16v 945, trying and failing to keep it cheap

[Xeroni]

Current May 2021

1994 945
b320 squirter ft block, ebay rods, stock ft pistons
16v refreshed head, stock cams, ford valve springs
custom 16v na manifold J pipe
3in turbo back exhaust with two straight through resonators
HE351 ebay turbo
AW71L, accumulator modded
homebrew fuel chip, stock b204t ignition chip, Buchka wasted spark
BNE coilovers in front, cut springs and 240 shocks in rear, random homemade adjustable panhard bar found in the parking lot of a Volvo meet
Volan wheels with cheap af tires

After having a 240 for 5+ years I decided to go back to my roots and pick up another grandpa wagon. Was chatting with my buddy Michael talking about the old 760 and he started throwing craigslist postings for them at me.

Long story short I picked up this for $700 bucks back in November of 2019.




East Coast car so it has some rust. I took care of the surface rust with some convertor and slapped some BNE coilovers and adapters/ 850 wheels on it.

And I decided to finally get around to using that 16v head and accessories I had laying in storage for who knows how long.





And then why not also put a turbo on it.




The rusty exhaust fell off it



So I had a 3in cat back made

Accumulator modded the AW71L



And back in September of 2020 I took it to work and on the way back merging on the freeway this happened




Tensioner bolts backed out and the belt slipped off.




Ouch, completely thrashed.

I cleaned up the pistons and tossed the stock 530 head back on it. Other than some piston slap when cold it runs just as slow as when I first picked it up.

I started gathering up parts to rebuild the 16v head. Took the first valve out and saw this.



Cracked guide, no way I was replacing that on the garage floor.

That's one bent valve.



Bit the bullet and dropped the head off at a local machine shop that was recommended to me. In the meantime I put the engine I had laying in the side yard from a free 740 I owned for a whole two months (which burned down, my luck with 7s) and stuck it on a stand.



Tore it down to put some big boi ebay rods in



I was told it was rebuilt about 20k before I got the car.





Painted the block Ford red




While I still had the og setup I smogged and registered it in California since my Vermont tags were up Jan of 2021.



Head came back from the machine shop. New valves, guides, seals, upgraded springs.




Putting it back together




I as going to make a twin scroll J pipe but I went the easy way and did just a single since the HE351 is just a single.






Which brings up to current day





All ready to go in. Should be happening in March sometime. I plan to take a week off work for my birthday and get it all set.

[Harlard]

Good luck!!

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by Harlard

Good luck!!

I used loctite on those tensioner bolts this time. They better not come loose.

[Harlard]

I like backing up 262 with Nord Locks whenever possible nowadays.

[David945FT]

Did you just use the stock FT/FK pistons? No valve reliefs cut?

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by David945FT

Did you just use the stock FT/FK pistons? No valve reliefs cut?

Correct. No reliefs were on the F or the FT pistons.

[Broke4speed]

Originally Posted by David945FT

Did you just use the stock FT/FK pistons? No valve reliefs cut?

Valve cuts aren't necessarily required.

[oldschoolvolvo]

nice work on the j-pipe!

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by oldschoolvolvo

nice work on the j-pipe!

That took way longer than I expected it to. Something like six hours. The first bend and that motor mount bracket killed me.

[122power]

right on man!

[dopski]

Originally Posted by Broke4speed

Valve cuts aren't necessarily required.

Wow thats an eye opener for me. Really did not know that.
Then u are forced to use an other timing, or just as it should on a B234F?

[DET17]

Originally Posted by Broke4speed

Valve cuts aren't necessarily required.

Don't all the 16V penta pistons have them? What about the 16V NA engines?

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by DET17

Don't all the 16V penta pistons have them? What about the 16V NA engines?

All factory 16v cars came with reliefs. With stock cams though there's no interference without reliefs if it's timed correctly.

[DET17]

Originally Posted by Xeroni

All factory 16v cars came with reliefs. With stock cams though there's no interference without reliefs if it's timed correctly.

Factory insurance policy against imperfection.

WRT failing to "keep it cheap", I have an entire build thread that documents this perfectly.

What you will learn, that "cheap" and "reliable" are mutually exclusive. Now when you add in "fast and reliable" you bury the scales quickly.........

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by DET17

WRT failing to "keep it cheap", I have an entire build thread that documents this perfectly.

What you will learn, that "cheap" and "reliable" are mutually exclusive. Now when you add in "fast and reliable" you bury the scales quickly.........

Truth. Especially with cars.



Welded a flex pipe on, not sure how low the downpipe needs to be so the bottom piece is just wedged in there.

[Broke4speed]

Originally Posted by DET17

Don't all the 16V penta pistons have them? What about the 16V NA engines?

Sure, but they don't NEED them for the engine to run with stock cams, if everything is timed correctly, as mentioned above. It's proper insurance against terrible work/murphy's law though.

Given that even with the reliefs it's an interference engine, it's 50/50 on whether or not the effort is required IMO. In the watercooled VW community, it's commonplace to slap a 16v head on an 8v block and not add reliefs.

[Xeroni]

How today started:



Vs how it ended:



New motor and transmission mounts also installed. Still have to fit up the dual cooler. Going to use it for the transmission and engine oil. The ABS module mount will need some bending to give more clearance to the turbo. And I still need to finish up the downpipe enough so I can drive it to the exhaust shop.

[Xeroni]

Only leak was at the oil filter relocator on the block. PITA to get to with it in the car, required moving the power steering pump out of the way and reaching up from underneath. Is just open downpipe at the moment so I'll have to wait until my next day off to take it to an exhaust shop.

[Xeroni]

Replaced the hot side couplers with ones of the correct size and hooked up the PCV. Tuesday will be when I'll finally be able to take it for a test drive and get the exhaust finished.

[JerryJS8]

It's coming along quite nicely!

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by JerryJS8

It's coming along quite nicely!

Thanks it is.

Catching up on your build thread makes me want to go through and clean and get all the rust off this one.

[MadDog_945]

haha you're failing already with that cheap keeping thing

[JerryJS8]

Originally Posted by Xeroni

Catching up on your build thread makes me want to go through and clean and get all the rust off this one.

Rust is the devil and the end of many a good car!

[Xeroni]

Originally Posted by MadDog_945

haha you're failing already with that cheap keeping thing

I failed at it when the timing belt failed lol

Originally Posted by JerryJS8

Rust is the devil and the end of many a good car!

We're lucky in California that we hardly see rust. We still have 70s Japanese cars still around thanks to it.

I got the old 16v exhaust I had made welded back onto the car today, 3in straight piped to the rear. I might add a muffler in because it's really loud.
That was also the first test drive of the car and I noticed a few things. I didn't make any boost at all and the thermostat gasket was leaking ( I did reuse the old one). The latter is an easy fix but the first took me a while.
I thought the wastegate arm might have been backwards, then I checked the vacuum lines. Then I finally looked at the hot side piping and found this:



Opps.

Hooked that back up with a right sized OE Volvo clamp and it was boosting. I still need to do some changing to the fuel map but once in boost it held around 11.5-12 afr until I popped off a cold side pipe at 20 psi. I might need to run a bead around my hard pipes to stop that.

[Xeroni]

Today I:

Replaced the leaky thermostat gasket, ew




Put a "race muffler" from Amazon on it to hopefully quiet it down a bit. For whatever reason it has one 3in ID and one 3in OD. Luckily I had a 3in ID to ID adapter laying around to weld on to it.



Then I drove it around some more, the brakes are no where near adequate for how fast this car can accelerate. They've never felt great so I'll probably go through and refresh it all up and put some new DOT4 fluid in it soon.