The 94' turbo sedan blew a water pump a few months back and I was sharing my wifes Dodge Stratus because the weather in the Northeast and my schedule could not get together for the water pump/timing belt job.

I had enough of driving the american POS so I did the water pump/timing belt job the other day. Easy enough, but one FYI if you think the timing belt is too short it might be stuck on the little "bulge" of the oil pump. I stood there wondering WTF? for about 5 minutes until I realized it.

Anyway, the wife has been bugging me for a new car and besides her Stratus I have a 1997 VW Jetta GT and the 1994 850 Turbo.

I tossed around the idea of selling the Volvo and cleaning up the Jetta as my daily driver. The only thing is I LOVE the Volvo and the VW is just a car.

So I have pretty much decided to do the little things needed to sell off the Jetta and then do kind of a "restoration" on the 850 Turbo Sedan.

The Volvo has 152K on it and it burns oil and has major blowby. (It's NOT the PCV system I have worked on that for awhile, it's definately valve guides/seals and rings) low-ish compression.

Otherwise it runs great. I picked up a spare engine some time back from a later model C30 and have torn it down. I found 2 bent rods but otherwise it is in good shape, I am guessing it swallowed some water because the timing belt, valves etc were good and the pistons showed no signs of detonation.

So the preliminary plan (barring and unforseen issues) is to clean up the head and put in new lifters, valve seals, N/A Cams (if I can find a cheap set) etc.

I picked up 2 more rods and pistons used off ebay and have access to the tools needed to check for a set of 5 straight ones. I will clean up the bores and hand match a set of pistons from the 7 I have.

I have a 19T angle flange turbo to go out for balancing, (Don't ask, but it DOES need balancing, a little issue with permanent marker not being that permanent) and I am planning to clean up a junkyard "japanifold" the R manifold just isn't in the budget.

So here are the questions.

1 Where to buy Rings, Bearings gaskets?

2 I read somewhere awhile back that a suitable higher pressure fuel pressure regulator could be had from a dodge, I bought it and now I cannot find the info on it and am wondering if anyone has heard of this cross reference. (the regulator was $20 vs. like $120 for the volvo part) I am thinking that if I were to custom make a MAF sensor housing in a larger diameter I can "trick" the ECU into matching the higher fuel pressure.(this is an old VW trick for more flow on the intake side) it requires some fancy math but that's it. The MAF uses air velocity thru a known area to compute volume. Increase the area and there is a linear increase in volume. Knowing the increased fuel pressure delivers a specific increase in fuel volume you just work backwards to get to the MAF housing diameter needed.

3 I am not looking to build some 21psi of boost monster, pretty much the stock boost level is fine with me, anyone know what the stock 19T volvo turbos had for a wastegate setting? PSI wise

4 Stock internals and auto tranny, what type of HP are they good for (with good reliability and driveability)?

5 Exhaust, Obviously I need an angle flange downpipe cuz the car has a conical flange in it now. Is the OBX system any good? I know you get what you pay for and it looks like it is cheaper than some Downpipes alone.

 

Try Swedish Auto Parts.com they seem to have a very extensive selection of odds and ends for volvos good luck im glad to see you keeping the volvo