If we can find NOS Mahle B18 pistons, we use the rings that come with the pistons, but the Mahle B18 pistons are really hard to find nowadays. I still don't understand why Mahle doesn't make them anymore as they still make pistons for the early B20 engines with 6 bolt cranks.

So with the lack of Mahle B18 pistons, we've turned to VP and they have pistons custom made and supply Grant or Hastings rings. And unfortunately, we've had issues with some of the rings not being the correct size and in both cases some of the rings had ring gaps that were to big and out of spec so we had to get them replaced.

We use Dorman connecting rod nuts for the 6 bolt rods and OE Volvo nuts for the 8 bolt rods.

And yes we still use and prefer D cams in all stock B18 and B20 engines except for K-jet(CIS) equipped engines which get a K cam.

We have not experienced a pattern of unusual or premature wear on our customers cars in the last 20+ years. I attribute this to using high quality parts and using oil with sufficient ZZDP.

The D cams we use and sell are custom made for us and we use high quality lifters from AE or from Isky.

We have copies of D cams made because back in the late 1990's,Federal/Mogul bought the TRW valve train division in Europe, the only source of high quality aftermarket B18/B20/B30 valve train parts, and shut them down and because the white box cams we were getting weren't made correctly.

We are currently building an engine for a B18 to B20 swap for another shop and in this case the owner of the 1967 1800S has requested a larger cam and we settled on a Isky VV71 instead of a D cam.


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Eric
Hi Performance Automotive Service (formerly OVO or Old Volvos Only)
Torrance, CA 90502
hiperformanceautoservice.com or oldvolvosonly.com