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© 1997 Brian F. Schreurs
Even we have a disclaimer.

First things first. This series Volvo has some sort of plastic road junk shield which screws to the underside of the car, just in front of the engine where it can get disgusting from 18 years of residual engine sludge. It is also in the way. You must remove it.

Note the gap in the upper left corner of this debris shield. This is on the passenger-side and it's where the tube must go.

Now that you have access to the area you'll be working in, get comfy under the car. A padded creeper would be perfect, but at the time we didn't have one so we just put down a jacket. You're going to be here for a while, so you don't want any expensive chiropractic bills from lying on the concrete.

Note that the exhaust manifold is on the passenger side of the engine, whereas the air inlet is on the driver's side of the engine compartment. This is a completely asinine design, because there is supposed to be a pre-heating tube running from the manifold, to the radiator support, below the radiator, and into the bottom of the air box. This is a nice, shiny, tinfoil-on-cardboard tube, about three feet long. If you don't immediately see it, you've already lost it. Go buy another one.

In the case of this Volvo, the tube was still there, but dangling uselessly below the engine. The manifold end was pretty torn up. We took it off and cleaned it up. It's held onto the air box with a standard hose clamp, but 18 years had pretty much caked it on. Remove it carefully to avoid ripping. We had to use a screwdriver to pry it off.

Newly cleaned and with the ruined ends cut off, the tube was ready for a new mission. Where it once fed warm air to the engine, it would now funnel cold. All we needed was a place to put it. Cutting through the radiator support was out of the question. Ideally, we would have liked to snake it immediately below the air box and rad support, to the front of the car under the bumper. But we could not do this for two reasons: one, the undertray we previously removed would not allow it (and the owner didn't want to cut up the tray); two, the air box outlet was on the passenger side of the box, not the bottom, so the path would have been pretty convoluted anyway.

In a perfect world, we would have ditched the airbox altogether and instead run a tube directly from the carb to the underside of the front bumper (by cutting a hole through the silly undertray) with a K&N high-velocity air filter on the end. But come on! This is a Volvo 240DL. Like we're going to that much trouble.

Yep, that's our cool ram air intake, just below the front bumper on the passenger-side.

No, the path was pretty much predestined. On the passenger side of the rad support, there is a convenient notch which allows just enough gap for the pre-heater tube to run betwixt the support and the undertray -- if you leave one screw off the undertray. No problem! There, the tube runs to the front of the car where it is held below the turn signal with a piece of wire. Perfect!

So the final route of the hose is, from the front of the car: passenger side turn signal (below bumper) to the radiator support, turn to the driver side, past the radiator, directly into the air box. Just one kink in the line. Not bad, considering there was no cutting or welding involved!

Don't forget to put the undertray back on. The engine is quite vulnerable to debris without it.

So, did it help performance? Come on -- it's a 1980 Volvo 240DL! But we guarantee it's the only one in the area with Ram Air.

Postscript: Sadly, the owner of the Ram Air Volvo removed the ductwork after complaining of too much road noise. Guess it actually worked!