I just read through the whole thread (and your website), and all I have to say is, bravo good sir.
Which GPS is that? I'm running an older Garmin Nuvi with traffic and bluetooth.
If you have some extra time you might consider making a linked table of contents at the beginning of your thread.
Thanks for the compliments! I too have an older style Garmin Nuvi, not sure which specific model it is because I bought it used at a great price.
And that is an awesome idea about a table of contents with hyperlinks to each mod! I'm in the process of organizing a mods list (which you may have seen on the "under construction" page of my website), so a table of contents will be the icing on the cake. I'll have to do that some time soon... Right now I'm working on transferring my domain to MyNameIdeasWereTaken.com
Hi - This is my first post to this site and after reading through your thread I just had to give you props and ask a couple questions. I have an 06' S40 T5 and until I discovered this site never realized the things you can do to these cars and now that I've seen your thread I'm in awe of what I could do to mine. I'm a complete noob at this stuff and probably couldn't do 90% of the things you did to you car over the last couple years, but I would love to learn. I have some ideas, but haven't taken any steps. You see, I've never been into doing anything more than stock maintenance stuff to my car, but I've developed a lot of interest lately to take on some of these projects...starting simple of course. The thing that makes me hesitant as well is the fact I have 115k+ miles on my car and wonder if it's too late to start doing any modding, but am sure there are some things I can do to make it more enjoyable - curious what what other people think.
I have some things I need to do "Stage 0" stuff, as they say, to keep it running but I would love to do some of these smaller mods as opposed to tuning.
I'll be going back through this thread and see if I can find various things that I might be able to tackle, but any suggestions on things I could look to tackle first or anything would be appreciated. Like I said I'm a noob, but I've been reading this site and a couple others for a couple months now getting a feel for what people are doing and what not. I know I could probably figure out some of this stuff in time and I have done some simple LED's upgrades inside and installed a Xenon light kit a couple years ago, but nothing too major.
Also, I noticed your selling some tips and might be interested. I'm guessing these are more cosmetic than anything from what I've gathered, but for the price it would be a good starter project as with my mileage I don't know if doing full exhaust is in the cards. Regardless I love what you've done with yours and am very envious of your commitment to this. Great job and thanks for taking the time to share with everyone.
Thank you for the awesome compliments! I feel honored for my thread to host your first posting; welcome to SwedeSpeed!
Of course first, we need to see pictures of your car! With that high of mileage, I would personally hold off on doing any real performance mods, but it is never to late to change the appearance. Depending on your budget, wheels are a great place to start. To keep things cheap, a can of plasti-dip can go a long way from blacking out your grille frame or blacking out the letters on the back, you can even dip your wheels if you wanted to. Before I can really answer your question in depth, what kind of look are you going for with your car? Do you want a really stealth appearance? Or an OEM+ look? Or just a few subtle things that only true Volvo enthusiasts would acknowledge?
If you do want to alter the performance in such a way that isn't affected by your current mileage, I can now really encourage installing the Elevate torque mount. I have 103k miles and it made a huge difference (I would rank it as a 4/10 on the difficulty scale). The intake turned into a pretty big project, not something I would recommend for a first big mod, plus it's more of a cosmetic piece than anything else (though there are gains). But like I said above, what do you specifically desire out of your car? Then I can help point you in a more clear direction.
The exhaust tips that I have for sale are purely cosmetic. Let me know if you're interested and we can make a deal!
It sounds like you're really passionate about your Volvo, you will undoubtedly fit in well here on SwedeSpeed. I could barely apply a sticker straight when I first joined this forum, but this thread really shows how I've learned, progressed, and matured in the last few years. I'm sure you'll come to find (if you haven't already) that SwedeSpeed is a treasure chest of knowledge and we have a very welcoming and polite (though often sarcastic) forum.
Anyway, his pictures give a good example of what it looks like taken apart. This is honestly identical to what I did (but on a C30).
