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Radtap's 1980 242

Radtap

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 16, 2020
Location
Tucson, AZ
Here's my 1980 242DL 178k b21f w/ m46 and sunroof.
Bought in July of 2020 after my buddy sent me a facebook link, saw the car and immediately decided to buy it, was on bare rims on a trailer, hood didn't open, trunk key missing, doors barely open, parked in either 2000 or 2001, last tags on plate are for 2001. Said screw it and got it for $300, buddy sold me some wheels & tires to throw on it.

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No title.
Turns out the guy I'm buying it from got it from a friend back in 2001 who wanted to send it to the crusher, previous owner lost title so they couldn't crush it. So there it sat. No attempts were made to get it running but neither the previous owner or the seller mentioned why it was parked, just "issues".

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But there's clues. Fuel tray was nowhere to be found
Got in contact with previous owner who turned out had the title in her father's name who was the only one who knew where it was but he sadly developed dementia, so for about 6 months it sat at my buddy's house with minimal work and attempted to file for a lost title.
In that time both the seller and previous owner found both sets of original keys for the trunk and doors. Finally got the car to my house and started disassembling the fuel system.
By the grace of whichever deity you believe in the previous owner's father remembered where the title was, in his piano. February it was officially mine.

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Acquired some goodies from a buddy
And started cleaning and reassembling the fuel system.

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I was having issues with my fuel distributor. the pin didn't want to move smoothly, the fuel left inside rotted and ruined everything. Tried my best to clean without damaging hoping maybe it was salvageable but nope. Bought a known working unit and held onto it for a couple months while I replaced the rest of the fuel system along with the fuel tank.

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Fuel viewing window ft. level float
Luckily this thing was parked in Arizona and spent it's whole life here, only rust was the fuel system. No packrats either! Just sunrot, entire interior has to go

https://i.imgur.com/QTW1Cm5.mp4

Just got it running July 2021, a year after I bought it, roughly 20 years since it was parked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHWO7XZnN2U

Friend came over and we half ass bled the brakes but the entire system is air, just air.
August 2021 it runs and it drives, took it around the block, its 11pm. Only one headlight works, no interior lights, barely any brakes, idling at 2k, speedo looks like an inflatable tube man, 30 exhaust leaks but I don't care. It finally drives. It's only up from here.

It's a tan interior, grey now. Transmission and body is all in good shape and so is interior electrical, we all know engine electrical isn't. Engine seems healthy, 160psi on all 4 cyl. Plan is to get it running and driving to enjoy it, restoring the interior and in the meantime building a turbo b230 to swap in and replace the b21f. I have a lot of plans but those will come when the bank account permits. Now we're just dialing it all in so I can go get tags.

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Sorry my pictures aren't good I honestly forget to take them but I'll be posting more soon.
 
Nice find and start! That?s awesome about the seller and previous owners helping out and actually finding the old keys and title! I?ve had a couple buying experiences where the sellers were not so willing to help with stuff after the sale like that :lol:
 
BTW, an >500 dollar flathood 242 roller is something I've been looking for for years. I want to make it a street legal track car. Stripped, caged, B6304 with a manual, ripper.
 
BTW, an >500 dollar flathood 242 roller is something I've been looking for for years. I want to make it a street legal track car. Stripped, caged, B6304 with a manual, ripper.

You can find them but you have to be ready to buy it when it's for sale. I got mine for 350 and I felt I overpaid.
 
This is only the third 242 I’ve seen in person here, the other two were at the junkyard and I was pulling parts from them but my local yard won’t sell off any cars. Seller had it listed as a 83, there was no title or registration and none of the windows had the same year so for a couple days genuinely did not know what year I had, didn’t help it was a 15 digit vin and I couldn’t find the older Volvo decoder at first. Windshield is an 87 but still has the original 80 chrome trim
 
Glad to see you are saving this car, very cool! Best of luck getting it to the condition you are looking for.

I have a ton of K Jet parts if you need anything for cheap, I'm never going to use them.
 
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Look what the boys up north shipped to me this week. Crack free 1st gen dash
Probably won’t go into the car for a little bit but it’s finally in my possession, no more hunting around
 
Glad to see you are saving this car, very cool! Best of luck getting it to the condition you are looking for.

I have a ton of K Jet parts if you need anything for cheap, I'm never going to use them.

I think I?m good on kjet stuff for now, I?ll figure it out when I try dialing it all in this weekend. Might need a new auxiliary air valve but I?m not sure, makes for an expensive part
 
I have one I'm sure if you need it. Dash is a killer score! I just bought a NOS dash recently for my 78, took a while to find, even longer to save up for it.
 
Went to emissions today and passed with flying colors, only had to do idle test, no rollers.
Next course of action is fixing the sunroof
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Can anybody help me out here? While the car was sitting at my friends house his younger brother got in and started dicking around and screwed up the sunroof, was completely closed when I left and when I came back the back corner wouldn't pop up.
Also car passed with 0.24% CO (max 1.20%) no problem there but HC read 199PPM with max being 220PPM, getting a little close, my father told me that means it's running lean but it smells rich. I don't know enough about emissions to know what either of these readings mean in the grand scheme of things.
 
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HC (hydrocarbons) is basically unburnt gas so your assessment of it smelling rich and having high HCs are in line with one another. I don’t have experience with kjet cars, but might just be your O2 sensor is bad and telling it to dump more gas. Not sure if it’d pass emissions at all if that’s the case though. Easy enough to test if the O2 sensor is working though, grab a voltmeter and see what the reading is doing. Under normal operation it should be fluctuating between .3-.7V IIRC.

Bummer on the sunroof.. they can be finicky. When I bought my 242 the PO told me you had to be very gentle/particular with how you cranked it and that he didn’t let others touch it. Mine would skip/bind but luckily replacing the handle/gear mechanism fixed it. Sorry that’s not much help
in your case. You may need to pull it and clean/grease the ball screw cable things etc, which seems like a PITA. Hopefully someone that’s had a more similar issue to yours can chime in with some advice. Best of luck getting it fixed.
 
Unfortunately turns out one of the cables snapped, luckily there is a 240 at the yard with a buttery smooth sunroof that I’m gonna gut this weekend if it’s still there (praying). I’m 99% sure the o2 is bad because it’s running so rich it barely idles, it’s a $12 piece so I got a new one and even if it wasn’t bad doesn’t hurt to replace it, it’s a 1 wire o2 and those go out a lot quicker than the newer 3 wire ones so god knows if the PO ever replaced it. Judging by the fact there was duct tape “holding” the fuel system together I highly doubt they replaced it, I found 4 wiper motors in the trunk and 3 ignition coils when I got the car, coil and wiper motor that were installed were both bad and the ones in the trunk were all good. Found tons of parts still in their packaging throughout the car. A lot of buying but never installing. Also considering my aux air valve is bad and stuck open and it’s somehow not running lean in the slightest with the idle screw backed somewhat out it kinda points to some kind of limp mode
 
are you in Tucson or the phoenix metro area? lots of us in both areas, though up north its a bit more sparse. I assume since you are in the sweat zone you are not up north though.
 
always a 240 in at least one of em, hmu either here of fb (same username) because I tend to go to them at least 1 or 2x a month. Need to go back and get some gm fuse block connectors this week or next week
 
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