Project BPU! DD 945 turbo

bhg confirmed, distorted around #3. I think age and rot contributed to the failure, and it was juuust barely blown. pistons all still look mostly good, chambers look good, just a little color difference on the #3 plug. compression numbers across the board were still good, etc etc.

head was a bit crusty coming apart, I may do some pre-cleaning before I cart it to the machine shop for a skim and a valve job. checked lash with the ipd turbo cam, everything (For the most part) is a touch loose cold, need to compare that with the cam that was in there (T) and see if things remain consistent, that'll make the swaprooskie work a bit easier. either way I'll get it set up for the ipd cam since that's what's going to get stuffed in there shortly after it goes back together.

briefly entertained not sending it to the machine shop for a valve job and a skim, tossed a not-a-machineist level on there and saw a little daylight in the middle. probably wouldn't be a big issue but I'm guessing by some of the crud I found it's gotten a little warm before, and might as well while it's apart. so tonight and tomorrow night I'm gonna work on cleaning it up a bit, deshrouding the exhaust valves a bit, and otherwise getting ducks in a row. I measured all my shims, but I'm a bit on the fence regarding letting the shop set the lash, I think I'll handle that myself after the fact. I will get some pics added to the thread perhaps a little later this evening as well.

couple pics, then bed time.



valve lash. ipd turbo cam on top, T cam on bottom. not bad for the ol T cam, and the ipd in this case is fairly close to .005 looser across the board.


fabbed a valve spring tool this evening



works good but may get some adjustments to the way it attaches in the near future. new springs are taller than the old springs, so it's going to be a touch more difficult to set up. probably nothing that couldn't be handled with my large c-clamp, but still.


hit the head with some alumabrite and the pressure washer this evening to knock the overall crust levels down, but it's still gonna get gussied up at the machine shop later this week.

Are you installing the dual spring kit from Erland?
If so, definitely check the retainer to guide/seal clearance. IPD cam lift should be fine, but I've seen enough Volvo heads to know that those measurements can be all over the place ( I set the guides at a very precise installed height during rebuilds to make my life easier)

culberro said:

Are you installing the dual spring kit from Erland?
If so, definitely check the retainer to guide/seal clearance. IPD cam lift should be fine, but I've seen enough Volvo heads to know that those measurements can be all over the place ( I set the guides at a very precise installed height during rebuilds to make my life easier)

Click to expand...

yeah I am. I'll def. keep an eye on that when it goes back together.

did some quick headwork last night, deshrouded the exhaust ports a bit, cleaned the bowls up. nothing crazy.



dropped the head and valves off at the machine shop, reckon I'll have a couple days to work on some other stuff while that gets done did, estimated to be done early next week. I will probably work on the overdrive unit for kent's corvette in the mean time, get all of those ducks in a row and what not.

head is back from the machine shop, gotta get that doug nash overdrive put back together so I can get my workspace free again (thinking tonight), and start re-assembling the head.

got the od unit together, and started on the head. I really do dislike installing valve springs, even with the new tool lol

Nothing like the occasional keeper flying through the shop to later step on whilst you are quickly grabbing something you forgot

head's together, and preliminary lash numbers are in for the ipd cam. it was kinda tough to turn over by hand though, so I'm going to pull the caps back off and take a look-see. might check the lash on the T cam, but based on the pre-valve job numbers, it's going to be tight AF, as nominally, the ipd was .005 looser, and now the loosest value is 015, and the tightest is 002

I think I gave sam my bucket of shims, I'll hafta ask him.

sam's going to shoot me, but I measured everything up and ordered shims for the t-cam (based on the drift differences before. it'll be what it'll be), and the turbo cam, along with the gee-whiz tool.

hopefully it'll get here tomorrow and I can do that this weekend, but either way I'll put the car together and have just that bit waiting.

yeah that's a no. order mid afternoon on thursday, knowing it won't go out (on the phone "it'll go out tomorrow morning"-I called) til friday am...

aaaaaaaand they don't even process the damn order until friday night.

**** you once again, Ipd.

well aside from getting plugged by ipd (****ers)...

got the front cover bits off, replaced the front main seal and aux shaft seal.. probably didn't have to (They weren't leaking), but once in there.. anyway. new blue bag stuff, should be good for the remainder of the engine's life, however long (hopefully not short) that is. water pump was in baad shape, hell the whole cooling system went south on me it seems.. I put fresh antifreeze in it last year when I did the turbo install but what came out was mud.. so we're gonna be flushing this dog when it's back running before I fill'er up with fresh green.

head is back on, new water pump installed, gonna probably put the intake back on and then roll it down to the house to do some quantitative degreasing, cause she nasty. lots of years of oozing and dust, nothing too serious. probably do a good rinse on the radiator at the same time.

had to use a chisel to get the old waterpump gasket off.

didn't work on it today (maliboosty took my entire day), but just popping in to drop another F U Ipd, you had one job.

got the front drive stuff back on (timing gears, belt, new tensioner, the usual), started shimming the cam (t-cam. probably going to end up a little tight but it's only in there for comparison purposes, once I get that data I'll switch to the ipd turbo cam and we'll move on)

contemplating playing hookey the rest of the week to try and get this project over the line and get kent's corvette closer to the line as well. been a mixed bag here of late with all the various things going on and hard to move forward.

I should've put the battery on the trickle charger (it was disconnected but it was a bit low from lack of use prior to decapitation), that made for an interesting first start.. but it did light up and run. second start up was a bit more even and normal, and I let the car warm all the way up before taking it on a test drive. Car is running very good, currently I'm rocking the T cam, I'm going to get numbers for where it's at and then swap in the ipd turbo cam and get numbers for that as well.


the only possible thing left to test (and I don't know if I'll do it on this car or not) is the intake manifold swap to the kl racing one I have on the shelf. from that point, I'm, not sure where this project will take me, but the goal will remain daily-d, so a/c and heat and all of that are hard requirements. if I stay red I'll have a hard time not going twin cam, but I may just go in a totally different direction, who knows.

shimmin' the cam


getting there


adding fluids


test drive!



some more test drive notes:
the car is quite a bit leaner than what I recall it being (in and out of boost) before I did the head work, I'll verify this against a previous datalog but I'm confident I didn't have it set up to hit 19psi at 14:1 afrs lol, and out the top around 13:1 seems spicy as well. I'll dial that back lest I end up back in there with another headgasket

well the miata tuning session went reasonably well (and stayed on time), so I had time to kill this afternoon and livestreamed the cam challenge.. it involved me regaling everyone with my sweat-soaked t-shirt and 45 minute shim-time. more or less similar lash to the t-cam. all in all, it was about an hour and a half/hour-45 start to finish. I do have a healthy oil leak at the front of the head now, not sure if it's the brand new volvo cam seal, the new volvo valve cover gasket, or what. I'll look into that later tonight. car has a couple coolant drips as well, one that appears to be from the upper radiator hose (have new, just put the old one on for the cooling system flush).

anyway, here are the numbers. it was a hot sticky afternoon, not sure what the DA was, but it was not conducive for high hp numbers.. but we're interested in the comparo for now, so what we have is what we have

without further ado:


and since I cut off the power numbers for some reason, the blue line is 202, added a single degree up top, maybe pulled a couple down low.

and the video that goes with it

https://youtu.be/rHwKJPk7Y1I

well, oil leak was messy but not as bad as feared. does not appear to be the cam seal (whew), looks like the front corners of the cap were leaking and the new gasket didn't sit down in there tight enough. rolled it over until both valves on #1 were free, popped the front cap off, cleaned everything up, put a light schmear of grey rtv on the corners, a bit more on the outside corners after I torqued it down, and bolted the valve cover back on. I may not have gotten the valve cover tight enough initially either in my haste to get the car back together.

two coolant leaks were identified, the aforementioned upper radiator hose, and one of the turbo water lines (I think at least. it looked like it'd been leaking). tightened the clamp on that guy, hopefully that leak is resolved.

re-checked my lash because I heard what sounded like a loose valve in the video... I have 5 @ .014, 2 @.015, and 1 @.017 I could fix that, but it's an exhaust valve (one of the .015's is as well, maybe two), I think I'll let it ride for now.

So that?s a 20hp bump with the IPD turbo cam, some minor porting, and a fresh valve job?

It definitely looks to sign off around 6k, not even taking advantage of those valve springs yet!

culberro said:

So that?s a 20hp bump with the IPD turbo cam, some minor porting, and a fresh valve job?

It definitely looks to sign off around 6k, not even taking advantage of those valve springs yet!

Click to expand...

yeah. I haven't really done the timing changes yet to take advantage of it. there's also the sudden desire to do an intercooler test and verify that the npr is all we believe it to be