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YASVT (Yet Another Sixteen Valve Turbo) - now 16V Whiteblock (LS)

To tack my 2 cents on top:

While doing valve springs - do rocker trunnions at the same time.

If you're doing a cam, go ahead and get a new oil pump (oil pump removal is 99% of the way to cam removal), and follow all the superstitions on priming. Because the pickup will get swapped when you do the Holley pan (or removed when you shorten your stock one), that should probably all happen at roughly the same time. I'd go ahead and get a pickup tube brace, and for the love of love, be gentle with that O-ring.

I'm not sure what the PCV looks like on the Gen 4 trucks, but I know the valve cover arrangement from the Gen 3s resulted in some atrocious oil-sucking on mine, cured by an LS6 valley cover (which the LS2/3/7 cover strongly resembles, swapping out knock sensors for DOD deletion plugs).
 
they're m8x1.25 bolts, but they have like 10mm heads on em iirc.

I had to dig out my dinky tiny socket set to get the intake off. 8mm heads (or was that 7mm)? WTF? I think the smallest I've ever seen on a Volvo is 10 mm, and it wasn't doing anything important.

Once, when taking the front end off a crunched Taurus (lol, kids, sigh) I ran into a 5.5 mm bolt. Not 5, not 6, but 5.5 mm.

I guess they figure that smaller heads on all the bolts eventually adds up to a noticeably lower weight?
 
don't touch the cam bearings, they all look like ****. don't look at em, just swap the cam and keep going. (unless of course, a bearing comes out with the cam. then, I dunno)

don't touch the rings. I didn't fool with it on mine, no pcv, virtually no blowby even after a couple high boost mistakes. My engine came to me with a reported 120k, and it looked good on the inside. Should've replaced the lifters tho.

DO:
replace the lifters/trays
springs/retainers

I used arp head bolts with mine, got em cheap from a local(new)

This one has 140K, looks to be well maintained so far. Not sludgy inside, had remnants of nice looking coolant, H3 it came out of was nice looking and smashed in the front.

I guess the cam bearings are press in things, not terribly easy to shade tree replace at home?

If I don't need to gap the rings, that's a lot less taking apart. Which is a good thing. I guess 140K miles probably loosened them a bit from stock anyhow.
 
Also - accessories. I think this motor had truck accessories on it, not sure if the H3 fitment was a weird one or not. But the engine came without any of them - just bare brackets. And the front pulley has a chunk missing on the front edge that goes into the first rib, probably should be replaced. And the water pump pulley has a slight wobble, might replace that as well. Which pretty much puts me to the point of being able to put on anything. Corvette or Camaro or truck. I guess the Corvette and Camaro water pumps have hoses that point forward, and alternators that aren't stuck up so high. But with a turbo going in somewhere up front, truck style up high on the passenger side might be a good place for the alternator. Keep room on the passenger side for a turbo. I was sort of half pondering using those hooker turbo headers with the crossover pipe that goes back and under the bellhousing into the passenger header, with a big V-band to a fabbed turbo pipe up front.
 
careful with anything that goes back and down exhaust wise, in the 940 there wasn't/isn't a lot of room back there with the frame rails and all.
 
Those hooker turbo things seem to be pretty snug. If you could fit an exhaust header down then these things should (maybe?) fit? Of course, then you also need to fit a downpipe as well on the pass side.

STS says these Hooker headers fit in a 240 with their mounts: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/hok-8501hkr?seid=srese1&gclid=CJvJxo2dgcUCFcGVfgodbacARA

Hopefully this would work about as well?
https://www.holley.com/products/exh...ust_manifolds/exhaust_manifolds/parts/8510HKR

EDIT: BFH all the things!
 
I had to dig out my dinky tiny socket set to get the intake off. 8mm heads (or was that 7mm)? WTF? I think the smallest I've ever seen on a Volvo is 10 mm, and it wasn't doing anything important.

Once, when taking the front end off a crunched Taurus (lol, kids, sigh) I ran into a 5.5 mm bolt. Not 5, not 6, but 5.5 mm.

I guess they figure that smaller heads on all the bolts eventually adds up to a noticeably lower weight?

Interesting.
did some searching, M3 bolts should have 5.5mm heads, seems ford and GM use 5.5mm heads on lots of trim, particularly into plastic with hi-lo thread?
SJUZuXv.jpg


JIS stuff on Toyotas, I'm sure you have seen, has a step down in head versus thread size. Always wondered why.

60's land rover Ive worked on was nearly ALL 7/16" and 1/2", legend goes so two wreches can do it all in the bush. All bolt-nut used different wrench sizes...

240's 8mm head on coolant strap and d loopy wire harness clamps, IIRC, but are screws not bolts.
agree, 8mm head bolts rare, thankfully. maybe human engineering done to prevent having bolts misplaced into screw holes?
noticed that on many places on 240, suspension and engine accessories, if actual bolt and nut combo used, the nut will be a smaller wrench size, I assume, like rover did, so no job would require two copies of same tool. quite thoughtful if that is reasoning.

I like fasteners.
 
8mm short 1/4" drive is probably in my top 5 most used tools. Plenty of 'em on SAABs, and dirt bikes are the king of small fasteners (where incremental weight savings really matter).

Since I started dealing with 240s a few years ago I've always thought they went way oversize on a lot of fasteners, and a lot of the wiring gauge is overly heavy as well.
 
I can see that. The trans doesn't exactly tuck up very much. I don't want to fear speed bumps any more than I already do.

The ending is apart as far as it needs to go - since you all talked me into not gapping the rings. Oil pump and cam is out, stripped short block with rods and pistons still in place.

Time to start ordering some parts.
 
I've always admired your car, and it's also one that gave me a kick to get back into Volvos after I came back from a stint overseas(had to re-register like twice I think, pay no mind to my current join date).
Wishing you luck as you progress down the V8 route. Was hoping to see you iron out the issues and see the 16v + EFR 7064 put in some more work, but I realize things take time.

Don't forget to have fun.
 
The hope for the V8 swap is to have more fun and do less wrenching. The MTBF (mean time between failures) on the 16V Volvo motor was just not quite what I wanted it to be. Generally under 5000 miles, something (often the HG) would let go. This last time when I replaced the HG I very carefully checked the block and head, everything is as flat as can be, the Cometic just failed for some reason. Using ARP headstuds as well. This time I installed the Cometic bone dry and torqued it a little higher than spec, we'll see if that holds together.

Ordered a bunch of parts.
- LS7 lifters and trays
- PAC 1218 valve sprangs and retainers
- LS9 cam (so cheap, lol)
- LS4 oil pump
- Holley 302-1 pan and related dipstick/tube
- LS6 headgaskets
- Alper headstuds
- gaskets

Enough to get the motor back together. Next up - deciding on an intake and accessory/waterpump. Not worried about A/C (turbo is going to sit on the passenger side, if there's room, maybe I'll revisit the A/C thing in the future), but I do want PS still. Possibly the Camaro high PS, low alt setup.

Still not sure about the intake either - I have the truck intake that came with the engine, I understand that it will fit under the hood (?), but I'm still pondering an LS6 intake, or possibly something aftermarket. When you're tossing some boost at it a better flowing intake probably isn't really a 'need', but it's sort of a 'want'.
 
Is the LS4 oil pump one of the high flow variants (I'm guessing it is, since that engine had DoD)? There are some horror stories where under sustained high RPMs, the higher flow pumps drain the sump on smaller pans, on engines where the extra flow isn't required (ie, non DoD). If you're just drag racing and cruising, it probably won't cause a problem...

It's worth noting that since the crank pulley comes off to do the cam and oil pump, you'll want to figure out which offset pulley is going back on, by the time you're reassembling. I don't think there's any downside to using one of the closer pulleys, if you're already replacing all the FEAD bracketry and the water pump.

ICT Billet makes a clone of the Camaro brackets that maintains the truck pulley offset: http://www.ictbillet.com/ls-truck-a...p-bracket-lsx-ls3-lq4-lq9-l33-ls3-billet.html. Kinda wish I'd done it myself, rather than adapting the truck brackets, as it'd make for more Volvo-like PS hose routing and lengths (I coiled up a high pressure hose and shortened an old early low pressure hose). My early engine had a type 2, identical to my Volvo pump, but clocked differently and running a serpentine pulley - the later ones use a different fitting for the high pressure line.

If you adapt the truck harness and keep mostly stock routing, you'll need to extend the alternator wiring for the lower position. DIYAutoTune sells one for Gen 3s, but at some point the Gen4 switches to a different alternator connector/pinout.

There are kits around to mount Sanden 508 compressors (which the 240 original is), and the original lines will connect, although they usually wind up on the passenger side and would be better shortened than looped up. Unless you have an early (red-blue connector, 2002 and earlier) or 03-07 van ECU, you won't be running the AC through the ECU, you'll be keeping your Volvo wiring and using some aftermarket module if you wanted to do high-RPM cutoff. If you're gonna do AC ever, I'd suggest at least going ahead and getting a bracket and doing some test fits with your old Volvo compressor, or you're almost definitely going to make it impossible to do without major reworks of *something* down the line. Two notes about 91+ AC: you'll need to buzz off the rear mounting tab from the passenger coil bracket as it is extremely friendly with one of the hard lines going into the firewall bulkhead, and while it won't apply to you because turbo, the hard line on the passenger frame rail will interfere with an NA exhaust setup.

The truck intake will just *barely* clear the hood. It will not clear a strut tower brace (flashback to a certain 16V intake, lol). If you do an LS6 intake, you might need to do the water pump as well - at some point the truck engines got a water pump with a different neck that will barely clear the throttle body on a car intake, where the early ones will interfere (as did mine). The LS6 intake will not dramatically out-flow the truck intake, you would switch to it purely for the sake of aesthetics, or to clear a strut tower brace. If you do go to an LS6 intake, you'll need to do some simple mods and add spacers to use the truck injectors, but that probably doesn't apply, because turbo. If you're swapping injectors, the electrical connectors on the truck injectors are different from literally anything else, just clip 'em and crimp new ends on.
 
I figure I'm wide open on the accessories. The Hummer this came from got hit in the front, and the truck crank pulley already had a chunk out of it big enough to be a problem (not just the lip, into the first ribs). And when I spin the water pump the bell has a little bit of a wobble. And at 140K miles I should probably replace it anyhow. And it came without PS pump or alternator as well. So about the only thing I have that is usable is the truck bracket. Might as well do Corvette or Camaro - no real downside to tucking things in closer to the front.

This also came with no harness or ECU. I was planning on MS-ing it anyhow. Possibly a roll-my-own using my MS3X (like I did with the 16V in it now, make up a complete harness after getting pigtails for everything), or if I'm feeling lazy perhaps one of those pre-built LSx MS3Pro ECU/harness packages.

Here's a nice 'intake shootout' article: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/20-ls1-intake-manifolds-tested/

The LS6 manifold is barely better than the truck manifold, it's a waste of money if you're trying to improve performance, but I was more going for the clearance and being able to still use my strut bar.
 
Yeah, going full green-field there is a pretty big win - I tried to keep as much truck stuff as possible to keep costs down, and it's really do nothing but bite me, and make me question myself when I've had opportunity to change them (ie, when I pulled the engine and had the front pulley off to change the oil pump - but stayed truck offset because I had a new L99 water pump).

Another fun possibility with the Camaro bracket setup - the clocking and mounting is the same between the ABS era Volvo and the Camaro, so you could chunk a serpentine pulley on the Volvo PS pump, and use it on the LSx.
 
Cam, lifters, timing gear, oil pump,Holley oil pan all on. Cleaned the head mating surface, put the head studs in. Opened my GM perf head gasket 'set', only one gasket. Hrrrmmm... Nope, auction says two, plus a collection of one single item doesn't really deserve to be called a 'set'. Contacted the eBay seller.

Up next, dealing with the heads. 3 broken flush exhaust bolts. One had a stub poking out about 1/4 inch, I soaked it with some PBLaster for a while, got some vice grips on it, and even before I tried to twist it, it broke off flush just from slightly nudging it while clamping the vice grips. Old break, apparently it managed to break in two places, down in the block, and at the bolt head. Only it hung on by a sliver down by the block.

Sort of 50/50 on breaking out the welder and trying to get those things out myself, or just taking it to a machine shop. I'd rather not screw up the heads, not sure how tricky welding to the broken bolt is down in an aluminum hole. But then again, these heads aren't really hard to find.

Also, bought a trans - 2007 G35 sedan. It's a version later than the CD009 - the JK400. Not as much about them on the internets, but should work as well as a CD009 does.
 
I had $200 in my heads, getting a couple broken bolts out, surfacing, cleaning, and re-seating the valves.
 
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