Hello there!

Long story short, my uncle was going to sell off his Volvo 262c due to him not having the time to fix it up. I went ahead and purchased it off him due to me liking the car. You don't see many of them out on the streets! I had been warned by others that Volvos can be expensive to maintain and decided to join this forum for help, tips and meet new people who love their Volvos (this is my first Volvo)

I will definitely do my research but there are two things that I know i definitely need help with:

-The car sometimes rocks when idle and takes a long time to accelerate. Sometimes going 10 MPH for over 5 seconds. Power issue I guess? Then I park it, start it up minutes later and it works perfectly. Can't seem to figure it out.

-Engine swaps. I know nothing about them. The original engine is still inside the car but my uncle told me to look into finding another engine. I want to keep the car as original as possible but I will be driving the car often and need it to be reliable.

This is my first time on these forums and I will be doing alot of research to figure things out and get tips from the great people here. Another thing, I have yet to take it to a mechanic. I like to try to figure things out on my own if possible.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing great things from everyone!

-Arthur

 

Hi Arthur, welcome to the forum.

As you may see from my signature, I once had a 262 Bertone. What year and engine model do you have? That makes a big difference. The V6 has issues with the idle plate and cam shaft bearings. Yuk!!! The turbo's are a lot better to deal with.

People that says Volvo's are expensive to maintain likely have not owned any old car. It would be good if you fixed the car yourself.

 

I have a 1978 and I'm not sure about the engine model...yet (sorry about that) If it helps, its still the original engine. You did say something about working with the turbo engines and I am interested. I have off work today so I've dedicated today on looking/learning more about swaps (have never done one before) What's the best way to start? And woud I have to change my transmission as well?

 

Brings back memories, I used to have one, what a great ride.

The PRV6 was actually a great engine from a performance perspective, but had a design where the cams were lubed by very tiny oil jets. If you didn't change the oil frequently and use high grade oil the holes would clog and then the cam lobes would wear down quickly (they were soft t'boot). Common fix at dealers was to pull the cams out the back of the engine and into the interior by cutting holes in the firewall. So if you see patched holes (sometimes unpatched) you will know they were done at least once If it wasn't done and they were worn, the engine ran like crap. No power, rough idle, etc, as you'd expect from valves that weren't opening as much as they should. It's pretty obvious if you take off the cam covers and take a look, you'll see where the arms ride on the cam lobes, there will be a section worn down.

The one I had never had the cams done and I spent a weekend playing with it to see what I could do, as a temp fix until I decided if I was going to swap the engine or not. So what I did was rearrange the spacers on the cam shaft so the rocker arms would ride on a spot on the cams that was in original condition/height. Basically, the rocker arms aren't as wide as the cam lobes so there would usually be a spot you could shift them to that would have them riding on "fresh" metal, so to speak.

It worked REALLY well, the engine ran almost like new (or what I imagine new would be) and I drove it a couple of years like that running very light weight synthetic oil.

I also was able to clean and adjust the air flow plate on the Kjet system, which helped a lot as well, along with regular use of Techron. I also put in new injectors, at the time they were cheap enough to do and it really helped a lot.