1999 v70xc no compression; new head?

[flyingd]

I have no compression in #2 cylinder: think I lost a valve. Had someone scope the inside and the walls and piston look ok.

My questions are:

Where can I find a rebuilt head

How hard is it to pull the engine if I decide to change out the whole thing.

Thanks in advance

[JimBee]

Why would you change out the whole engine?

Others who are knowledgeable about cylinder head rebuilders will chime in on this, but I'll suggest googling or using online "yellow pages" to find a local rebuilder. If what you need is one or two valves replaced, you can pull the head and take it to a local shop for the work. That might cost you a couple hundred dollars (plus the cylinder head gasket kit and bolts, $140.00 at FCPeuro) if you do most of the disassembly and assembly work.

A good place to begin is this thread with the embedded link to tracyssoap tutorial, widely considered one of the best tutorials on cylinder head removal.

https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums ... =1&t=43299

[E Showell]

You would change out the whole engine because if you are paying someone else to do the labor, the difference in time between changing the cylinder head and swapping an entire engine is about 3 hours. If you can find a good known used engine with low miles and you have a burned valve on a high mileage engine with a car that is otherwise in very good shape (and you plan on keeping it for a while) it might just make sense to do an engine swap.

If you are doing the labor yourself, it probably makes more sense just to change the cylinder head.

[erikv11]

I've done them both and my preference is to swap the engine IF these criteria are met
- you have a known good, lower mileage engine to swap in
- you have ample space to use a hoist and move the pulled engines around etc
- you have some time to do it carefully and a decent assortment of tools

The engine swap is heavy and therefore dangerous but is about 50x simpler: you take it out, you put it back in. The only tricky part is separating the transmission from the engine, and putting them back together. And maybe making sure the A/C doesn't get smashed while the engine goes in and out. With pulling and machining the head you take the engine all apart, clean it up well (very tedious and time consuming), then you put it all back together. The head job is much more technical. For some that makes the head more fun, but a lot more can go wrong.

Time-wise, I would call them even.

A rebuilt head can be sourced from Clearwater (http://www.cylinder-heads.com/), many people on this site have used them. It will be a bit cheaper to reman the head you have, plus then you can put in OEM valve stem seals while I would bet good money Clearwater is putting in the cheap ones.

[JimBee]

If you decide to go the whole engine swap route, and assuming you really like the car and would like to run it for a long time, and are willing to invest some labor time and money to restore it with a good engine, you have a couple of options.

The glaring key factor in swapping in a used engine—apart from the fact that it is major "rigging" project— is knowing what you're getting. I'm not saying I would never do it IF I had the space and facilities, as mentioned, but at the least I'd want some "engine-running" data on the replacement before going through all the work. If I had an "observed running" replacement engine on the garage floor (that I had tested for compression) I would replace the internal o-rings and the rear main seal, plus clean up the "chimney" and any other sludge.

If it was a junk yard engine, I would take it apart to examine its internals.

I'd probably begin by looking at the odometer, which may or may not be accurate. Less than 150k and clean on the outside? Good, proceed.

Next, I'd pull the oil drain plug and swab the pan bottom with a loop of wire or thin flat metal turned on its edge. Does it look clean? Good. Pull the camshaft cap. Nice and clean up top AND no excessive scoring in the cam journals? Great. I'm that far in, might as well yank the head. All the valves seem properly seated? Spray some carb cleaner into the intake and exhaust ports, does it flow through the valves? No? Wonderful.

Consider that I haven't bought the engine yet ($159 at my upull w/o warranty).

So far the checklist is positive, and I have a few hours invested in this venture but no money.

Time to pull the engine from the wreck. At my upull's, they chop out the cat, leaving just a downpipe stub so nothing other than wiring, grounds, etc., on the exhaust side needs to be disconnected.

With the engine out and trans disconnected, turn the engine by hand while examining the cylinder bores from the topside. They're all nice and smooth? Super.

Now for the final test, pull the pan. With the pan off, you can see how open or clogged the engine's "chimney" is—as well as any general build up of sludge, blockage of pickup screen, etc.

Finally, pull the bearing caps. What you'll be looking for is the coloration of the running surface of the bearing inserts. Place the bearing caps in sandwich bags (if you're going to buy the engine). The caps are numbered but the inserts are not. You can't mix up the inserts if you're going to reuse them.

"Bad" bearings will have uneven coloration, with some copper color showing.
Some of these images show bad bearing inserts: https://www.google.com/search?q=rod+bea ... 1024%3B768

Passable bearings will have a uniformly dull leaden appearance with maybe a minor scratch or two. The crank journals should be perfectly smooth. and shiny. If they're out of round, you'll see that in uneven bearing wear. If they look good, but you have a penchant for redlining, you'll want to replace them with a set of Clives anyway. If they don't look good, the crankshaft journals will be suspect, so I'd pass on that engine—unless it checks out otherwise and you know somebody who can check the journals with a micrometer.

NOW you know what you're getting for your investment. AND if you take these steps (and do the o-rings and RMS), you can expect a lot of good service from a replacement engine.

The only specialty tool you'll need to perform these steps is an external torx for the bearing caps, E-16, I think. Harbor Freight sells a set for $10.99 #68016.

[E Showell]

Or, you could do none of those things and buy a used engine from Erie Vovo with a warranty and it comes delivered on a pallet. Way more expensive, however.

[E Showell]

Figured a used engine from Erie to be roughly twice the cost of a remsn head from Clearwater.

[JimBee]

Okay, but even the engine on a pallet, probably all cleaned up so you wouldn't know if it had leaking seals, etc., is still somewhat of a crapshoot if they didn't disassemble it like I describe. Some of their engines might not have been running when they received them. I don't know how they decide which engines to warranty, but at the greater expense for a used engine that would need to be removed and shipped back if it didn't work out, I still think if I were doing this, the teardown before purchasing would be how I'd do it.

[erikv11]

Yeah, you must be confident about the engine to warrant going that route, that is one of my key points too. I've done it twice, the first was a junkyard engine and I had problems with it. The second time I waited until someone on the forums was parting out a car, so I could get an honest and detailed description of the history. That one has worked out very well, still going strong 3 years later.