Multiple Problems - possibly related?
 

Hi... I am new here, and have been rumaging through several volvo sites and decided to join here and pose the following facts / questions and hope for some useful advice.

1994 volvo 850, non-turbo 20 valve wagon

All of the following seem to have happened nearly simultaneously and I am not sure if I should be fixing them individually, or looking for some other major failure as the cause of all of them:

1. High crank case pressure - blows oil by the cap (I have read the threads on both the flame trap and the oil trap and understand, as well as the option of the $150 kits to replace all of the breather components). Temporary fix by leaving oil dip partially dislodged to vent crank case - white steam escapes constantly.

2. Failure of one of the heater core quick connect connections at the firewall, coolant inside car and coming from defrost / vents (bypassed heater core for now). Have not disassembled the actual heater core at this point to test it itself for failure.

3. Water Pump failure - moderate amount of water pouring / dripping from rear, mid section of timing belt compartment. Temp guage never gets higher than horizontal, or 3pm on the guage. Can keep enough water in it for now by adding 1/2 gallon before my short 1 mile trips around town.

4. Seems I blew a crack in the front side panel of the coolant expansion tank (side facing the computer box).

I am beginning to wonder if I have a combination of failures that may include the head gasket, or just a quirky mix of failures that have really good timing. I don't want to replace the expansion tank, water pump (timing belt / serpentine belt), heater core and all the components of the breather system (or at least oil trap and flame trap (the flame trap is cleaned, but I can't seem to clear the vacuum port on it -- its a $2.50 part, so not a big deal there)), only to have to do it all again to do the head gasket....

but the head gasket job is so much more involved than doing all of these other things, even though a lot of similar preliminary steps... and will cause the car to be down for a much longer period of time, I don't want to do that job if I don't have to.

Any thoughts?

Tim Gorman

Seems to me that the car has had ZERO scheduled maintenance and all of those items are not related. Nothing listed above indicates a blown head gasket. However a few of those things will lead to one because driving around with any coolant leak is playing overheat roulette.

The temperature gauge should read right around 3 O Clock when the engine is running at it's normal temperature and the cooling fan is working.

If you're near an Autozone they loan out a hydrocarbon tester. It's a tube that gets filled with a chemical and pushed into the coolant overflow tanks neck. If there is any gas from the combustion chamber getting pushed into the coolant the chemical changes color to give a positive reading.


Once you settle your fears fix all the coolant leaks before you cause the headgasket to fail by running low on coolant :eek:
When doing the water pump, if you're not sure when the last time you've had the timing belt done, NOW would be the time as you need to remove it to do the water pump.

Do the "PCV" system as it's likely if the black box is plugged the vacuum hoses aren't far behind for being plugged inside too. It's not cheap, around $100 bucks but it's cheaper than repairing all the seals that can blow out because of it (cam seals, rear main).