RWD - engine out, questions arise...

Volvo RWD 120-130 Forum

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engine out, questions arise... 120-130

So I had my engine in and running, drove around for a day. Got a little over-enthusiastic with a friend and started pushing it a little too hard in the freshly rained upon pavement (dumb, but we couldn't resist). The engine was and still is a refreshed b20 in which I invested as little money as possible as it is my first engine... my 'learning engine' if you will. I was banking on there being plenty of little mistakes. Anyways... I'll cut to the chase... after a couple spins we heard a not so nice knocking sound. We turned the car off and pushed it into the garage w/ nervous anxiety. After some BB research I was convinced it was the fiber timing gear... it wasn't so... so off came the head... everything was fine. And out came the engine... oil pan off, everything was fine. Turns out my flywheel had come loose. All the 8 bolts were loose enough to give the wheel about a 1/4" of play and make a horrible clunking noise (amateur I know... but I never claimed I wasn't). At first I was embarrassed to share this story with a bunch of old pros... but i thought about it, and realized that I'm just having fun learning and prodding the limits of whats acceptable... perfection is great... but I'll save that for another day... right now I'm having a blast and learning how to break things (I feel like I should have been doing this when I was 15-16 years old). So the engine has run for a good week. I've noticed some things I now have questions about.

1. I'm burnin' oil. Between shifts I got a little plume of smoke. And after draining the engine upon taking it out, it was apparent that there was less oil in it. The crankcase breather seems to be feeding quite a bit of oil residue to the intake manifold... better option to run both the oil cap and crank case breather to a filter unit? My rings are fresh. The cylinder walls had some minor scores... really can't imagine them leaking too much oil to the combustions chambers. **And its a fresh head so the valve guides etc are all shiny and new.

2. End play... is what I'm calling the connecting rod play at the crank... is there a number for acceptable left to right play?

3. After inspecting the head it looks as though cylinders 1 and 4 are burning pretty hot/lean (a friend told me this) as they had a grayish look compared to 2 and 3. His hypothesis was that 2/3 are easier to feed fuel to... path of least resistance etc. (I'm running dual SUs). Is this grounds for concern?

4. Whats with the lack of decent rockers? I have 3 sets and they're all worn. To the point where my Alfa friend was appalled that I'd even consider putting such a worn piece on my vehicle. Is finding good ones a treasure hunt? Or are there alternatives?

Sorry for the length... just kept going... I probably have a lot more questions too that will arise.
best, Dan


New engine out, questions arise... [120-130]
posted by  benwah  on Wed Dec 9 04:47 CST 2009 >

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