850 engine replacement woes (& Updates)

[bigdaddylee82]

It's been a ~7 month long ordeal, between killing the original motor, disassembly, diagnosis, locating a "new" motor, getting the motor shipped, pulling the car apart, putting the new motor in the dead ones place, and finally last night it started .

I say 7 months, it didn't take me that long of actual wrenching time, I tend to procrastinate. If I were to have everything together at once, and were motivated the project could be done in 3 or 4 days by the average shade tree mechanic.

I'm 97% done with the engine swap. I'm still dealing with some of the head/intake differences between my original motor and my new but older motor. I've got to get the hose from the oil separator to the flame trap to be about 4" longer and make an S bend. I've got to make another vacuum line about 3" longer as well. I sealed off the tube coming out of the head by cutting it off and crimping it shut, and had to drill and tap the intake for another vacuum line as I pictured above, but other than that, I don't forsee any major issues with using the "different" motor (knocks on wood).

I've got to get a new radiator, I ripped one of the transmission cooler lines out of the radiator when lowering the motor from the car . I just bought an axillary tans cooler from Summit, and patched the hole in the plastic tank on the radiator to get me going for the time being.

So putting a heater hose on, filling it with coolant, bleeding the brakes, dropping it off the jack stands, and she should be on the road again by the weekend (knocks on wood yet again).



- Lee

[bigdaddylee82]

Another snag, I got the "new" motor up to operating temp for the first time and when the thermostat got warm enough to spring open I discovered that the thermostat "housing/neck" has a crack in it. Steam and coolant spewed and bubbled out. So there's just one more part to replace. I swear I'll have a brand new car by the time this is done. My coolant reservoir cap grew legs and walked away too, I can't find the dang thing anywhere.

Anyway here's some more pictures.

The new engine in it's final home:

Lola Motor.jpg (120.51 KiB) Viewed 1513 times

Brakes bled, everything where it's supposed to be, and all 4 tires and wheels on for the first time in ages:

Lola Air.jpg (76.23 KiB) Viewed 1513 times

She's finally on the ground and supporting her own weight:

Lola Ground.jpg (81.32 KiB) Viewed 1513 times

-Lee

[bigdaddylee82]

Oh, and here's a quick little video of her running, nothing spectacular, but it sure makes me smile.



- Lee

[whoa]

Applause!! Sounds great, too.

[polskamafia mjl]

She soudns very good. I'm glad everything worked out!

[bigdaddylee82]

Thanks for the good words/encouragement fellas.

I drove it Saturday! Quite the feeling of pride and accomplishment. My booty fab patches on the radiator and thermostat housing held strong. I did a ~4 mile test drive before moving it to it's new home. The only hiccup was loosing power steering, some how the high pressure line out of the pump had worked itself loose (I never removed any steering lines from the pump or rack) and coated the pretty much everything with power steering fluid.

I've had a bout of hard starting, I'm suspecting bad/old gas. I've ran Seafoam through the intake, boy what a cloud of smoke, and have put about half the can in the gas tank but haven't driven it enough to have really made a difference. Changing the plugs helped with starting, but it's still hesitant. A guy I work with used to run a engine machine shop and swears by Marvel Mystery Oil. I'll top the tank of and put a bottle of MMO in and hope for the best.

The booty fab will be gone soon, I'm picking up a new radiator after work today, and I ordered a new coolant reservoir cap, and thermostat housing from FCP Groton yesterday.

The only thing I've still got to scratch my head about is wiring the AC compressor back. I'm missing something. There's a "pig tail" i.e. two wires coming out of the back side of the compressor, but I can't seem to find the wires that plug into them. I'll do more investigating once the fan shroud and old radiator are removed. I'll get one of my 10mm combo wrenches back too, it fell into the fan shroud.

So between the Volvo, unpacking, and a bathroom remodel, I should have plenty to keep me busy this weekend.


- Lee

[bigdaddylee82]

Looky what I drove to work this morning .

New reservoir cap, thermostat housing, and radiator last night. Put a bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil in the tank, drove it to the gas station to top the tank off with fresh gas, and ran her through the car wash last night. Of course it rained over night, but I don't care she needed a bath bad.

I decided to keep the auxiliary transmission cooler instead of plumbing the transmission lines into the new radiator, this also kept me from having to spend any more $$$ on transmission cooler hoses. Plus the auxiliary cooler will do a better job than the in radiator cooler. Since I intend to put a hitch on the car, this will keep the transmission much happier when towing.

If it turns out my "extra" wires on the A/C compressor don't actually go anywhere, I'll charge the A/C system, put the front air dam/splash shield back on, and have a reliable and economical daily driver again.

- Lee

[bigdaddylee82]

So a little up date.

I did my first oil change on the "new" engine last night. I had been running O'reilly brand Dino 10w-30 with a Wix filter since I put the motor in and first filled it up with oil. Seeing as I didn't know anything about this engine other than what the auto recyclers told me, I went with a fairly short oil change interval on my first oil change. With that same train of thought I decided to run some AMSOIL engine flush through it as well before changing the oil.

I put a new Wix filter on filled with the same O'reilly 10w-30 conventional oil, then poured the AMSOIL engine flush in. The directions said to let it idle for 10-15 minutes, but I had read about several other people running it longer for "better" results, and not knowing any service history on this engine I decided to go longer, I let it idle for ~30 minutes, and then did the oil change. The oil was thin, in part to being hot still, and the added solvent of the engine flush, but that was the blackest oil I have ever seen, picture the darkest Colombian roast you've ever seen, it was probably darker than that, and it only had about 1300 miles on it, that engine flush really cleaned some junk out.

So O'reillys has been running a special for a few weeks now of 5 Qts. of their new full synthetic, and a Mobil 1 filter for $18, can't beat that, I've stocked up and am good for about 25K miles now . The O'reilly brand oils are all made by Omni, but from what I've researched the base oil is Valvoline, so O'reilly oil is pretty much Valvoline oil, and the Mobil 1 filters are $$, so seems like a heck of a deal to me.

Well during the oil change I noticed that there was grease all over the passenger wheel well, back side of the wheel, and brake caliper the flipping CV boot gave up the ghost. So there's one more thing to replace. I like the car but I'm getting tired of fixing crap. It's eventually going to be a new car . I'll probably get reman half shafts from O'reilly or Advanced they're the cheapest I can find, and I've had good luck with them in the past on an S70 and a Cavalier.

Oh, but the list goes on, I put new struts up front before the original engine died, but didn't replace any of the hardware, and am kicking my self for neglecting it now, the thump, thump, rattle, rattle is getting old. The PCV system needs replaced I thought I pieced together the best parts from both engines when I did the swap, but apparently that wasn't good enough. All of the urethane/rubber mounts are the original ~16 year old parts, so there's a little vibration, slightly better after the flush and synthetic oil, but only slightly. I've still got something up my sleeve to get the VVIS working, but I'm waiting to tackle it and the PCV at the same time, that way I've only got to pull the intake manifold off once.

Sigh... Stay tuned as the saga continues.

- Lee

[nightc1]

I have nothing of value to add, but wanted to post that I read through the whole thread today. WOW.

I'm amazed that the end result was a working engine. Not that I know anything about ripping engines out and replacing them (other than reading threads here)... I just think it's amazing to see it go all back together and actually work. It seems like you are really close to having lola running great.

I guess the end result is to look back and figure out what you paid for everything (outside of time). In fact I'm curious about how much you spent.

Anyway thanks for the thread and the subsequent updates. An extra thanks for the pics and the little video... that was cool to see. Keep the updates coming in.

[polskamafia mjl]

lol whats so bad about having a brand new 850? I know what you mean though...I'm afraid that I may have recently crossed into "everything breakes at once" stage of my 850's life. I'm hoping I can get ahead of it all this summer and repair/replace enough things to slow or stop other things from breaking.