Wow, alright- some things happened.
Since my last post, I was able to enlist the help of someone (a lot stronger than me) with a beefier torque wrench, and now that center bolt is to-spec and not falling off anytime soon.
In preparation for today's operation, I cleaned a lot of the gunk and some of the rust off the rear cam snout and the rear cam sprocket, just to make things a little easier for install. Nothing crazy, just a little oil and steel wool to smooth the surfaces over.
I also now have a bunch of hoses to deal with some of the cooling system weirdness I addressed in a previous post - the whole "death" heater hose thing.
Anyways, what did I actually do today? Cam install. Took me a bit to uncover these rather crucial bits from under a pile of boxes and bags containing various parts that came off the car. Also, upon my first cautious look around at things, I discovered an injection pump bracket bolt that I had apparently misplaced some time ago...
glad I found it.
So, I gooped the cam up with some assembly lube, and dropped it in. Note the little holder plate at the back, used to help establish straightness. Cam setting for TDC on the #1 cylinder means that those two front lobes are pointed obliquely upwards.
Next, the two center camshaft caps go on (yes, I made sure to mark them previously for orientation, and kept them in separate bags so I knew which one went where) - opposite to one another.
With that done, (and the bolts tightened, but not torqued) - the Greenbook calls for the seals to be slid onto the ends of the cam, square with the front of the cylinder head. I got them "sorta" close... more on that later.
Then, the end caps go on, and everything gets torqued to 15 ft-lbs.
Now you're supposed to press the seals in to full depth. Ideally you would use an unobtainium Volvo service tool for this job, but apparently a nice deep socket will probably also work. I had
neither, so I ended up using an old cam seal stuffed on the end of a cardboard tube to press/tap them in. I totally failed to get the seals lined up flush the first time, so I ended up taking the end caps off, pushing the seals flat with a straight edge, and doing this step over.
NOW they're to the correct depth.
With that done, I double-checked to make sure that the engine was set to TDC, and it was. For some reason I didn't get pictures of me doing this (I guess I was just super excited), but before you torque the center bolt on the front cam sprocket, you need to stuff the flat holder tool in the slot in the back of the cam with a 0.2mm feeler gauge squished underneath for clearance.
I moved the water pump to adjust belt tension to what I thought was appropriate, torqued that center bolt and felt adventurous enough to spin the engine around - carefully.
The
great news is that I managed to get four rotations with no pistons hitting valves, apparent compression and enough oil pressure to get up to the top end.
I'm going to double-check my tension and run it by v8volvo before I do anything else, but this is pretty monumental if I've done it correctly. Now I need to replace some hoses, put coolant in it, and get the injection pump back on and timed. It might be running soon!