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Whiteblock in a white box

I've had a few engines apart before and I don't think I've ever had head bolts take so much effort to remove. I'm not a small guy, and it took an 18" breaker bar with a cheater on it and all of my weight.

And yeah, every single one of them gave way with a noise that sounded like they'd broken.

I used a plumber's torch to heat the bolt heads up, and I didn't want to cook a bunch of sludge in the head while doing it, so I didn't leave the heat on them very long, but in a couple of cases the bolt didn't want to move so I hit it again and then it came free. So heat is your friend.

Got the head on the bench today and measured the warp on it, which is quite low, so there's no reason to have it machined. I am a little concerned about getting the gasket mating surface cleaned up though, I rubbed at some of it for a good while with some mineral spirits and it didn't seem to be coming up at all. I removed the exhaust studs because they were super crusty, fortunately they all came out with no issues.
 
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thatcher.hubbard said:
Long story short, despite a lot of care and caution, one of the head bolts snapped off when I was removing them.
Click to expand...
Was it on the exhaust side between cylinders 4 and 5? I've broken around 7 or 8 bolts(or more) on that spot. Some B6254, most B6284T and might be one B6304. All of them were opened the first time since leaving the factory.

18" breaker bar sounds about the same I open the bolts with. Mostly a loud snap, I like to wear ear plugs while opening.
 
Yes, that's *exactly* the one that broke. And I have reason to believe this engine has never been opened before too.

Lankku, have you found that an engine that's had the head off and the bolts replaced are less likely to snap?
 
I think breaking the bolt has something to do with time and heat cycles and the place of the bolt. On some cases there has been dried oil in the bolthole while others are clean. But all stumps have come out easily. I've never broken bolts on an engine which has had the head off. I've even used same bolts two or three times and they have been fine. Just measure that they haven't stretched.

I know of a couple of engines which have also had the bolt snap, and those have also been unopened before. Seen a pic of one low mileage B6284T bolt which had the thread still keeping it together :omg: Looked like it had been over torqued on assembly.

And, it doesn't seem to matter if you open that bolt first or last, or if the engine is warm or cold. It'll break if it's going to. Got to start trying to give it a couple of good whacks.
 
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All whiteblocks make that terrible groaning sound when you're breaking them free. I've taken apart a least a dozen or more whiteblocks and never had a bolt snap. The cheater bar is the key to breaking them free. It's even worse when you have to torque them down and then do the final angle torque. So be prepared for that. Just take your time and you'll be fine.
 
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Haven't been posting updates because progress has been in fits and starts, the end of the year had me needing to finish up a couple of work projects that kept me pretty busy.

The head went off to the machine shop to get pressure tested, ground, hot tanked, decked and the valve seals replaced. The shop mentioned it looking pretty sludgy but also said that they barely needed to take anything off to get it cleaned up:



They also tanked the valve cover for me because even after using gasket remove the anaerobic sealant was holding on. It *still* had left over sealant on it when it came back, but it came up really easily with another application of gasket remover and a plastic razor blade this time:



My pile of cleaned and painted parts is getting nearer to where it should be as well:



Up until very recently, I was completely unaware that you could disassemble and clean hydraulic lifters, so thanks Youtube.



About half of my lifters would collapse completely when squeezed when I took the engine apart, but I'm going to rehab all 24 of them. They're as sludgy as the rest of the top end, it's no wonder the check valves inside have gotten stuck. I've been soaking them overnight, two at a time, in one of those scary/stinky parts cleaner cans from NAPA, rinsing them in lacquer thinner, wiping any remaining crud out with a pair of forceps and bits of shop towel, rinsing again, then re-assembling with a bit of synthetic and the air bled out. It's pretty easy to tell they'll hold pressure.

I've also been sitting down with printed copies of the S90 and 240 wiring diagrams and filling out a master spreadsheet to figure out which wires are getting cut and spliced together. I have a 47-pin Deutsch bulkhead fitting I'd like to use, but it's only got five positions that can take 14-16awg wires.

In an attempt to make my life easier and keep a working temp gauge, I bought a thermostat housing from a 1999 V70 that has two threaded holes in it instead of the single one in the S90 housing. Broke4speed did the same, but I realized after I got it that in his case, he's using a VW NTC sensor for the gauge, and he calibrated his ECU to use a GM LS sensor. I tried screwing the stock S90 sensor into the housing, and of course it's too long. From what I've been able to find on the Internet, it seems like the resistance curve on the S90 sensor is very similar to a standard sensor that got used on a lot of VW/Audi/BMW stuff that should also have the right threading.
 
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I've been working on boring and not picture-worthy engine rebuild stuff and also doing a lot of reading of wiring diagrams and ordering of parts to get everything buttoned back up properly. The plan is to pull the B230F this Friday and get after it, and I've got a friend coming in from out of town to help so I can't punk out.

Getting the wiring harness taken apart hasn't been terrible, but it does take time. A lot of the stuff in the harness is twisted in two or three-wire groups, which I assume is to reduce cross-talk without having to resort to shielded cables. I've been pulling and labeling pins at the fusebox end.




I trace stuff back to the main ECU connector where I have a pretty comprehensive pin map built to reference:



On the list of "crap I didn't think about that might screw my schedule", I figured out that the fuel system on the S90 is returnless. I knew that was a thing, I just thought it didn't become common until more recently. Not sure what options I have around that. Aftermarket ($$$) fuel rail and FPR so it has a return path? It looks like Alex Buchka's swap originally used the OEM rail, but I can't tell from the pictures if he welded a return fitting on it or not.
 
...or I'm just being stupid.

Here's the FPR:



Clearly, the bottom line is a return, and I'm pretty confident it is because I put my caliper in it and it measures out at 5/16". So it's a "non-return" system, but it returns from just outside the rail.

So I just have to figure out what to do on the upper threaded feed fitting. Threads measure out at 5/8", with an I.D. of 5/16". The original fitting was a hard line I don't have any more (again with the stupid, I could have flared and clamped it into the existing fuel line).
 
Any ideas what size the banjo fitting that goes over that thing is supposed to be? There's a 94 960 at the JY near me, I guess I could always go pay for a part I already had on my own parts car :roll:.
 
Yeah, I saw some Volvo parts that came up when I Googled it that had a banjo on one end, but it's just a flare nut.

I *think* it's actually 5/18-18, because everything I can find says that an O.D. of 5/8-18 is for a nominal I.D. of 3/8" with an actual of more like 5/16". Which is what my calipers measured it as. One of these:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/rus-640610?rrec=true

..and then maybe a -6AN to barb adapter might work. But I'll probably just run to the JY and see if the 960 still has fuel lines.

Is it weird that a car built in Sweden in 1997 still had a ****load of SAE fittings on it?
 
Maybe a couple of other reasons to prefer a '97 as a donor car over a '98:

- The 1998 S90 has a fuel pressure sensor toward the back of the car that's wired to the ECU. I can't find any clearer description of what it does, but it doesn't appear to be a simple switch, it's got a separate power feed and then two wires that run back to individual pins on the ECU. Rock Auto has a part, but the picture looks nothing like the diagram in the green book, though it does at least have the right number of pins. I'll almost certainly try to start the engine without it, we'll see what happens.

- The 1998 S90 also has an EGT probe. The function diagram in the manual makes it appear to simply turn on a warning light when the EGT is over 850 degrees C, but the manual also suggests it's somehow linked to the EGR system. It looks like this part is still available, but it's spendy.

- The S90 has an external air temp sensor wired to the ECU. This one isn't so bad, as it's part of the main engine harness, and the part is still available relatively cheaply.

Obviously, if you were doing a whiteblock swap and going aftermarket, you could ignore all of this stuff or use it as made sense. With the OEM Motronic 4.4 we'll see if any of this stuff is limp-home inducing, or if just turns the CEL on.
 
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