Volvo XC70

I bought a 2008 Volvo XC70 off of Facebook Marketplace. I came across it while scrolling as I often do, and this caught my eye and I just fell in love with it. I love the way it looks. The price was also quite attractive, however, the reason for that was that it had some damage to the engine. After doing a bit of research on the engines these have and what the likely issue was, I decided to take a gamble on it and try fixing it. Here's how I did it.

This is just after I picked it up.

And this is after I got it home. The Land Rover towed it just fine.

I discovered it had an aftermarket trailer brake controller installed in it, which I didn't intend to use at all so I removed it. However in the process of removing it I found that the brake switch wire was fuse tapped straight into the fuse panel. This means that the brake controller 'thinks' the brake pedal is pressed all the time, because the wire is on ignition power instead of brake lights. So I don't see how the trailer brake controller could have ever worked, but it doesn't really matter to me since I'm taking it out anyway.

Starting to take the top of the engine apart. After taking the top cover off it was immediately clear to me what the problem was and it was exactly what I suspected. The timing belt has jumped some teeth so the valve timing was out of sync with the pistons. This has caused the pistons to impact the valves (but only the intake valves) and the weakest link in the chain has broken.

In this picture you can just about see some of the damage. Directly under each cam lobe there is a half circle of aluminium cast into the head, this should be a full circle, the aluminium of the casting has actually broken.

Camshafts out, and the damage is becoming more visible.

Head off the engine and on the bench. I spent some time disassembling and cleaning the head, which I did by putting it in the dishwasher a few times which actually worked amazingly well to clean all the carbon away.

This is one bit I was a little worried about, because valves have touched pistons it's entirely possible that the pistons or cylinder bored could be damaged. However I got extremely lucky and there is not even a mark on the pistons. Everything on the bottom end seems fine.

Here you can see a bit more clearly what's broken. There are holes drilled into a protruding part of the casting which leaves a relatively thin wall next to the holes, and that is where they've broken. This is not necessarily a bad thing because they act a bit like a fuse, they fail so that other harder to fix things don't. 

These holes are for the automatic valve lash adjusters, sometimes called tappets or lifters. They have a pressurised oil supply and an oil drain at the bottom. Here I've started to grind the broken area back a bit with a die grinder.

All ground back to fresh metal. In this picture you can see what the lash adjuster holes are supposed to look like. All the ones on the exhaust side (closer to camera) are still intact. 

Here I've built up the broken area with weld. This new material is what will get machined to make the new holes out of.

Here I'm 'machining' the weld material to a flat surface. I say machining in inverted commas because I'm only using a drill press, albeit a fairly good one, and a modified old broken drill bit that I reground to be a bit like an end-mill. 

This is the resulting flat machined surface, it's not very pretty or smooth, but that's okay because it doesn't need to be. This is just to mark out and drill a hole in the right place, it's not a precise surface.

I got a drill bit and a 12mm reamer to make the holes for the lash adjusters more precisely and to give the inside of the holes a much smoother surface finish. Regular twist drill bits actually leave a very rough surface on the inside of the hole they drill, and these surfaces need to hold oil pressure so a reamer was needed as well.

This is the first hole drilled and reamed, it came out quite well. This shows well the oil supply port at the back of the lash adjuster hole which is made by a cross drilling that goes through almost the whole length of the head.

The lash adjuster fits nicely in the bore.

I then proceeded to do the same welding and machining on the other 9 broken areas.

Drilling the rest of the holes. It took a lot of careful measurement and marking out to get the holes in the right spot.

Another very important tool, which I actually had to fabricate myself, was a very super extra long 8mm drill bit to clear out the cross drilling that supplies oil to the lash adjusters. This drilling would of course have got filled up a bit by weld in places, so it needed to be re drilled.

This is the oil cross drilling hole after I ran the long drill bit through it to clear out any weld material out from inside.

Drilling an oil drain hole at the bottom of the lifter bore to make sure oil doesn't pressurise the lifter from underneath.

Finely adjusting the height of the surface each lifter sits on to make sure they all sit at the right height.

The cross drilling hole welded back up and sealed on the outside after cleaning the internal oil passages.

Cleaning up the bottom head surface using my favourite method, sandpaper stuck down to a sheet of glass. I also lapped the valves back into their seats to ensure a good seal.

Cleaning up the top surface of the head where the valve cover and cam covers sit.

New valve stem seals installed. The old ones didn't seem bad but it's worth doing while the head's off.

Valves and springs reinstalled in the head.

The engine block deck cleaned of any old gasket material so the new head gasket can seal nicely.

New head gasket installed and alignment dowels inserted ready for the head to go on.

Cylinder head with rocker arms already in placed back onto the engine block.

New head bolts dropped in and lubricated ready to be tightened down.

Head bolts torqued to spec using a torque wrench and an angle gauge with markings to track each stage.

Camshafts installed and correctly aligned with each other.

Installing camshaft bearing caps.

Reinstalling the timing belt and pulleys.

All other components then got reinstalled including the cam end bearing covers, fuel pump, vacuum pump, timing cover, intake manifold, fuel lines and everything else needed to get it running.

First drive out to the service station. It started up straight away and drove perfectly.

First mod. I decided to swap around the manual up and down shifts because the factory way felt backwards to me. I prefer pulling back to shift up, like in a race car.

Wires of the manual shift sensors reversed on the shifter circuit board to flip the signal sent to the car computer.

The plus and minus symbols reversed on the trim piece so the graphics match the new shifting layout.

Fitting the shifter trim and centre console back together.

Replacing the upper torque rod mount because the rubber bushing in the old one was split and worn out.

The A/C wasn't working and when I took the compressor clutch off the magnetic coil just fell out. It had clearly overheated, I'm guessing because the ball bearing got old and worn and overheated and the extra heat was too much for the coil.

After taking the magnet housing off I found that the pulley bearing had actually seized spun on the aluminium shaft, slightly damaging it.

I was able to buy a new bearing and clutch coil instead of buying a whole new compressor. I used some green Loctite to hold the new bearing on the shaft which worked well.

Compressor refitted to the engine block and the belts replaced with new ones. Later I got the A/C system recharged with refrigerant and it works perfectly.

Land Rover Discovery 1 (Part 2)

Something I wanted to do on the Land Rover after I got it was to protect it and try to prolong its life. I am doing all this on a budget though so brand new window seals to replace the old cracked ones were out of the question. So I got some Sikaflex 227 and some masking tape and filled in the cracks in the rubber seals. So far it has held up remarkably well. 

I also used the Sikaflex to seal around the front windscreen and in all the gutter channels.

Since the vehicle was leaking so much and the carpets were holding water, the drivers seat had developed a lot of rust, particularly around one fastening bolt. The weakened metal coupled with the constant forces of someone in the seat caused the metal around the bolt to completely fail. So I decided to fix that area of the seat frame.

I started by cutting out a section of metal around the failed bit.

Then I cut and tack welded in a new piece of steel.

Then fully welded it.

And from the other side.

Then I smoothed out all the welds with the grinder.

After a coat of paint it fit nicely back in place.

The Disco performed well doing its first firewood run.

For some silly reason - probably because I'm an idiot, I decided to swap the indicator and wiper stalks around to put the indicator stalk on the right of the steering column which is what I'm used to in my Subaru. This is the internals of the indicator switch mechanism.

Here are some of the moving parts for it. I would of course have to make a mirror of this component with all the contacts so that it works the other way around to control the lights.

I somehow managed to pull the non-user serviceable roll pin out of the stalks. 

Here is what the insides of the wiper stalk looks like.

This is the contacts part of the indicator/light stalk with the high/low beam mechanism attached.

The intermittent wiper speed control wheel on the wiper stalk has a small circuit board inside to send a signal to the control unit, I had to make a mirror of that circuit board to to give the same wiper function in the same direction as when it's the other way around. 

This is a 3D printed version of the back of the wiper switch which is mirrored from the original.

This is a custom 3D printed connector for the wiring from the indicator/lighting switch.

I modified the contacts on the original indicator/lighting switch, and although the switch unit itself was able to fit on the right hand side of the steering column, the connector would have fouled on the key barrel, so I soldered wires to the contacts and made a "divorced" connector for the indicator/light switch for the original connector to plug in to.

Another little modification I wanted to make was to the instrument cluster. I wanted to split the indicators so that there was a separate arrow for indicating left and right. I also wanted separate the low and high beam indicator lights on the dash board. 

I found some translucent green plastic to use as filters for the indicators.

The seem to match fairly well to the original green filters in the instrument cluster.

I painstakingly used some masking tape, black paint pen and a craft knife to make the individual indicator "indicator" lights. 

I utilised some of the unused pin slots in the connectors to the instrument cluster. They didn't have pins already, so I took some out of my parts car and joined new wires onto them for the new functions.

I realised that I needed one more wire connection up to the steering wheel than the standard rotary coupler had. So I thought I'd try adding a slip ring to it to add one more connection. This can be used for the horn, which is how it was done on the non-cruise control models. The horn was the only function they had on the steering wheel, and it was earthed through the steering column itself. The slip ring I made here is simply made of a piece of solid copper wire, soldered into a ring and lightly hammered flat, then epoxied onto the rotating part at the back of the rotary coupler. Once dry it was carefully filed smooth.

Here you can see the, temporary, wiper which is the springy piece of metal that contacts the slip ring. It is mounted on a new custom 3D printed bracket which mounts the wipe/wash and light/indicator stalks to the steering column, but the opposite way round to normal.

Some trimming of the steering column surround was needed in order to fit the stalks in their new positions.

One thing I really wanted was indicator lights on the dash board to tell me when cruise control is on, and when it's set. So after a lot of probing and testing of the cruise control ECU, I managed to come up with a circuit that would illuminate a light on the dash when cruise control was set and was trying to hold a speed. 

I made the circuit on a solderable breadboard, and it was just small enough to fit inside the cruise control ECU housing.

After joining all the wires and making an output pin, I covered the sensitive parts and coated it with lacquer. I then added some foam tape to hold the new circuit board in place and slid the whole thing back into its aluminium housing. 

The blue connector here is meant to plug into the cruise control switch on the dash board, but all this is now being handled with the steering wheel controls. So the switch isn't used and can be replaced with a switch blank from the parts car, and new wires are joined on with a new plug. This new plug will go to a custom made control box which powers the cruise control ECU. 

This is the control box which simply takes the inputs from the new steering wheel controls and sends power to the cruise control ECU, doing what the standard switch used to do.

After practicing on the steering wheel for the parts car, which was already damaged beyond repair, I made this template to transfer the hole location for the switch onto the good steering wheel.

It's just a rectangular hole cut into the moulted foam steering wheel.

The switch is slotted in and held in place with a screw and the help of a little bit of super glue.

The finished rotary coupler with its new slip ring and all wiring. One wire of course had to be added to the rotating side.

Here you can see the permanent setup of the wiper and how it contacts the slip ring.

This is the symbol I made on the dash to indicate that the cruise control computer is on, this is simply powered by the same wire that powers the cruise control ECU.

And this indicates that cruise control is set. For this I had to add a new wire to the instrument cluster, powered by that little circuit board I made and put inside the cruise control module.

This functionality of cruise control and the corresponding indicator lights on the dash board, along with the light/indicator stalk being on the right, is something I'm used to from driving other cars. I find it makes the driving experience more enjoyable and less prone to mistakes as the layout of controls is more similar. It is also a very satisfying project.