1994 850 turbo wagon problems
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1994 850 turbo wagon problems
I have been having problems with my car and can't figure out what it is. First off I bought the car a few months ago, it's my first car, it ran for a few weeks then died. Me and a buddy tried string it running again but just couldn't figure it out, finally I get the money to get it to a shop and the compression was shot. The car has just under 250,000 miles on it. This mechanic found me a good deal on a used motor with 130,000 miles on it so I got the money together and got it running again recently. It was running better than ever until a few days ago. I noticed I was burning through oil fast, smoke/oil coming out of exhaust and the tube that goes into the top of my turbo is somehow leaking oil and will start smoking if I get on it. My coolant also looks dirty. Any ideas on what it could be? Should I just take it to a volvo shop? Thanks
Senior Member
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 1,988
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From: Kingsport, TN
Unless you are a millionaire, you should not be taking it to a shop. Financially, it is never proper to pay someone to maintain any old European car. Just use it to learn to work on cars. It's worth it. You may get frustrated, but just take it easy and take your time and if you have to, get a second car.
There are several sources of oil burning with the Volvo 850 and turbos. You may have more than one. I will list the ones I am aware of:
1. the seals inside the turbo could be bad, and leaking oil. I am no turbo expert.
2. The intake valve seals could be leaking. This sometimes is intermittent. If you in particular have a situation where the car idles a while, and then when you take off there is a huge cloud of smoke, this points to the intake valve seals. These are dirt cheap, but as you can probably guess, take all weekend to install.
3. On these volvos, crankcase blowby goes into a little separator pot. darndest thing I ever saw. The drain on this little separator pot tends to get clogged up with sludge, and then it can't separate. The blowby on a turbo goes around and goes into the inlet of the turbo. In general, the low points in the intercooler piping will be full of oil and that could be relatively normal. however, if the separator pot is stopped up, then you are going to blow higher volumes of oil into the turbo. Maintaining this separator pot is a common volvo thing, so you will find lots of pictures and videos on the web about it.
Turbo engines are frankly getting hard to find around here. So I would not plan on pulling that new engine trick too many times. I do have some "logistical" suggestions. Watch craigslist for everybody who is selling a volvo 850 for $500 and go look at them. At some point you may see an opportunity to get yourself some parts cheap, or maybe even get a 2nd car running. Also, get an OBDII scan tool, or app on your phone, or whatever like that. That data can be interesting. The OBD-1 thing under the hood is also very useful. Great repair manuals here:
Volvo 850 Maintenance And Service Documents
Good luck!
There are several sources of oil burning with the Volvo 850 and turbos. You may have more than one. I will list the ones I am aware of:
1. the seals inside the turbo could be bad, and leaking oil. I am no turbo expert.
2. The intake valve seals could be leaking. This sometimes is intermittent. If you in particular have a situation where the car idles a while, and then when you take off there is a huge cloud of smoke, this points to the intake valve seals. These are dirt cheap, but as you can probably guess, take all weekend to install.
3. On these volvos, crankcase blowby goes into a little separator pot. darndest thing I ever saw. The drain on this little separator pot tends to get clogged up with sludge, and then it can't separate. The blowby on a turbo goes around and goes into the inlet of the turbo. In general, the low points in the intercooler piping will be full of oil and that could be relatively normal. however, if the separator pot is stopped up, then you are going to blow higher volumes of oil into the turbo. Maintaining this separator pot is a common volvo thing, so you will find lots of pictures and videos on the web about it.
Turbo engines are frankly getting hard to find around here. So I would not plan on pulling that new engine trick too many times. I do have some "logistical" suggestions. Watch craigslist for everybody who is selling a volvo 850 for $500 and go look at them. At some point you may see an opportunity to get yourself some parts cheap, or maybe even get a 2nd car running. Also, get an OBDII scan tool, or app on your phone, or whatever like that. That data can be interesting. The OBD-1 thing under the hood is also very useful. Great repair manuals here:
Volvo 850 Maintenance And Service Documents
Good luck!
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