busy spring

i've been remis and haven't posted in a while - so i guess i need to pick up where i left off on the torque rod for the transmission.
Way back on the 23rd of jan, a very sunny and what i thought was a warm day, i jacked the t5r up and busted a knuckle or two getting the new one on. I had to borrow a tool cause i didn't have a good breaker bar, but finally got the old one off and STRUGGLED to get the new one on. Took about and hour and 15 all said which was longer than it should have.

here is a pic of the busted piece hanging:



and here is a pick of the new one on:



if i wasn't so cold by the time it was on i would have cleaned up that mess down there . . . lot of leftovers from the transmission hose popping off.

As a testament to how much i have been working - i didn't manage to get the car up to highway speeds till easter! i had hoped that the mount would have stopped the intermittent jerk when i put the car in reverse, which it didn't. But i was SURE it would deal with the vibrations at high speeds.

So this easter, heading up to maine, i was SHOCKED to feel vibrations, bad ones, again on the way up - this time @ lower speeds than before. So up there i notice that the firewall torque mount was shot. ungh. i ordered one from fcp groton and installed saturday. Much easier. in and out in half an hour and that job required taking the plastic water deflector off and wiper arms. but was a snap. Also, replaced the radiator cap which may have finally solved what i thought was an over pressurized cooling system but was probably just a crack on the inside of the cap.

So am feeling good. I still need to figure out which are the vacuum hoses that need replacing with the stylin blue ones. Have some body cosmetics to deal with. And of course need to figure out what the hell is causing my winter mode to kick in all the time. Think i need to pull the codes again and post to volvospeed or volvolution or something. Its getting warm tho, so time to get back under the hood and get 'ol sugerblack driving nice.