A profitable day at the junkyard yielded a couple of small but significant upgrades I have been planning to make to the 850. These little things that make the car just a little nicer to drive or live with or make it more modern are by far my favorite sort of upgrades to make.
The hatch of the 850 doesn’t have a convenient handle to pull to close it. Which has always felt like a very odd omission in a car that was so expensive at the time. You end up either grabbing the interior latch to pull it closed which breaks eventually, or you just grab the edge of the tailgate, which means dirty fingers, worn paint, and odd looking clean spots on the tailgate from finger marks. I tend to have to reach over the top of the tailgate and aim for the license plate to close it without touching paint. Which means I either touch dirty and wet paint or license plate. I remember when these cars were new various aftermarket companies made handles that bolted to the license plate to solve this issue, but those really didn’t help. There is a better solution courtesy of later cars. Sometime before 2000 Volvo added a handhold to the edge of the tailgate so you can just reach up with your left hand and pull it down to close it. This is such a small thing but it makes a huge difference in terms of convenience. So I had planned to drill holes to install one of those on my 850 and finally got a nice one from a 00 XC70 in the yard. Installing it turned out to be a lot simpler than I had thought it would be. Pull down the tailgate trim panel and the holes are already there not being used at all. I had expected drilling.
It is as simple as popping the red plastic mounts for the screws into place.
And trimming the carpet/plastic trim to fit. And suddenly the car is just a little nicer and easier to use. It is somewhat surprising just what a big difference such a small thing can make. It makes life just a little easier every time I close the tailgate.
Today’s second upgrade is another one of those seemingly small things that makes a noticeable difference. Replacing the stock intermittent wiper relay with the adjustable intermittent relay from a vw.
