Rebuilding 5-cyl. Cam/timing/code questions.

jsellers · Post by **jsellers** » 26 Mar 2010, 12:40

Hi folks. I sold my Immaculate 850 turbo wagon to a guy on ebay. It's a 1994 with 56k original miles-like new condition. He buys it-flies in and I spend an hour going over the car with him-he then drives it for 3 hours-pulls over and the engine is cooked. I give him all his money back and reclaim the car. Turns out a heater hose split and engine lost all cooling while he continued to drive it at 75 -completely smoked the motor. Obviously he wasn't paying attention( or high) but now my friend-a very good mechanic-is rebuilding it for me and he has never worked on the Volvo 5 cylinder before. He has the following questions:
1. Setting the cams-there are slots on the back-when properly aligned are the smaller 1/2 circles on the bottom or top?
If cams set correctly-firing order start on #2 piston?
2. No timing marks on Cam pulley's-just W or M letters as mark-use these? Cannot see a slot or line mark
3. Will overheating the motor destroy the knock sensors? Should we replace or re-use?
We are still baffled by the fact that no codes were stored from the engine melt down-any thoughts on that? Thanks for your assistance! Should be a sweet motor when done.

Post by **charlyW** » 26 Mar 2010, 14:10

jsellers wrote:Hi folks. I sold my Immaculate 850 turbo wagon to a guy on ebay. It's a 1994 with 56k original miles-like new condition. He buys it-flies in and I spend an hour going over the car with him-he then drives it for 3 hours-pulls over and the engine is cooked. I give him all his money back and reclaim the car. Turns out a heater hose split and engine lost all cooling while he continued to drive it at 75 -completely smoked the motor. Obviously he wasn't paying attention( or high) but now my friend-a very good mechanic-is rebuilding it for me and he has never worked on the Volvo 5 cylinder before. He has the following questions:
1. Setting the cams-there are slots on the back-when properly aligned are the smaller 1/2 circles on the bottom or top?
If cams set correctly-firing order start on #2 piston?
2. No timing marks on Cam pulley's-just W or M letters as mark-use these? Cannot see a slot or line mark
3. Will overheating the motor destroy the knock sensors? Should we replace or re-use?
We are still baffled by the fact that no codes were stored from the engine melt down-any thoughts on that? Thanks for your assistance! Should be a sweet motor when done.

First thing is to check the head for flatness, I'm sure your mechanic will do that as a matter of course. Timing marks I've included a picture showing both top and bottom timing mark line up locations.

: Timing marks Cam.JPG (56.43 KiB) Viewed 955 times

Both Cam sprockets have a slot marks on them to line up cut out arrows on the rear of the plastic cam cover.

I would imagine you stand more chance of warping the head before destroying knock sensors I don't know the test procedure for testing knock sensors I would rebuild the motor then see if it returns codes for knock sensors.

whoa · Post by **whoa** » 26 Mar 2010, 17:16

Intake slot above the surface of the lower cylinder head, exhaust below it.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 27 Mar 2010, 15:14

+1 on what whoa said. Pick up a Haynes manual. They have very good detail on how to build the camshaft alignment tools with common, home center, steel stock.

How bad did he cook it? If stuff was melted you might be better off just putting in a used engine but I doubt that you could ever find one with the low mileage that you had.

...Lee