixed the brakes, had a cage built for it, and raced it in the exact shape it was in.  We missed winning C class by a couple of laps after a full 24 hours. So began our journey.  The following is an article written a few years back, which continues the backstory.

Hella Sweet Lemons Car of the Week: Little Lebowski Urban Achievers’ Volvo 245

Posted June 11, 2018 - Text: Eric Rood

— Photos: Eric Rood, Murilee Martin, Nick Pon

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Back in 2013, I came up with a metric called “Domination Factor” for comparing the relative performance of car types in Lemons races. We don’t bog you down with deatils, but the relevant piece of information was this: Volvo 240s and 260s fared better than any other car in Lemons, on average. Lemons has seen many Volvos come and go, but the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers have run their ugly old 245 Wagon in 28 races.

As many Lemons cars do, the Lebowskis’ 245 started out in Lemons as an ugly old box. The car featured the naturally aspirated, eight-valve version of the Volvo “Redblock” four-cylinder engine, which was good for about 110 horsepower at best. With more than 3,000 pounds of Swedish steel to punch around, it was never fast in a straight line, but it always cornered well and dealt with rainy tracks better than almost any other car. The team, based in the Chicago suburbs, ran the first race at the infamous Nelson Ledges race in 2009. A steady downpour punctuated that race and the team—called VolOwned at the time—came in second place in Class C.

The Volvo survived and came back in 2010 with a fresh Ghostbusters “Ecto-1” theme. Plastic bins and assorted dollar-store ephemera graced the car, which finished 10th overall at the first Lemons race at Gingerman Raceway, though it was only good for P3 in Class C.

The Ghostbusters theme lasted a year, but they came back in 2011 with the Volvo painted like a school bus that doubled as a fantastic “The Big Lebowski” reference. As you might guess from the top photo, taken in April 2018, they have not washed the car since painting it seven years ago.

The School Bus wagon picked up a Class B win at the snowed-out Gingerman race in 2011 and was promoted to Class A, perhaps slightly unjustly, with low triple-digit horsepower. Undeterred, the team racked up a series of clean races with long fuel stints that almost gave them two overall wins, coming up second place in back-to-back pieces.

A spate of Midwestern flooding and torrential downpours would surely be their chance to punch through at Gingerman Raceway in 2014, the team thought, but things went awry before they could even get to the track. The car and then tow rig both got stuck in the team captain’s flooded yard and the team missed tech inspection.

They passed last-second tech on Saturday morning with an optimistic gleam in their eyes. However, they were thwarted minutes before the race with a phantom electric problem that parked the car the entire weekend, earning them the I Got Screwed trophy for a miserable weekend.

They eventually diagnosed and fixed that, then ran several more naturally aspirated races. Finally in 2016, the Little Lebowskis upgraded to a turbocharger on their Redblock engine. It hasn’t been any more competitive with the turbo. In fact, they haven’t sniffed the Top 10 in a few years. However, the team generally have had more fun running in a quick Class A car and seem like they’re having a better time on a given race weekend.

As often happens in Lemons, the team owner accumulated several parts Volvos. All of those came on random sets of wheels with no-name 600-treadwear tires and rather than throw them away, the team captain stored them in his garage space. So at Autobahn Country Club in 2017, the Little Lebowskis cleaned out the garage and instead of spending $500 (or more) on race tires, they brought a dozen of the old wheels and tires for the race. They weren’t any faster, but the old all-seasons’ screeching was mightily impressive.

The car continues to race in the Midwest today. Its next race will be its 29th by our count, the second-most for any Volvo in Lemons behind the Bert One Volvo 262C Bertone Coupe.

The team captain told us in April that it’s starting to show some signs of old age and wear from probably at least 15,000 race miles, but we suspect the ol’ brick will be racing for at least a couple years to come.

The 24 Hours Lemons returns to racing at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan on June 30 and July 1. Read more Lemons coverage on Roadkill.com right here, then be sure to follow Lemons on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

After many almost wins, the car was turbocharged, but never really was as competitive as it once was. I believe this is mostly due to more modern cars being built for the series, and the now 30+ year old car just not having the power to do much in class A. So I sold the turbo engine, transmission, and tons of b230 parts to another volvo team to do what needed to be done.  I had everything I needed to ls swap the car. So I started the process about the fall of '22. 

Crusty 5.3 ready to be given new life.Pile of parts that will soon be in the car.

It may be difficult to tell from the video, but this car is a handful to drive. The rear tires are always sliding, and the brakes are terrible.

The car did very few laps, and a few things became very obvious.  The rear end, tires, and brakes were all somewhere between inadequate, and downright dangerous. I also started looking around the inside of the car and realized I was not as confident in the cage at 120+ mph as I was when the car barely got over 90. We are about to enter the modern age for this car.

Outstanding!

Car's got a lotta pickup.

Holy E36 M3, that thing rips!  Can't wait to hear what's next!

Great build, love old volvos with a big engine....seems like some wide A$$ tires all around and maybe a little rear aero and that thing will be even more of a hoot

Making a racecar out of a volvo 240 is difficult.  There are few off the shelf options for important parts, and this car is going to be "aggressive." Wheel choice is basically zero, big brakes are out there, but lacking.  I decide to start with an axle swap.  I have done the Ford 8.8 swap into other Volvos, and it's a pretty common upgrade.  One must acquire an axle out of a turn of the century explorer, chop off the ford stuff, pull the longer axle, shorten the long axle side tube, and then put in a short side axle into the now equal length axle tube. Pretty straightforward stuff and when done the assembly is about an inch wider than factory so with the correct wheels it fits like stock.  It also fixes a bunch of the shortcomings in the back of this car. Ford wheels, big brakes, an LSD, and any gear ratio one could want, and stronger too.  However, i felt the explorer axle was too tame. The only reason the explorer axle is the go to, is to avoid body work.  This is a racecar and should be treated as such.

Here is the stock axle, and associated linkages.

Here is a comparison of the two axles with tires. Going from a 225 tire (up from 195 stock) to a 275 tire, and almost 7 inch wider axle.

After going back and forth between reconfiguring the geometries, and moving pickups I opted to go the easier route. I bought a weld on kit for the stock arms.

I bought a nice brake flaring tool, and it's worth it.

This hose is a front brake hose from a 1970 beetle. It goes from the volvo factory hard line to the axle.

Axle mount for the soft hoses. In hindsight this was not the easiest way to do this.

I build some mounting plates for the soft brake hoses. These came from a 2013 or so mustang, since the newer ones are metric.

Some shots of the brake lines.

All ready to go into the car.

The axle went in perfectly. Everything lined up much to my relief.

After some cutting of the body, the axle articulates well. It also looks badass.

With the axle swap done, I was able to drive it around the block without incident. No leaks, no wierdness, and pushing the car is much easier.  I wanted to make sure the LSD was working, and I think it does.

Next I need to deal with the front end.

I preparation for this and a couple other projects, I created a nice flat table.  Mdf, and 2x4s.

Leveling it up

it's level.

One of my favorite tools.

I started by laying out all this crap kind of where it goes, and made some marks on the table to indicate where I wanted the front tires to be. The idea is that I will end up having to chop up the strut towers, and put them where it makes the most sense, after I get the wheels where they need to be.

The wheels are held in place.

I made some upper strut mounts for the mustang strut assembly, and next I will begin to mock it up on the table, and take some measurements.

That table is great, very interested to follow along

Looks like you aren't using the stock radiator grill opening any more and just ducting air from the bottom opening.  Any reason you don't use both??

jfryjfry said:

Looks like you aren't using the stock radiator grill opening any more and just ducting air from the bottom opening.  Any reason you don't use both??

 I feel that having too large of a radiator inlet was causing cooling problems on this car. I wanted the inlet area to be about 1/3 of the area of the radiator. Then with a gentle enough curve to allow the air to maintain attachment the air will expand, and slow as it crosses the radiator while also giving the air a path out the back of the radiator. Much of this decision was based on looking at pro level touring, and gt cars, as well as reading about race car aerodynamics. I was not 100% satisfied with this design, mainly the curve is too aggressive, and there is not a complete path for exit air. With the addition of the oil cooler I will be redoing a lot of the front end of this car.