Volvo 745 -91, lifted, B234+MS and back again

So uuuuh I usually wanna finish things before updating, but uuuuuuh I keep making things more uuuuh "difficult" and never seem to quite finish.
So uuuuuuh here's an partial update since last.


Ever wonder why there are so darn many warning labels on things these days?
Idiots, that's why.
Following is the harrowing tale from inside the mind of one of these idiots.
We will also catch a glints as to why dentistry is so profitable, and why driving a small japanese sports car in the middle of a nordic winter is not the best idea, nor the worst.

The car has been great since the engine swap, noooo trouble what so ever.
But there has been some mystery as to why the heater core won't stop making bubbly sounds.
It's not uncommon at all after refilling the cooling system, usually it clears out in a day or two.
This time however, it did not.
Not wanting to face reality I tried several times to put the car in various slopes, reving it's little heart out to clear the bubbles. Which works, until the day after.
I also tried this:

I did recall vaguely that the manual says not to ever do this. But I did it anyway because I think I know better.

Then I did this as to not die from the fumes by running the car indoors, gotta think

It kind of worked, the rather heavy crank pulley (b21) almost flew off, that didn't stop me from trying again, then it did fly of and almost hit me in the face, which got me thinking.

And if I start to think I won't stop, which led me into trying to figure out why the car has been running on three cylinders when cold, a problem that had been escalating.
Looking at the sparkys made me think that there might be a stuck/not closing injector:


The injectors looked "rough"
Placeholder for image of dirty injectors that somehow Google Photos killed after I rotated it. I don't feel safe anymore.

There was rust and "gunk" in the injector rail:



Blew some brakeleen through the injectors using a sophisticated adapter



Then they bathed in a ultrasonic cleaner with 50/50 water/red ethanol whilst I furiously clicked the injector open:


S? clean, I ?ls? kleaned tche sparkys which I should replace b???t they have the vary c??l "R" on thiem.
I'm a sucker for **** like "R", "Turbo", "Cool stuff".


I also cleaned the rail the best I could and dared, blew through it with brakeleen and brushed the inside I could reach with a soft brush and 5-56.


At least no loose flakes left.

And huzzah! It runs well again.
I think you can clearly see the smooth idle in this picture:



The sharp observer may notice how I ignored the issue with the bubbly noise from the heater core, but reality kept at it and I soon noticed a lack of coolant, and alot of pressure even a day or two after it last ran.
So back inside we gooooo


I also have had some so called "slippage" on the clutch, and also that there was oil under the engine+gearbox

That's oil.

And since I have a new clutch for m90+deep flywheel that I originally meant to use with the m90+m40 setup on the original engine, I figured it was a good time to change the seal in the rear as I had to change the flywheel for the clutch.
I did not however want to remove the gearbox together with the engine (remember how I redo things after I've done something where it would have been a good idea to do the thing that I now need to do?).

So I made a stick.


And tried to flatten the ends with my pipebender-turned-hydralic-press



Don't be fooled, the press didn't work out, I had to do it in the vice.

aw yes it's already paying off

And wooosh, a stick to hold the gearbox, I couldn't have done that faster/simpler, nooo sireeeh


Maybe I'll leave it there after, it clears all the things


Here-we-go-again.jpg

Interesting process. Great that you are keeping the old girl on the road!

On the note not having to redo things, running new wiring behind/on top of things like the steering column would be beneficial DTR

What's up with the house wiring though?

Great thread, thanks for sharing!

I suspect the house wiring is for the block heater.

lookforjoe said:

Interesting process. Great that you are keeping the old girl on the road!

On the note not having to redo things, running new wiring behind/on top of things like the steering column would be beneficial DTR

What's up with the house wiring though?

Click to expand...

volvomancharlie said:

Great thread, thanks for sharing!

I suspect the house wiring is for the block heater.

Click to expand...

Thanks!
Block heater is correct, volvo original. It's made of aluminum, also one goes into the passenger foot well for a heater fan.

About new wiring, do you mean the wiring for the blinky?

Disconnect all the things, again.


Dirty turbo, but the axle feels good


s? filthy. and some clear signs someone has "fixed" the valve cover at some point.


The t?rbo is s? kute, s? sm?ll.


I have bad memories about the original oil return, never getting it right in the block which resulted in a fine mist of oil behind me, with another car.
That time I solved by threading the hole R20 and put AN-connections in the block and turbo instead, with some large steely hose.
It cost money tho, so, I do my best.


Things went surprisingly well, getting the header off the head, until the last nut underneath. Of course.


I ended up wiggly-waggeling my way under to get the screws out the block and let the holding thing dangel on.





Got the head off and uuuuuuuuh I'm not surprised, I guess the leak was back at cylinder #4.


Aaaaaaand the aluminum has been eaten away by the coolant, one of the fun effects of never changing propylen glycol, I've seen it before around the thermostat housing on other volvo heads, but I didn't notice much when I change the thermostat on this one earlier. Fun.


The head gasket was also not in stellar shape.


Found an o-ring in one of the coolant passages



Yeeeeeah...


I sure made a great deal on this car/engine






Enough of that gore, I got the old gasket off with some wrath and cleaned up

Looks much happier in the last pic. Even though the deck is steel, I use a large chunk of steel wrapped with wet/dry paper to sand the surface for final prep. If you only use wire wheel / roloc discs, it won't be properly flat/true to promote longevity of new parts going in

Hilding said:

Disconnect all the things, again.

Enough of that gore, I got the old gasket off with some wrath and cleaned up

Click to expand...

lookforjoe said:

Looks much happier in the last pic. Even though the deck is steel, I use a large chunk of steel wrapped with wet/dry paper to sand the surface for final prep. If you only use wire wheel / roloc discs, it won't be properly flat/true to promote longevity of new parts going in

Click to expand...

I should have done that, in time of writing however, it's too late.
Ah, why didn't I do that. I can feel the doubt, the dread, grow in the back of my mind.
And I have gone extra on cleaning up the head, makes it twice as annoying that I didn't think about the block surface.

I'll tell myself that the sticky stuff I put on the gasket will do the trick!
More on that soon.

Still catching up with pictures.

The original head, brushed and scraped with razor blade, notice the back of cylinder 4



Then I had a faint memory of buying a head a couple of years ago that I was hoping to be a 405 but turned out to be a 530.
It was through bildelsbasen.se and the seller had not put in proper info or pictures, I made the gamble on the year and model of the car.
Not what I hoped for back when but welcome now.
Rather then trying to fill the cavities with "chemical metal" (I think it's the same as "JB Weld") I'll be using this older 530 head.

No cavities, just discoloration.
Very icky tho, the buckets were stuck and took some convincing and a few days in oil to come out.
As one might already guess, this does not bode well.

The last bucket, the most stubborn bucket, of course came out by shooting into my face.
Right beneath my eye. Makes me sad when things try to kill me.


The older 530 has a Y-cam. Why indeed. I'll keep it in, almost like a T-cam what I found on the internets.


The crudge, the filth.



Perk of being single, you can spend two hours in the kitchen washing valve train parts.
May be part of the reason one is single.


Valves got spun and sanded.

Why did I take this picture...?
One can see that I've taped the block, and made a mess of the newly cleaned engine bay.
There is oil blown all over the the car now. Fantastic.


Oh right I'm taking it out for the clutch and rear seal change.


It sure helps when the head is off, so small.

The throwout bearing has been making a racket so that's getting replaced too.
Oily and a little rust on the eeeeh spliny thing.


Totally stable set up.

TDC in case someone needs to see it.


The stuff, an on/off clutch but not so harsh, "they" say. I recall someone claiming a 6-puck is almost like a normal, kind of.


This is elsewhere on the internets, but I've noted down some things about the flywheels and clutches.

B230 dual-mass (?) 60-2 flywheel weighs 14 kg (precision instruments, old bathroom scale)


B230 dished (?) 60-2 flywheel weighs 12 kg.


Thickness, bottom lip to mounting surface, the actual surface that is on the crank is sunk in a few mm.
I think I checked that it was the same on the two. No promises!
DM 64-11 mm
Dished 55 mm

Pressure plate, not mounted, mounting surface to feather top/edge.
DM 35 mm
Dished 30 mm+ 1mm shim due to the thicker sinter

Total
DM 88 mm
Dished 86 mm

Again, measured with only the best instruments and care.







Aaaaand then I made a swing back at working on the head...

I had ordered a pinn-screw extractor thing, since using dual nuts (or triple) didn't work out on the majority of screws on the old head.

A joy to use! Why didn't I get one of these 10 years ago?

Cleaning the heeeeead


Aaaaaand it's bad.


When blowing through the oil canals there was a lot of old oil crude,
and it seems the oil had been blocked from doing it's job in the past.


Back at it again, cleaning up the camshaft to check the damage on that.


It's also scared, of course.


I really should paint my kitchen...


This made me a little sad.

Wracking my mind in despair I resumed working on the rear seal and clutch.



Weeeell, burnt in oil?


Went at it with oil and fine sand paper


I put the new seal in but I appear to have negated taking a picture.

As I was about to put on the dish flywheel I recalled reading a thread on savarturbo about the subject
and someone suggesting cleaning the mounting surfaces on the crank and flywheel with valve grindy paste.
This to increase friction between the two.
So I tried it, for fun.


Locked the crank so that I could spin the flywheel against the crank.


A pass with coarse paste and then one with fine, it sure cleaned up in appearance at least.
Can't say I feel any more friction by hand, oh well.


Then I also recalled a buddy mentioning that "someone" had said that one should put the loctit in the screwhole,
not on the screw, which I always do, so I tried that too.


Cleaned up the gearbox and changed the bearing


Put the clutch on, I managed to remember the shims.



Cleaned up the mating surfaces on the gearbox and the block,
took a pair of long m10 screw that I turned the head down on and put in the bottom two holes on the block as guides for mating the box and block together.
Worked well.


Putting back some things, jumping the gun on the belt and related things.


And then suddenly I went back to the head.

Cleaning up a bit more, still looks rough at the.... at the uuuuuuh "slippery surfaces" for the cam.


But I figured, at least it won't be leaking, and is it really that bad? Prices on heads on bildelsbasen have risen since last I checked, and I don't want to try to find another right now, need the garage for other things again.
So I kept going forward with it, plugging the pulsair holes:


If memory serves (this was daaaaays ago) I drilled the holes to 9 or 9,5 mm and tapped for m10.


exhaust paste in the... in the... uuuuuuuuh why am I like this, I know the words, they're somewhere in here.



Done this on another head "back in the day" but I had more patience when grinding down the obscuring part of the screws, this time I cut into them several times with my dremel and then broke of parts with a hammer and chisel. Then grinded down what remained.
Precision work as always.


Huzzah, never mind the scuff marks on the side of the walls, I just touched with the sandpaper roll thingy.

Dang. Cam journals that bad will continue to drop oil pressure/lubrication at the cam. You aren't reusing the camshaft, correct? Seems like a waste of time. Can't imagine it's going to last very long, perhaps that doesn't matter to you? I'm not one to rush out & buy new parts, believe me. I spend many, many hours cleaning/refurbishing old parts rather than buy replacements, just because I enjoy the challenge. Sometimes, though, it's a fools errand...

What do the caps look like?

Spilt lock washers are the worst thing in the world - definitely shouldn't be used for heated applications at all. Would make more sense to use some left over flanged head Volvo hardware & just use a good locking paste on them.

lookforjoe said:

Dang. Cam journals that bad will continue to drop oil pressure/lubrication at the cam. You aren't reusing the camshaft, correct? Seems like a waste of time. Can't imagine it's going to last very long, perhaps that doesn't matter to you? I'm not one to rush out & buy new parts, believe me. I spend many, many hours cleaning/refurbishing old parts rather than buy replacements, just because I enjoy the challenge. Sometimes, though, it's a fools errand...

What do the caps look like?

Spilt lock washers are the worst thing in the world - definitely shouldn't be used for heated applications at all. Would make more sense to use some left over flanged head Volvo hardware & just use a good locking paste on them.

Click to expand...

I sure am reusing the camshaft, as you say I probably shouldn't.
Caps = lifter buckets end/shim? Discolored but surface is smooth to the touch, I didn't take any good picture of them.

I have a million split lock washers so I try to throw them on things just to use them, I had an inkling that they will just settle flat with heat and some time. I'm hoping the exhaust paste settles as a threadlock.
It worked alright on the head I did the same some 10 years ago, it's still on my B21 that is in my Amazon.
Hope it hold this time around. Soon this whole car is made up of hope.

I'd love to get my hands on a 531 head, but as of writing, money is short and 531 heads are valued as gold.
Spring is around the corner and with it a lot less spent on power and heating, hoping to make room for a purchase in a month or two.

You make a very good point about the oil pressure, now I get a little nervous. Maybe I should get a gauge, depending on the cost.

Next I needed to plug the waterholes that originally are for the carb-intake, heating/cooling.
They are a lite awkward size so no screw I have make up for the size.

Maybe the end of a shock?


But what thread/size is that?


Time so go down a new rabbit hole.


Hmmm, uncanny precision work in progress


HMMMMMM.....


I'll screw this up, don't worry.


Getting creative with fixture for the head on the mill.


I dare not remember how many hours I spent on getting the head in the right angle, had a lot of fun.


I made a little machinist stand which holds it up against the clamp, no picture of it.

Sure I could have just drilled by hand, like a monster/heathen/barbarian.



The plug just drops in, which it wasn't suppose to. I didn't take into account that things get warm/hot/expand when turned.



So I glued it and hit it with a hammer. The fix for all things.



I ****ed up twice!

As the plugging worked out anyway I moved on to the valves.



Every time I would take a valve out I caught glaces of the canals, the ducting, the airways.
Original have quite the edges and harsh transitions from manufacturing.



And-since-I'm-already-late, why not spend some more time sanding down edges with the dremel.



Feeling pleased with the valves and the pseudo porting I was very close to slapping the head on and calling it ok. Despite the looming issue with the camshaft...
But I looked at the surface of the head which I just before called good and started thinking.
Since-I'm-already-late-The-sequal.
When I bought the mill I knew it would be to small for shaving heads. Buuuuut it would be reeeeeally neat if I could anyway.
So I made this spinning hazard:


Notice the finely tuned balancing.


Had to remove some silly safety guard thingy so that it wouldn't hit anything.
It gets *very* close to the height crank thingy, but only close.


The head is pretty much the same size as the table of the mill, so I got creative with the holding-down-details.


There are screws in the rear T-slot which the head stops against.

300 rpm is too much, such wobble, 200 is good. So slow we go.


Too bright light in the background, but one can see that it's taking down the corners both left and right.


I went very slow due to 200 rpm and a very large arc on the tool and very light cuts, 0.02 mm at a time.





This "method" (using the wrong size tools like a fool) has several issues.
Since I can't use the same side of the tool to make a pass, but rather use the left side of the tools swing for the left side of the head and vice versa, the trim on the head is very evident.
Here one can see a spot where the difference shows.


This forced me to make another attempt at trimming the head 90 degrees in relation to the bed/table.
The right side is 0


Aaaaand the left side is.... 1 degree above? This is over 400 mm between the spots of measuring.


I spent 30-40 minutes in my pajamas late at night cause it kept bugging me.


The "tuning" is done by loosening two screws on the head and then tapping or pushing with a screw located on one side (none on the other). Once you think it's perfect and try to tighten the screw, it moves the head ever so slightly.
I got it down to less the 1/2 degree. My instruments are not the best (shocking, I know).


Tedious I think is the right word.

The next day I made one pass at 0.02 cut, 200 rpm, and I took things at glacial speed.
It took me a bit more than an hour and and half for this one pass.


At this point one can see the switch in direction but I can't feel the difference with my finger.


There is another issue that I'm aware of using a machine too small and that is that the table/bed is probably giving way ever so slightly with the work piece on it when it's at it's outer most limit of movement.
But I'm making a kind of sanity check with glass as a flat surface (I hope) and sand paper.
Also because the water hole for the waterpump was out of reach so I filed that down by and roughly, fixing the last of that with this.


I went at it until I could no longer hear or feel a difference depending on where the head I was sanding with the glass pane.



It's funny how you can be doing a thing, focused, and in the corner of your eye there is... something not right.
This time I thought I was seeing a crack at the intake seat of cyl 4.
But it just seems to be something... else... it's fine, I'm sure. Probably.
Why would it crack there? It's too straight for a crack. lalalalalala it's fine.


I'm quite pleased with the surface, I should have checked with a straight steel scale or what have you, but I don't have anything properly straight (shocking, I know) that would give an reliable answer.
And I also didn't wanna ruin the mood.

Hilding said:

I sure am reusing the camshaft, as you say I probably shouldn't.
Caps = lifter buckets end/shim? Discolored but surface is smooth to the touch, I didn't take any good picture of them..

Click to expand...

Bearing caps, not valve shims. Since the cam is pressed into the caps when in operation, if those have the same scoring as the head, it seems bad.

.02mm = around .008" - that seems like too much to be cutting in each pass - how passes did you end up doing? Glass & sandpaper also doesn't sound like a viable plan for ensuring the head is true Be interesting to see how it all holds up when you're done. These do seem to survive much abuse & keep going, so maybe you will have good luck with it.

Which sanding grid did you use for the sanding step? From my own research 180-220 grit should be perfect for the elring gasket (MLS requires much higher polishing) I simply used a machinist flat table with this grid to level my head whilst putting sandbags on top to provide even pressure. It has held up for a year now under 1 bar of boost, so good enough I suppose

lookforjoe said:

Bearing caps, not valve shims. Since the cam is pressed into the caps when in operation, if those have the same scoring as the head, it seems bad.

.02mm = around .008" - that seems like too much to be cutting in each pass - how passes did you end up doing? Glass & sandpaper also doesn't sound like a viable plan for ensuring the head is true Be interesting to see how it all holds up when you're done. These do seem to survive much abuse & keep going, so maybe you will have good luck with it.

Click to expand...

I'm no machinist, how much would be reasonable in each pass?
I can't find a picture and now I get unsure of how small the scale shows, I have some memory of thinking "it does not amount to a hundredth" or was it a tenth? As long as it's less than 1 mm I'm good.

Swedbrick said:

Which sanding grid did you use for the sanding step? From my own research 180-220 grit should be perfect for the elring gasket (MLS requires much higher polishing) I simply used a machinist flat table with this grid to level my head whilst putting sandbags on top to provide even pressure. It has held up for a year now under 1 bar of boost, so good enough I suppose

Click to expand...

Not sure, it's 200-something.
Good to hear some success, if you only grind it, did it take long?
I remember hearing about a father and son who worked at a train workshop.
There was a large flat table at the place, every lunch break they would be grinding away at a inline six head.
I think it worked out, took them a while to get to the height they aimed for.