New pride & joy

[Luxobarge]

So, a few posts ago I noted that I needed to do the PCV system on this car, life is manically busy but I finally - eventually - managed to get around to doing the job.

So here goes:

The kit of parts (around £100 all in) had arrived from FRF Swansea some time ago, and I'd already bought a couple of cans of new oil and a filter, so all ready to go.

Here is the engine bay before I started:



There are a couple of excellent guides in the articles section on here, which I read and absorbed before I started, and I'd also gathered a couple of pictures/diagrams of the PCV system, routing of tubes etc. which I printed out and had to hand as I went along. I started by disconnecting the negative terminal of the battery and draining a couple of pints of coolant, then removing the top left radiator hose in order to give better access. Other than that, I just started removing things as I went, knowing that the objective was to remove the inlet manifold.

Here we are with the inlet manifold removed - you can see the gunky components of the PCV still attached:





There is a lot said about the difficulty in getting to the lower inlet manifold bolts, in fact I found that the far left one under the thermostat houseing was quite easy, the far right one was more difficult but they all came out without any major drama. However, you do need a long socket extension bar (around 10" or more is ideal) and a wobble-joint adaptor. I found that 1/4" sockets and bars were easier to work with, but 3/8 would probably do the job.

I managed to get the black metal fuel pipe out from under the fuel injector rail, so I left the injctor rail attached to the inlet manifold throughout the job, as I don't have any spare O rings for the injectors and I'd guarantee that one or more would be damaged if I tried to remove the injector rail.

Only real hassle was that in order to get better access, I decided to remove the throttle cable drum and mechanism, along with the associated tubing, idle valve and vacuum tree. There's one 10mm bolt holding the vacuum tree in, and it snapped, so I had to put the whole inlet manifold on the pillar drill and drill it out and re-tap the hole - worked fine after that though.

I then cleaned the front of the engine and the inlet manifold as thoroughly as I could, using paraffin and brake cleaner spray. Here's the new PCV kit starting to go back in:



It was quite scary at this stage seeing buts of Volvo all over the workshop and a huge hole where the intake manifold used to be, and there were a good few vacuum pipes and electrical connectors dangling around, I was just hoping and praying that I'd remember where they all came from, although I did take a couple of extra close-up photos just in case! I didn't need them though, I found it was actually quite easy and good fun putting it all back together again with the new bits - the kit from FRF was spot-on, although I decided not to use the crimp-on hose clips they supplied, and used traditional jubilee clips instead. I have a tool for crimping the Volvo clips, but there's not really room to use it in most of the places you need it, and I prefer to be able to easily take the hoses off again if needed.

While I was working on it I stuffed clean kitchen roll into the various oil and intake orifices to keep muck out, but with the wadding removed you can see my nice shiny inlet valves - not bad for over 150,000 miles eh?



And here we are with the inlet manifold back on. The only additional hose I replaced was one running from near the radiator to the back of the engine on the turbo intake, it has a one-way valve in it and was looking a bit crusty - I had a piece of suitable hose on the shelf os I used that and it seemed to work OK.



Another evening saw the rest of the stuff put back on, and an oil change completed (with new filter) and we end up back where we started - but the engine looking a little cleaner!



Final job was to cut the old PCV seperator in half with a hacksaw to see what it looked like, here it is:



Not completely blocked by any means, in fact I didn't find any hoses that were totally blocked from what I could see, but they were pretty mucky so I didn't check by trying to blow them through. However, I 've no doubt that the job was well due to be done, especially as I mainly do lots of short journeys in this car, which can't do it much good.

I have to say, that after diconnecting so many pipes and electrical connectors, I was fully prepared for some teething problems when I first started it up, but truth be told it fired up first time with no problems whatsoever, and after allowing a couple of heat cycles to bleed the coolant thoroughly it's all working 100% with no dramas, I have to admit I was quite proud of that!

So, it took me one session of about 4 hours and another of about 3 to do the job, but this included some fairly time-consuming cleaning and fettling while I was in there, and also included sorting out the snapped vacuum-tree bolt in the inlet manifold, plus I'm not the fastest worker in the world!

I'd say it's a fairly straightforward job so long as you are careful and methodical, and most importantly have a good selection of sockets, wobble-adapters and extension bars etc. Oh, and a magnetic bolt-retriever came in handy once!

Cheers all!