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1991 Volvo 964 B204FT

rabbitdani

New member
Joined
May 28, 2020
Location
Bucharest
Hello!
My name is Daniel, I am from Romania and I will try to document my experience owning my Volvo (wouldn't say restoration because the car is in pretty good shape already).
As it says in the title, it's a 91' Volvo 964 16v 2.0 turbo with an M46 manual transmission and multilink rear suspension.
I found little information on this engine compared to it's 8v brothers, but enough to go by.

Here are some pictures of the car as I got it:








I got the car from a friend of mine knowing it's faults but also knowing some money went into it (he didn't have room for this car because of other project cars). Other than a few cosmetic details (driver's side seat worn, interior dome light broken, a couple of buttons that are broken, taillights on trunk have grey middle and the ones on the quarters have orange turn lights) the car is in preety good shape, minor dings and scratches and rear left quarter panel isn't so well repaired after a crash in the taillight area. I couldn't find rust on the car or under it, haven't checked inch by inch but if there is, it can't be a big problem.
The car has got a few rather annoying mechanincal issues:
- the M46 dosen't want to go in overdrive onice the engine/transmission is hot (might be an electrical issue because it dosen't light the indicator in the dash either). In the first 30 mins or so of a trip, the O/D works fine, but when it gets hot it suddenly dosen't.
- the differential has got a bit of play in it - still have to research that area
- the engine ran pig ritch at idle/low rpm cruising - possibly found the cause(s) now that the engine is out of the car, i found a few vacuum hoses that were split - also because of this problem my friend changed the O2 sensor, coolant sensor, idle air valve (also had a problem with idle) but none of these seemed to solve the problem, thus very low mpg :).

And now onto why I had to take the engine appart:
After a few roadtrips with the car and a few youtube videos on this engine, I noticed my balance shaft belt whas whining too much. I used the trial-and-error tehnique to set the tension on the belt right, but the problem came when i had to put the plastic timing covers back. I previousely removed them without removing the accesory pulley, but putting them back on is not as easy, so i removed the pulley but when i tightened it back, I didn't have a second person to hold the brakes or lock the engine somehow so I couldn't torque it to spec.
What followed was a bunch of backfires when I tried to start the engine. After checking the timing was aligned, i realised the crank was spinning freely from the timing gear - the pin/key in the crank pulley had snapped :-(.
After ordering a new crank pulley from KLRacing (couldn't find it in romanian part stores and the Volvo dealership gave me the price but couldn't order it :wtf:), I replaced it and tried to start the engine - ran like crap, bent valves.
Took the head off to find at least 6 exhaust valves bent :(. Later, the machine shop called to tell me all 8 exhaust valves were bent. This, ofcourse gave me the opportunity to find alot of problems with the engine, and, in the end, I pulled the whole thing out of the car.

Photo of head:

Example of bent valves:

Culprit:

Shortblock:


This, ofcourse gave me the opportunity to find alot of problems with the engine, and, in the end, I pulled the whole thing out of the car:
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Gave it a nice clean so i could work further :) it leaked oil from both main seals, balance shafts, cam cover etc:
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Cylinder walls in good shape (odo is reading < 200k km but may have been swapped, dunno) Also main and rod bearings are cool so I ended up just changing the main seals and repainting the block red.
I did the balance shafts delete - figured it was a good point in time. (16mm freeze plugs for the drains and m12 , m6 threads tapped in the block and plugged, for the oil feeds)




I also bought al the other seals/gaskets/head bolts/timing belt/tensoners/ to reassemble the engine, also got the head back from the machine shop, they shaved 0.18mm off of it because of warping. I also got new hydraulic tappets for the exhaust side so I don't have any funny surprises.
It is all a matter of me having the free time to complete it. Up until now it all went pretty slow because of the time it took to get all the parts, I had to order alot from Sweden because i couldn't find them here.
As I make progress, I will try to post here. After the engine is back together and in the car, I will have to tackle the front suspension - it has play in the track rod ends and i ordered them, and all the bushings for the control arms/torque rods/sway bar links/sway bar.

Thanks for reading,
Cheers to old Volvos !
 
Last edited:
Cool to see another b204ft car! :)
Make sure you have the updated oil pump gear & bolt and replace the dowel pins of the cam gears by a solid ones ;-)
Probably bunch of other upgrades that I've forgot already...
 
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