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I wear my vest at all times and yes weapons are present in any given situation, Ive contributed to several OSR's in recent years. The main objective of any LEO is to put the bad guy behind bars make sure the public is safe and to make damn sure he goes home after his shift!
Diesels... Where do I start. I rebuilt my motor having diesel experience from working at the former McGraw Onan corporation, this before Cummins came in and screwed them up and bilked out everyones retirements. My father was the brainchild behind the Onan L-series diesel and my grandfather was a personal friend of Bud Onan and he was the mastermind behind the famed J series and CCK series motors that have evolved into the B and P series aluminum engines.
My present D24TIC
I rebuilt the motor due to excessive oil consumption and found 0.5MM oversize pistons wearing standard size rings, the block was factory stamped for OS but someone was snoozing when the put the rings on. I managed to go over 200K miles before the oil was being burned faster than the fuel. The engine still ran, had plenty of power and started at -10F but Shell Rotella-T gets expensive when you burn it at a rate of 1.2 gal/100 miles!
Now I would like to correct several myths of the VW/AUDI diesel specifically the turbo-diesel. (Will someone take note and update the FAQ?)
The first non-turbo motors had wall wear problems like no ones business. This was because first they had no real oil cooling and second not enough oil reached the walls due to the tight clearances of the rod and main bearings. Little throw off means little oil and lots of wear. The turbo motors had piston cooling jets located on the left side of the engine that went directly to the oil gallery and they had a sandwich type oil/water cooler that knocked temps down by 40-60 degrees. The second issue was the fact the non turbo motor burned dirty meaning lots of smoke per given mile, this loaded the heck out of the rings and made them stick and the hard carbon was a good abrasive to the walls so it was like running a 1200 grit paper lightly over the walls at all times. No piston cooling to speak of in a diesel makes pistons expand tighter at high temps and this put more pressure against the walls.
The other issue was with the casting itself. The non turbo motors were made of a low nickel iron that was hard and brittle, easily machined but was a poor running surface, the turbo blocks were a high nickel iron that wore better, was harder to machine and heavier by almost 25 pounds. Thread retention was better with the turbo blocks but with the machining issues the threads were thinner and more prone to breaking. A give and take with this but I have only seen 2 issues with this so far.
The other issues were with timing belts and heads themselves. The lower crank pulley is held with a very stout 15MM fine thread bolt that is torqued to a real value of 425 ft/lbs and this is all that holds the lower timing gear to the crank. The key is only to locate the timing sprocket and provides no driving force through the assembly. Timing belts need to be changed at the proper intervals at the very least, 50k miles is a better calender to follow with these. Many times people will take the car for a timing belt and the mechanic will not tighten the lower bolt to the 425 pounds because they dont have the torque wrench available or are just to damn lazy and use a breaker bar until it feels good. Either way you will end up with a slipped timing lower gear with a broken off key and a mashed valve or busted camshaft. I have seen both and Im holding onto a trashed block that has a good crank, this one lost the lower key to a slip and it busted the cam up through the top cover.
Heads... Early models used a 10MM head bolt that was a non torque to yield or TTY bolt, later blocks and all turbo used 11MM TTY bolts that needed to be retorqued in order to maintain good gasket compression for the head. The bolt was torqued to the yield point but retained enough "spring" to follow the head during expansion and would follow it down when cooling to maintain pressure on the gasket to avert surface shear. The heads themselves had no real issues other than surface cracking between valve seat inserts and warping due to mis-torqued bolts. Many an engine has been sent to the grave because some nit-wit mechanic said "your head has all these cracks and its bad. A new one is xxx thousands of dollars" and the owner would say no and junk it. The crack is superficial and extends to a maximum of 0.5 to 1MM deep and has almost 6 more millimeters to go before it hits water. I have yet to see one hit the water table and normally I dress the cracks to a 45 degree rounded radius and blend it down to the level of the valve seats.
Things to check for on an unknown Volvo or other VW/AUDI diesel. One the oil cap jiggle test means nothing on these motors. The vacuum pump discharge is to the interior of the motor so every pulse will make the cap bounce slightly. Pull the cap while running warm and note if any large oil droplets come out and spray the top cover. Large oil stains around the turbocharger inlet and wastegate means its a blow-by monster but rebuildable.
Drive the car if possible and FLOOR the damn thing in 1st and 2nd and note the turbo buildup while keeping an eye on the rear of the car for excessive smoke. A large puff of black starting out in 1st is normal but if it builds through boost that means the pressure reg on the injection pump is siezed up, easy but spendy fix but not a mandatory fix. Automatic cars will feel soggy until about 15 MPH then pickup hard, might break traction if you are lucky and have skinny tires. (and skinny butt)
After the hard run with the engine still running pull the coolant cap carefully to release the pressure, only takes 1/8 to 1/4 turn but dont allow much water out at this point. Now seal it back up and squeeze the upper hose, wear a glove. Now if the hose builds pressure within 30-45 seconds its a blown head gasket or untorqued head. Still salvagable at this point.
Rebuilds... If you are mechanically inclined and have an eye for ACCURATE DETAIL you can rebuild the motor using off the shelf parts. All the VW 1.6L and AUDI 2.0L diesel parts are interchangable! Thats right they are interchangable and AVAILABLE! For rings and bearings you are looking at under $275.00! Cofab makes the rings and I forget who made the bearings but I must warn you at this point... NEVER EVER GRIND THE DIESEL CRANK EVER! It is a hardened journal crank and grinding will take the surface off plus destroy the fillet angles. All motors will use the standard size bearings. Once again NEVER grind that crank, I speak from first hand experience $$$$
These are not hard to rebuild but require an eye for detail, german diesels are almost put together on center specs and leave no room for tolerance error, such errors almost always prove fatal to the engine. Even skimping on the pan gasket will prove to be a major pain in the butt because the pan also locates the lower bell of the transmission. This is german arrogance in its finest hour folks but look at the Benz diesels, some of the rabbit diesels are even running the clock to the higher numbers. True there is a diffrence between a rabbit and a benz however arrogance is the same on both sides. Germans are not known to screw around with "lets try this and see if it works". They have an eye for accuracy like no other and they build some of the finest diesel engines in the world! Germans never skimp on mechanical details, 0.001MM to them is the world and they like to set things on the tight ends of the scale.
Driving the D24 turbo powered 700 cars...
Absolutly NOTHING like it. At road speed you would never know its a diesel. Its quieter than the 5-cyl benz diesel by far and feels much stronger and pulls better. The diffrence between the D24 and say a B23 or even B28 is like night and day. Both feel snappy at first but they run out of breath, even the turbo B motors feel like they are gasping on the higher ends. The diesel will pull hard and flat from 60 on up but they are somewhat slow on the get-go off a light. I manage to get around 40 MPG with my TIC motor with all sorts of driving. Now to answer your question of why I drive fast? Because I want to and being a spec for DWI offenders (3600 district) I do spot them during my civillian travels and will maintain with them to get info to a uniformed or local. My son and I are both avid train nuts and we do spend alot of time on the road chasing trains through the subs, remember cops are always cops on and off duty but some just dont care off the clock.
A tic motor you ask? Yup its turbo intercooled. Another member of the brickboard dug up the intercooler intake manifold and hose set for me, I owe many thanks to George Holmer for this as Im almost sure I have the only real factory spec'd intercooled turbo diesel in the USA using the correct Volvo parts. At present Im waiting for a set of E-codes I won on Ebay along with the KPH speedometer and other E-spec trinkets.
Ya'know I used to not like european cars, too busy interiors or oddball construction but Volvos have always been in my sweet spot... Just never found the one I really liked. 240's are appliances and Jags are too unreliable and the 700 series gas cars after 1986 drove like Buicks and looked like them after 1991 when the tail lights changed to that center inserted amber signal lens. 900 series cars gave a taste of simple eurpoean form and function. Transform a 700/900 car with good sway bars, blistins and low profile boots you have a car that will take a highway cloverleaf at double the recommended speed with ease and after spending 6 hours in a P-71 interceptor the Volvo seats are night and day. Now if I can get those damn polycast wheels clean! Oh well
In short the turbo-diesel powered Volvo cars are a nice treat if you take care of them, piss them off and you are walking. Oil changes should have a 3000 mile law along with the filter, if I pull you over and check your oil and find it past this I may arrest you and take you and your car to the nearest oil change center! (j/k)
Most of the ones that are still running today will continue to run for many tens of thousands of miles more if taken care of. 160K miles is chump change for these and I have seen several 240 non turbo diesels that have bitten the dust at over 300K miles still running, I need a bigger garage so I can start soaking these gems up.
In closing...
Go with your gut feelings with this car, at the price you stated its worth it even with a sub standard running motor. A B21/B23 conversion is very easy with these cars and if you can rebuild the motor yourself and maintain the tolerances given in the Volvo green book you will also save yourself ALOT of money doing it. A rebuild will run you over $3000 at a qualified diesel shop (Petters in casper WY) and a high-school rebuild will send you walking.
My rebuild consisted of the following: New rings, rod/main bearings. Recycled oil pump and pistons. Bottlebrush to the cylinders interior glyptal sealing to the cast iron and exterior paint to the proper color (darker shade hunter green) and recycled crank. Head was surfaced lightly and all the mounting bolt holes for exhaust and intake were bored and filled with helicoils. The block headbolt holes were drilled out and double helicoiled because I had one pull out during a retorque. Injection pump was an Ebay special and all the sheetmetal was blasted and painted using a 2-part black epoxy paint. Exhaust is now a 2.5ID stainless bent by a maintnence tech for Hormel using 314 non seamed. Oil pan was recycled along with the exhaust manifold and turbo, both blasted and painted with gray cast 2-part paint good for 1500F. valves were hand lapped and clearances set 0.001 Mil looser to make up for break-in. I also port matched the intake/exhaust manifolds and did some other work involving the cam, specifically additional time and lift, this handled by Barry cams of Lester Prairie MN. Everything else is stock and the entire package of parts including the head gasket and other block gaskets were purchased through Drivewire.com and vwdiesel.com. All said and done with the tranny oil, diff oil and other misc parts I have under $600.00 in the whole rebuild with 15,000 miles on the clock. Lowest MPG is 26 and best is 47 running along US-12 to Wally world WA. I hope to have at least a 4 in front of that 15,000 before its all said and done.
Do let me know and if you or anyone else has D24 questions please ask and I will try to answer them.
Badge988
MSP-3600
D24TIC and waiting on another D24T for my 900 gas to diesel conversion should I get the time!
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