I couldn't find anything directly relating to this using the search, so here's my own thread.

So I'm resurrecting an S60R I got a hold of in February. It's got 139K on it and it's been my daily driver for almost a month. The guy I bought it from claimed to have done a PCV job on the car. He also claimed to have done a timing belt and water pump job, and I found a heater line loose and the timing belt wasn't tensioned properly. He was a diesel mechanic who just got fired (that's why he has to sell his car when the turbo blew on him), so I think I understand why he was fired. So I don't trust his work, not that he didn't do it, but that he didn't do it well. I know the turbo died because of a botched rebuild involving over-torquing a nut. I think he may have done it. I just find a PCV job hard to screw up.

So here's the evidence. At idle, crankcase pressure is just barely in the vacuum. You just see the needle deflect a little to that side on my pressure gauge (I rigged one up to a spare oil filler cap). Under boost it reaches about 1/2 a lb of pressure. Not horrible, but not what I want to see. I haven't truly been hammering the car because of this.

So I've also read that these later cars have weak PCV systems and even if properly fixed they may still be insufficient. If that's true I would expect some people to have made some fixes for it. I've watched FCP's video on a PCV job, and they made no mention of this. They did stress cleaning the nipples in the block. Also I removed my PTC to make way for my custom intake pipe so that's not a problem.

 

Finally some time to work on my car. I tore it all apart. Now I'm looking for input. So I looked at the oil separator box, it looks pretty new. The L-shaped tube into the block looks new, but the bottom tube into the block looks old. The tube from the valve cover looks new. The funny tube to the turbo inlet pipe looks old. It doesn't seem restricted.

I can't really figure out what Volvo was thinking when they opted for putting a PCV line in a rubber molding with a coolant line. Then that coolant line loops to a banjo fitting on the intake manifold where the PCV idle circuit joins the intake. Bad form Volvo! The PCV pipe collapses to about half it's cross sectional area around corners.

I've heard of one person claiming that these systems are undersized for older engines, so since it all looks fine I'm going to re-plumb the big PCV pipe with 5/8 aluminum tubing. I guess I'll have to re-plumb the coolant line too. But why does it exist? Is that a solution to get coolant to a section of the engine where there is poor flow naturally? The banjo fitting on the head has a very small orifice for the coolant so I can't imagine there being a lot of flow.

This whole part of the car is weird. Anyone got any thoughts?

 

I do the glove test, I think it's the best.

 

The coolant is to prevent condensation from freezing in the banjo bolt

 

I just used a pressure gauge to do the same thing. But that's a good video.

Interesting, but it sounds like it's one of those Swedish it-has-to-run-while-hell-freezes-over. I'll might bypass it. Is what it feeds on the head important?

Here's a video that I found says the PCV is not enough on older engines:


About 4:30 he talks about it.

 

Yes, I have seen that video. To much work for me.

 

So now it's making more sense. They ran coolant to the banjo bolt and then all along the PCV line to keep it all warm. It seems completely superfluous. It's nest to the block being fed by hot blow by and oil that it hotter than boiling water. It just seems like freezing even in 0 degree weather would only be a problem when the car is cold. In which case the coolant is freezing cold too. So anyone got any thoughts on that?

 

If you are still having blow by you can / should do a compression test.

 

Well the dipstick doesn't pop out anymore. Going to a larger cross-sectional area tube helped. The stock PCV tube goes around corners and gets squashed to about half it's cross-sectional area. The main part of the tube is even smaller than the inlet and outlet on both ends. The inlet and outlet are about 5/8." So my new setup retains the coolant line for heating the tube but increases the main PCV connection to pretty close to 5/8" tubing all the way. So enjoy the pics.