I own a 2000 Volvo S70 AWD with about 180k miles on it. Today, all of a sudden my car started making a very loud engine noise. See below youtube video. Its very strange because I stopped at a store to pick something up for 5 minutes, came out and started my car to witness this noise. Before stopping, my vehicle ran without issue.

I was very close to home so I drove the rest of the way. During my drive home, I didn't notice any differences with the way the vehicle drove. Aside from the noise, my vehicle seemed to run completely fine. The oil level is good. Any ideas? Worth fixing or having it fixed?

Youtube Video:
Thank you in advance for any advice!
-Ryan

 

Check the belts for a start, and then look at the exhaust.

 

I went out and looked under the hood for a bit and noticed the timing belt had slipped off the cam gears. The belt itself is in good condition and only has about 50-60k miles on it (5 years or so old). When I last replaced the belt, I also replaced the tensioner. Not sure how this can happen. I am guessing my engine is toast now as it doesn't start. If I remember correctly, the valves get bent and the head gets damaged when something happens with the timing belt. Any suggestions? Start looking for a new vehicle?

Thanks

 

Well, if the belt slipped off the gears when the motor was running it most likely bent some valves. Puling the head and either fixing the valves or replacing the head is a bot of work but not too bad. You will obviously have to replace the timing belt and the belt tensioner as that most likely failed causing the belt to slip. If you are mechanically inclined doing it will not be too bad, if not then you will be looking at paying someone to do it. Worst case scenario to source a new head, and have someone do all the work for you I would estimate $1500 and a few days down time.

 

Thank you very much for your advice. I will think about a new engine head, but considering the car is only worth about $2500-3000, it may not be worth my time / money to repair. There were some other minor annoying issues going on with the car so I am afraid something else might go in the near future. Thanks again for your help!

 

Hey Ryan I have a cylinder head here from my 2.4 it has one burnt valve. if you are close to Pa. I can get it to you cheap. You rework it and then just swap it out

 

If you were able to drive the car home and stopped the engine before the belt came off completely, you may want to reset the belt and correct the valve timing then do a compression test to check for any bent valves. Another option would be to see if you can rent an inspection camera to look at the valves through the sparkplug hole. If you didn't have a catastrophic fail on the highway you may have some good luck. Also, replacing the one burnt valve on lub's old head shouldn't be too bad since you can do that first, check for flatness etc then swap when ready. If you decide to rebuild that head, just remember to mark which shims came off which valves...

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I will consider fixing it, however, there were some previous unrelated issues going on with the vehicle that needed to be fixed. ETM seemed to be going out. Driveshaft was bad and removed. Rear suspension shot. CV axles shot. Parking brake siezed / shot. Tires on their last year. If this was the only issue I probably would go for it but it might be time to move on. Thanks again.