My Volvo 850 T-5R project

[kerryt5r]

HybridAero said:

That looks epic! My new favourite thread!

Thanks very much

Made some more progress with the engine build over the long weekend:

Ground in the valves:





Fitted all of the remaining valve stem seals and inserted all of the cleaned up/ground in valves :



Refitted all of the valve springs, collets and caps :



Installed 15x hydraulic lifters, but 5 appear to have seized? May need to purchase 5 new ones



S60R head gasket on :



New head (stretch) bolts had their threads coated in oil before installing and tightening in sequence over 3 stages



Leading to this :



Just need to install 5 more hydraulic lifters, cams, cam cover and time it up before I can start thinking about installing it..

[kerryt5r]

Today's update >

Thanks to the advice of a helpful forum member, I carefully put the 5x seized hydraulic lifters in the vice and gently released them from their seized positions one by one. Very pleased with the outcome & now they are all installed as follows:



Here is how the (mostly) assembled engine looks now:



Got the cam cover back from the machine shop yesterday - cleaned up and ready to install once I have finished cleaning the camshafts at the weekend:



That's all for now

[kerryt5r]

Axionknight said:

Smashing, I remember seeing your posts on the VOC forum some years ago about this car, it's great to see you sticking with it, keep up the good work!

I sold mine

That's right - started my thread on there 9 years ago when I bought the car! Updated my thread there for old times sake but don't frequent that forum anymore on a regular basis. Good to hear from you - what did you replace your Volvo with?

melhookv12 said:

Is this the same engine as used in the focus rs?

I was assisting a friend. The focus doesn't have hydraulic lifters. Are you 100% sure that your engine does?

The focus engine has the shims as part of the buckets and are different sizes according to valve clearances.

Could be wrong but worth mentioning.

Thanks for the info but the Focus RS lump is indeed slightly different to mine. Mine is the 3rd incarnation of the original 850 T-5 lump (slightly stronger cylinder side walls/lower cc) and does have hydraulic lifters/tappets

[kerryt5r]

Good to see you charltjr - remember your maroon T-5 very well from a few years ago. Your new car looks great by the way!

Cleaned up the last few parts at the weekend:





And last night, put the cams in along with new spark plug o-rings and camshaft oil seals



ending up like this :

Edited by kerryt5r on Tuesday 10th May 13:34

[kerryt5r]

Made a bit more progress on Saturday :



Got the lower part of the cam belt cover fitted, along with the new cam belt tensioner and new pulley with new bolts for the sake of it.



Then fitted the S40/V50/C30 T-5 exhaust manifold one piece gasket



Had to snip off a small amount from the right hand side that would have blocked a water pipe



S60R exhaust manifold installed



New genuine coolant temperature sensor



Crank pulley wheel installed but not yet torqued up

Was hoping to fit the timing belt as well, but my vice wouldn’t open far enough to compress the damper/tensioner! Hopefully get that sorted this week

[kerryt5r]

Not much progress lately, but got the T-5R out of hibernation ready for its transplant!



And also managed to time up the new engine - now ready for installation.



Hoping to get the old engine out this weekend

[kerryt5r]

At the weekend, it was time to get started on removing the old engine:



Got the car securely jacked up and on axle stands



Front end panels and lights were stripped off in no time at all



Inlet manifold off and ancillaries now accessible



A full team of my friends/family were working flat out by Saturday afternoon!



Next we were ready to lift the engine out. Unbolting the last few items like the fuel lines at the back had taken much longer than expected



The engine was then carefully lifted out - had just enough clearance



Unfortunately the hot side of the turbo has a couple of cracks, but I think that I have now sourced a good replacement from a forum member - just waiting to hear back



And this is how the car stands now. Ordered up yet more parts from Volvo - just items that were perished or looked as though they were past their best. Not surprising to find a few things as the car is 20 years old now. Also ordered up a new starter motor to go with the new alternator that I already purchased.

Few bits and pieces to do this week, and then hopefully we can start thinking about installing the new engine soon

Edited by kerryt5r on Tuesday 7th June 13:12

[kerryt5r]

Stedman said:

Brilliant! Keep up the good work

Thanks mate

ryanpetit said:

Great read and awesome car! Nice to see you've kept on to it for so long.

You don't live round the back of fresh water square do you? I'm sure I've seen the car round Eastbourne

Thanks very much. My granddad lives there actually - good spot! I'm not from too far away

Mini update: got the water branch attached last night - had to take the manifold back off because you can't quite get to one of the water branch bolts! Just need to attach the turbo/turbo hoses and it's ready for install

[kerryt5r]

superkarl said:

I'd be porting and polishing the crap out of that manifold and turbo hotside

Some people do, but the S60R manifold flows so much more gas than the standard one that I am going to leave it. As for hot side of the turbo, I will ultimately replace the whole turbo with something bigger once I am happy with the reliability etc.

[kerryt5r]

charltjr said:

Looking good

Thanks

Weekend progress

On Friday evening after work, we managed to remove the gearbox, clutch and flywheel from my old engine and transfer the oil cooler lines over to the new engine (along with all new oil seals) and a new thermostat :



Saturday afternoon was productive to say the least - Flywheel (with new one use bolts), clutch and gearbox onto the new engine :



Turbo with new seals and DO88 water hoses to replace the old originals :



Ending up with the engine looking like this & ready for install :



Engine being lowered into place :



Located as it should go :



Engine was then bolted down properly :



The turbo hot side wouldn't mate up to the downpipe unfortunately, so that was about as much as we could get done for one day. I didn't realise that there were 2 types of connection on the straight flange turbo hot sides. Hopefully I will be able to get one before the weekend. We still had a bit more time, so fitted all new track rods and ends to go with the new Meyle HD droplinks :

N/S :



O/S :



On Sunday we connected the PCV & bolted on some of the ancillaries that wont restrict access for turbo refitting. New alternator :



New starter motor :



And how the car looked at the end of the weekend :



If we don't have any further problems then it should be back together by the end of next weekend

[kerryt5r]

Made some excellent progress with the car this weekend:

Saturday

Got started in the afternoon:



Luckily we could remember where most things went as it wasn't that long ago since we removed the old engine



Inlet manifold on and clutch bled. Had to replace the clutch pipe that runs under the battery tray as it was looking very corroded. Volvo have now made this a "classic" part so that they can charge a fortune for it! Worth doing though.



And this is how we left it for the day - certainly looking a bit more recognisable as an 850 engine bay..



Sunday

Sunday ended up being fairly straightforward. Sun was out as well which was a welcome change. Managed to get the front end back on and generally worked from the turbo at the back of the engine forwards



Before long it ended up like this:





Filled it up with mineral oil for its first run:



And after an initial non-start (spade plug for starter motor on wrong connector) it fired into life! Ran for 15 minutes on the mineral oil:



Next we put the car back up on the driveway and dropped the mineral oil out and refilled with semi-synthetic 10W/40 for 500 miles of running in



Here's how the car sits now:



Missing a couple of covers, but will tidy up in the week. So far so good - no leaks etc & MOT is on Saturday. Hopefully be able to start driving it after that.

[kerryt5r]

cosworth330 said:

Have you run in the new engine yet?

Yeah all run in & clean sheet on the MOT - just waiting for the car to come back from having a few tweaks and I will post a proper update

[kerryt5r]

Snazzyjake said:

kerryt5r said:

Yeah all run in & clean sheet on the MOT - just waiting for the car to come back from having a few tweaks and I will post a proper update

Any updates on this? Read this thread from start to finish and wow! Serious love for this and all the mods you've done to it! I plan to take a similar route with my 850r once I saved up some pennies!

Keep up the good work!

cosworth330 said:

kerryt5r said:

Yeah all run in & clean sheet on the MOT - just waiting for the car to come back from having a few tweaks and I will post a proper update

Nearly 2 years later, hows it going?

It's been fantastic - just been enjoying it over the last couple of summers. Lost enthusiasm to keep my project threads updated when photobucket messed around with their payment plans etc... I post the occasional photo to my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry_macreadie/

Basically I took the car to Shemtek up in Nottingham for some power upgrades (rude not to since I had forged the engine internals ) including a 19T Turbo rebuilt with an angled exhaust flange housing and 11 blade billet compressor wheel, Flux Fabrication custom stainless downpipe and middle section, large cone filter, BMW 540i MAF housing along with custom pipework, bosch 550cc injectors, 4.4 ECU and a custom remap. Also had the battery relocated to the boot which has made a surprisingly big improvement to the handling, notably to turn-in. All I can say is that the car is now fantastic and exactly as I always wanted it to be and it is not possible to drive it without a big grin. Haven't felt any need to change anything on it since getting it back and that is very unlike me...

I can't quite put my finger on it, but the old 850's seem to get cooler by the day - I have unbelievably owned mine for 11 years now and it has certainly changed a lot over that time!

[kerryt5r]

cosworth330 said:

I have periodically read your thread through the years and looks like you have built the perfect T-5R!
It was probably a few years ago when I wanted to buy T-5R for a toy ( had an 850R nearly 20 yrs ago ) anyway I decided that my F80 M3 would be too costly to track due to carbon ceramic brake package it’s fitted with and finally found a nice example manual Gul saloon to play with. Bought it this week and loving the old skool retro thing. Shem has worked on it, 4.4 ECU, intercooler, radiator, hard pipe kit, 19T, BSR exhaust cat back, map. Goes pretty well. Eibach springs fitted. Obviously spoilt with running a F80 M3 so the Volvo feels a bit pony in the handling dept.
I need to pick your brains re handling of you don’t mind?

What front subframe bushes have you fitted as mine are knackered.

Thanks

Thank you for saying so - it certainly is for me and has been damn good fun to own and modify over the years. There is just something about a well sorted 850 that I don't get from a lot of other cars. I have owned many cars in parallel to my 850 - EP3 type R, e46 M3 to name a couple but the 850 is the only one I can't part with. Got a few Mercs now but still enjoy using the 850!

I have genuine volvo bushes in the subframe because everything else on the car is so stiff: IPD bars, GAZ coilovers, poly bushes in the control arms etc but am always tempted to fit the solid bushes. Might give them a go when the current set of bushes are past their best.

Started following your thread - yellow T-5R looks ace! Awesome pair of cars you have there. Look forward to seeing your progress with the fiddy.