If you're thinking about the intake back cut - take the valves to your machine shop (or I'll take them to mine) and have them do it on their centerless valve grinder. It's just easier and less hair raising. Just by the looks of those valves, I'd say they were forgings - so re-profiling them a little isn't going to hurt them at all. I know that more material there makes them last forever and flow like crap - I'd be tempted (on the exhaust side) to make up a radius tool and just give them a little clean up. Although this does mean that you have to have soft jaws (or some split tube) to hold the valve stem and nerves of steel.

I had a few minutes to kill while Roberta was picking up Amber from her folks' place, so I blasted and snapped pix of the EP exhaust manifolds. These are the "good" ones, but still need modification because the passenger side has an EGR port and the driver's side exits towards the steering shaft. These are what John Lane just put on his turbo car, and to turbo this engine would be about the only reason why I'd use them. Then again, I may run out of time and not be able to build headers, so we'll see.



Upside down, driver's side on the left. The cylinders are numbered from the left 1-2-3 6-5-4. Number 1 is a bit abrupt entering the manifold, but all the rest are pretty smooth.


How they sit on the engine, of course again I have the PS on the right and the DS on the left.


Fairly generous entry radii. Need some flaring at the entry to ensure a smooth transition from the head and for anti-reversion purposes... that is, if I end up using these manifolds!

Sorry - I just had Ren and Stimpy's famous Christmas song "Log" in my head...Could be better, could be worse. It looks pretty easy to clean them out and plug the EGR hole and you're set. Not having seen the rest of the inside of the engine bay, is there a reason they are up-swept?

If you think those are logs, just wait until you see what's coming. You've seen more grace and beauty after standing up from the throne.

It's been a while since I've had a look under a Premier hood, but I'm thinking that it sweeps up to avoid the transaxle, halfshafts, steering gear, etc, that all end up behind the engine. The Premier oil pan sits flush with the bottom of a perimeter subframe, which is flush with the lower control arms, just like an 850, so all the hardware is above this. As the exhaust ports exit fairly low on the head (evidenced by the poor short turn radius), there isn't much room to go down with the exhaust before you start running into stuff.

Ironically, it looks like they'd work better in the 700 series too, since in that car the manifold just ENDS to avoid hitting the frame rails, which really have nothing above them. The crossmember sweeps up to meet the frame rails, which doesn't give a lot of room for the exhaust to go down. Sweeping up the manifolds would be good to get them away from the frame rails, and avoids conflict with the starter/motor mounts/crossmember/steering rack pinion housing that you'd get by sweeping them down. There are no spark plugs down there to worry about either (they're accessed from topside).

Pity Volvo didn't start making tube manifolds until the '93 850, 'cause here's where they really could have used one, and there's a TON of space in the 850 for a cast iron manifold. Tradesies? Naw, that one's not too pretty either.



Great, now it's stuck in my head. "What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, rolls over your neighbor's dog? What sits on your back, is great for a snack, it's LOG LOG log!"

Its log, its log, it's big, it's heavy, its wood!
it's log, it's log, it's better than bad- it's good!

I'm so happy that I'm not the only Ren and Stimpy fan - that was the last time I had access to cable TV.

Back on topic - IIRC, there is lots of room for a decent manifold design in the 780...right? I can't imagine how depressing it must be to create an engine then have an accountant design the manifold!

Manifold shots first. As you can see, the designers didn't have a TON of room to work with, but they certainly had more than they used. Of course, the engine comes up from the bottom on the assembly line, as probably does the exhaust system (which comes up first), so they can't take up much more space than the frame rails will allow being passed:




The model of efficiency. I certainly don't know how to comment here, except to say that at some point the designers just gave up. The bottom end is stout, the materials are top-notch, and overall the packaging is excellent, but whoever was left in charge of getting air out of the engine was a bit rushed or irresponsible.


At some point the exhaust manifolds have been off this engine - the driver's side had a broken stud in the head, the coolant pipe support clip (bolted to the manifold stud) wasn't attached, and there were traces of orange gasket sealer on all 6 gaskets.


Aside from external packaging, I don't know why the manifold cross section would be square. Craig's right (below) in that something fabbed up out of weld ells and tees would have been less terrible than this. Notice how the manifold wanders and isn't a straight shot all the way through - I can't see any reason why at this point.


Not to mention the "generously sized" 1 5/8" OD Y-pipe, with oh-so-smooth bends and efficient design. When I typed this I wanted to say 1 3/8" OD, because that's what sticks in my head from when I measured it, but that sounds ridiculously small. I should mention here that I LOVE Oregon cars, because the entire exhaust slipped apart without a single cut, and with just a bit of penetrating oil.




The infamous swirl intake port. You can see the big "ramp" on the left side, before the valve guide, but you can't see the big cavity left behind it. It probably works very well at what it was designed to do, but whatever that is I'll be losing it.


Cracking the engine, among the nasty baked on oil crud I was greeted with remarkably TIGHT timing chains. Huh? This image was with me torquing the camshaft back counterclockwise to give the tensioner maximum slack to work with, and it's barely extended at all. The driver's side chain was about the same. Spec for replacement is 8mm gap, and there's maybe 2-3.


Here's one of the tensioner rails - minor wear marks here, but they're cracked around the rivits. Drat, 'cause I'd have used them again. FWIW, the tensioners have 1987 date codes on them, as does the rest of the engine. Is it possible that these are original, 200,000 mile chains & tensioners?


After removing some really tight (and some not-so-tight) head bolts (with some difficulty, as the amount of oil crud holding them in was impressive! I had to use penetrating oil to loosen the crap up, and I was using my "good" impact gun to get them off, sometimes after holding the trigger for 30 seconds straight!) I got the heads off. Both head gaskets looked mighty mighty bad, and two of the fire rings were defiled. Could be the source of my coolant pressurization.








Down-the hole shots - everything here looks pretty good, and warrants further inspection. The bores were all nice and stable in the block, nothing is loose, so I'll probably just leave them alone for further operations and fashion up some cylinder holder straps to keep them in place.


Yes those are domed pistons, and yes those are divots in the domes. Mixture motion aids? 0.5 compression ratio drop from the "E" engine? Your guess is as good as mine. The divot does line up pretty well with the spark plug (same piston for both sides of the engine, so divots needed for each side too) so maybe it's something to do with that. Not a clearance thing (though maybe) but more to get a bit of extra volume around the plug.


One of the cylinders had this gross orangy filth showing up (at the bottom of the cylinder) and yes, this is one of the cylinders with a bad head gasket fire ring.

What the hell is up with that manifold...just some regular log style manifolds would be better than that. Can't wait for the text for the rest.

Text added to go with the pictures. Now, on to the fun stuff, and one of the reasons why I'm posting at 3:00 AM.

My plan was simple: I'd tear out the engine, go through and clean the gook out of it, verify it's condition and replace what was needed, and button it back up with the new heads (skimmed for a bit of compression and cam retardation). I'd modify the B27 flywheel to add the EZK crank trigger holes, and bolt an M46 behind it. Build a driveshaft, swap the pedals, build a crossmember, and voila! A bit of extra power plus a manual transmission, OEM engine control reliability, what more could I want in a daily driver?

Well, for some stupid reason I expected the crank trigger to bolt to the block, like it does on a redblock. It's not like there wasn't a ton of room back there for me to have a look or anything, was there? Anyway it doesn't, it is mounted on the bellhousing, and no, the B27 bellhousing doesn't have this hole, nor does it have the mounting pad for this hole. I could weld on a pad, but I'm not sure if I can bore it or face it properly in my lathe. Possibly, but I doubt it - it's pretty big. So adding the cost of this step to the machining of the flywheel and the building of the driveshaft, has caused me pause to reflect on my plans.

To make matters worse, I finished off one of the nearly-destroyed knock sensors when taking off the intake manifold. The plastic housing around the sensors have disintegrated, as have the insulation around the wires, and the manifold tugged on one of the clips - tink! Being as the engine lacks a bunch of power when it gets hotter and uses a ton of gas, I was always suspicious of these sensors, but now that I have to replace them (and the crank position sensor, which looks just as bad), I'm staring down $130 per knock sensor and $230 for the crank sensor. Those were the only prices I found on eBay, so I might do better, but still...

EZK is pretty specific in it's needs. It kind of requires all these parts, but I can think of a better way to spend $500. Make it $1000 once you add in the extra flywheel-bellhousing machiney stuff. Plus the driveshaft, plus the headers I was going to build and the time it would take to do them, plus the time spent doing the pedal swap... Damn, I'm starting to get discouraged.

Retreating a little bit, it's time to assess my options.

1) V6, automatic, LH 2.2 / EZK:

To pull this off I would need at minimum one knock sensor. I could get the engine back together and with the added power from the heads and Premier exhaust manifolds (or headers), plus the lack of coolant/oil issues, it would be somewhat more fun and would be reliable & hassle free. It would also cost me the least and would probably take the least amount of time.

2) V6, manual, LH 2.2 / EZK

The next level of entertainment, this step would require the crank trigger mounting pad, the flywheel machining & balancing, the driveshaft creation, modification of the shifter and crossmember, and at mimimum one knock sensor. It would also require a clutch kit and a pedal swap, plus all the dicking around to get the hydraulics & clutch parts working together. I can see at least another $2000 being dropped on this option, plus added months of time, but once together it would run hassle free and would be a snap to sell down the road 'cause it's all factory stuff.

3) V6, manual, Megasquirt

One step up the food chain would be to Megasquirt it. I would need a crank trigger but the position and style are totally free to me, so I'd probably modify the unused section of the crank pulley for this. Same as the above for driveshaft/clutch/pedals, but would be cheaper and would allow me much more freedom to do other stupid things, like add a light pressure turbo. The turbo would preclude any need for fancy header building, obviously, as I'd just have to build a Y-pipe up to the turbo and a downpipe to the exhaust, rather than a combined Y-pipe and downpipe. I'd probably even use the stock Volvo manifolds for this. M46 would be the limiting factor here, probably followed closely by the rear end, so the turbo might only be called upon for about a 50 hp boost.

4) B23 turbo, manual, Megasquirt

Probably the second-most logical step, I've got this stupid turbo engine sitting here on a stand and no car to use it in. I would need a clutch (sold it back to Andy, and probably don't have much chance of getting it back now) and I'm not sure that the front crossmember will take 4-cylinder motor mounts, but there's a good chance that all the parts I kept from the 745 would work in this car, so the driveshaft, tranny crossmember, etc... they should all work. The 780 has a goofy radiator arrangement and I'm not sure if the 4-cylinder rad would work. It must, right? Still needs a pedal swap and still needs Megasquirt, but all the rest is figured out already. Adding my modded T-5 tranny would require a driveshaft and some shifter mods, plus a different clutch, but would allow me to get a bit more ridiculous in my turbo choices. If the front crossmember, radiator mounting, or anything else doesn't work out (like the position of the ABS module, on the passenger side fender which is wrong for the turbo cars for obvious reasons), I could be screwed.

Now, it probably seems like a simple choice to some of you, and you've picked one of my four options (or created another one that I don't know of) but I have to keep in mind a few things:
- this is not my project car
- because this is not my project car, it is not supposed to take up all my time
- because this is not my project car, it is not supposed to take up all my money
- because this is not my project car, I want to sell it at one point. I don't really care what I lose on it, so long as I can make it go away and not hurt too badly.
- I can only get about 2 evenings of work in on it per week, max, plus maybe 1 day on the weekend.
- I have other things to do this winter, partly from the "honeydo" list.

If this WERE my project car, I assure you that none of these little tiny problems would be concerning me one bit. It's not a matter of being ABLE to do it, it's a matter of choosing the most sensible course keeping time and money budgets in mind.

So we'll see. The plan is for now to go V6 automatic, because to me that makes the most sense when viewed through the eyes of a person who thinks a car is a tool. I can whip that all off without breaking a sweat, but if I come across anything wrong with this plan, I'm eying up the B23.

I'd also vote V6 automatic, not just based on the time and budget constraints (which pretty much make it the only choice), but in my mind the bertones are supposed to be automatic anyway, plus it will make re-sale much easier than even an M46. Get a good lock up AW behind it if it doesn't already.

I don't think mounting the trigger pad is a big deal but the rest of it most certainly is a PITA. I've got a winter car that I've spent too much time and money on, so I really respect anyone that can show restraint. Option one sounds like a slam dunk to me as all other options are much more risky with lots of potential for going south quickly. I would even caution against the 4 banger turbo as option 2...IMHO if you're going to even step towards that light you may as well jump in and admit you've got a project!

A quick how-do-you-do with the EP manifolds on the inside and start mocking up the exhaust (with the head swap) and getter done. Oh that orange substance is rust from your cylinder walls/rings (you know this).

Oh, and if you really want to do a mini-project-but-not-really-a-project, weld up some tubular manifolds for that thing!

Totally the direction I was leaning, boys. I'll buy two new knock sensors just because - they sit down in that valley, baking between the block and coolant manifold, and the other one isn't far behind the one that broke. Other than that and the healthy new engine bits, not a lot of money to be spent. If I get the time I'll do the headers - in fact, I'll probably not put any manifolds on the car at all and will just build the exhaust system from the back up over the axle, and leave the rest to be finished later when I decide which way I'm going.

The James option:
The outline:
-Evaluate
-Fix it correctly and cleanly with what is there
-Drive 1 or two summers
-Sell it.
-Sell other engine/parts pile or keep until the right perfect 242 comes along for the right price in a garage there or from OR/CA to put it into...drive that a while and sell that.

PM for pretty exact dollar amounts adjusted for today's dollars and time tables lol with more relevant experience than I ever want to remember...

I had a B280 Bertone. I wished it had a B280E, 4.10 LSD/locker axle, better exhaust manifolds, and maybe higher stall converter and shift kit with trans cooler on the auto. I wouldn't have done anything else to it whatever. That would be plenty in time or parts to track down and probably more than I'd do even. Factory everything, quick enough, comfortable, no fuss (relatively speaking for an old car). As it was, it took me a while to get it all back to being in very good shape and was nice to drive, though fuel econ was never all that good for the power, and its resale value wasn't all that high for a car that is hard to find parts for with a motor with a bad rep. I loved it, but had no use for a rare 2-door car when I sold it.

You are completely sane with a kid and a house to spend less time on cars. It's just a car. Don't beat yourself up.

I have a cushy truck, am working a lot and working on the house. I don't even think for a minute about project cars and have no desire what-so-ever to have one. If I had a kid (hopefully I don't that I know of), I can't imagine there would be enough hours in the day to get greasy and oily and work on crappy volvos. Not that I even want to get dirty anymore anyway.

The 780 would probably be my project car, James, if I didn't have this goofy 123GT waiting for me in my back yard. It's not like I'm looking for another project just to use up some parts. Once the GT's built, there MAY be a Mad Max or a stripper 240 winter attack machine, or I'll put the B23T in an FJ40 or something equally odd.