A sleeples night.
Huff, So It is 03:30 at night, and I have been awake for at least an hour, twisting and turning in Bed.
I’m not really sure why, but while twisting and turning, Ideas for my car kept popping up, so I decided to get up and write a bit about it.
People who know me, know that I have a Volvo 850 T5 Saloon.
The car is from 1994, and well has over 600.000km on the meter, but it still drives great.
Of course with such an old car, it has some faults, It drinks Oil like crazy about 1 liter every 800km.
The Air Co is not working, and because of the Oil leaking onto the exhaust pipe, it is not possible to use the ventilation when idling or driving slowly like city traffic, this because it takes in the air mixed with burnt oil fumes.
And lastly the previous owner did a horrible paint job, and paint has started fading on the Hood.
But besides that, there is hardly any rust on it, it still drives 240km/hour without a hitch, and accelerates fast enough to outrun most non tuned and some tuned cars.
So what do I want to do with the car?, well first of all, I actually wanted a V70R, but since I don’t have the money to buy one, I will focus on this car.
I wanted to have a hook on the car, to be able to pull a trailer, or put one of those bicycle holders.
I went to the Volvo dealer Svala Motors in Zandam and asked for a quote on the price for a new one. Unfortunately their computer system were down when I was there so they were not able to give me a quote, but I left my Details, and they promised to call back.
I the mean time I went to a company here called Brezan, and they gave me a quote of €350 for one with 7 pole electric connector.
I figured that was rather expensive thinking I can just as well get a second hand one.
So I started looking and found some different websites offering searches from Car scrap yards, and found onderdelenzoeker.nl, here I filled in a search and some days later I got some offers, ranging from €100 without shipping and with old electrics, to €90 including shipping and new 7 pole Electrics. I ordered the cheap one including shipping from De Boer Auto Demonatage.
2 days later Volvo called back and left a voice mail, asking if I wanted 7 or 13 pole connector, but since I had now already ordered the second hand one I never followed up on it.
Well about a week after I ordered, it arrived, I opened it and the flakes of rust was falling out, wow it was very second hand, well you get what you pay for. I looked up some drawings of how it should be connected, and quickly realized that there were a lot of pieces missing, so off to Volvo to get those pieces. This time I went to Furness Car in Amsterdam Southeast.
After some investigation with them, we found out that I actually needed to order a Mounting kit, since most of the parts I needed were not available separate, ok so another €50 for those. While I was there I asked how much a new hook would have costed. he told me €180 not including electrics.
I quicly realized, that I could just as well have ordered it there, argh.
ok, well now it is 05:30, so need to get ready to go to work, will continue laters.
