The Morbidmobile Blog

[Laird Scooby]

How does it measure up against the gearbox dipstick Tom? I know they used different shaped tops on the gearbox dipsticks, usually with all the Volvos i've ever known, engine oil has been a red dipstick, gearbox has been yellow.

As you say your end is bright orange (Oooooo-errrrr missus, nothing worse than a bright orange end! The future is bright, the furure is orange! ) it sort of suggests it was red and has faded, also the gearbox dipstick usually has two different sets of levels marked on it, one side lower than the other as the "Cold" side, other for "Hot".

No good me measuring mine, as it's a V6 the dipstick is likely to be different again.

[360beast]

Measuring just the metal bit (to the bottom of the seat) mine is 57.2cm in my 940 b230fk

[Stephen Edwin]

Nitty gritty?

If the oil is drained including changing the filter - and then filled with the Volvo specified volume of oil - does either dip stick give a correct or workable reading?

[TomSaintJames]

Thanks for all the replies chaps, i'm starting to think that whatever topless dipstick that the car came with is the wrong one. Luke measurements and mine are almost the same, and looking further on ebay/google etc the used and new engine dipsticks seem to be the same. Interestingly it seems brand new ones have luminescent orange handles, and used ones red.

I've not compared it to the gearbox dipstick but do remember it having a seperate level indicator for cold or hot checks - a good idea! The current engine 'stick has two sections so I wonder if a broken gearbox one was used?

One concern I have is that the current disptick is quite a bit longer than the new one, perhaps that tappety/ticking engine noise is because the car has been run with insufficient oil for a while?

[Laird Scooby]

Just had a quick look on fleabay Tom and found these :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VOLVO-240...7/283252873109

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Volvo-Pet...l/283290868309

First one is a "quality replacement dipstick" so presumably a pattern part, the other is apparently genuine or at least that's how the listing seems to read. Both the same price but the first is Day-Glo Orange, the second (with 2 "O" rings as per original spec) is red.

Also found a used auto-box dipstick that just happens to be yellow :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VOLVO-740...K/253492854925

It seems Volvo used the same dipstick for all red-blocks, and the same part number 3514627, i know it's an extra expense but after everything else you've spent on the car, £12.74 seems a small price to pay to keep things right.

As for the ticking noise, if you could get a video of it so we could hear it, it would be easier to diagnose.

[TomSaintJames]

The £12.74 item is the very dipstick I have bought It is longer than whatever is in the engine already - hence my question. Thanks, Dave for confirming, I feel safe now in the knowledge that whatever dipstick is currently in the engine is the wrong one, as you say Dave - all red blocks use the same part (which is what I suspected).

I previously tried to upload a video, but without success! Can I directly upload it to the forum, or do I need to use a hosting site like the now prohibitively expensive photobucket?

In other news, we have the keys to our new house - finally! However, it is a right state, not only does the oil combi boiler not work, but it leaks oil outside. Someone in their infinite wisdom placed the copper/other metal oil feed pipe along the floor (outside! In a part of the front garden that often seems to be a puddle!) from the tank in a brick outhouse in the front garden to the porch where the boiler is, this now leaks from the joins, if not from a corroded pipe gone porous... We've managed to contain the leak and tonight I'll go and tighten all the unions to see if that helps.

[Laird Scooby]

For photos you can use https://postimages.org/ Tom, for videos, most of us seem to use https://www.youtube.com/ as it's fairly convenient and free to use both.

Which dipstick did you get - they were both the same price? The original looking red one with twin "O" rings or the non-original DayGlo Orange one with the single "O" ring? EIther should do the job and both will be new, just curious!
If it's longer than what's in there, chances are more that it would have been overfilled than under-filled.

As for your central heating boiler, they usually use copper pipe from the oil tank to the boiler and from what i can see round my neck of the woods, it's common to run the pipework at ground level, although where it has to cross a path, the path has generally been dug out and the pipe inset to minimise damage.

When you tighten the unions, use two spanners, one on the "fixed" part and the other for the nut. Spray it with WD40 or similar before you start, undo the nut 1/4 turn then tighten, just nip up then a little more, don't go silly as it's only copper and can easily deform causing more leaks.
Might be worth wiping each joint with a dry cloth before you start though, the "leak" could be spillage from the previous owner having sold the contents of the tank. Also worth dipping the tank with a long enough stick to ascertain how much is really in there.

I don't know if you've had oil fired heating before, if not this is a really useful site :

https://www.boilerjuice.com/

It's a kind of "compare the market" or "confused.com" for heating oil, they go a couple of steps further though as they take your order, put it with the cheapest supplier for your area, organise bulk purchase discounts by putting you into a "buying group" and getting as many deliveries to the same area on the same day(s) and in the unlikely event the original supplier can't deliver for whatever reason, they switch your order to another supplier (at no cost to you) so you still get your ol. Also if the discounts they manage to obtain are more than when you placed your order, the difference goes into your "Tank Account" to come off your next order.

Maybe not as cheap as going direct to an oil supplier but worth it for the peace of mind when a supplier has problems or whatever and to save you several hours ringing round for quotes that might not even be valid by the time you've phoned all the other suppliers and gone back to the cheapest!

Might be wrong on this, i thought when a house was sold the heating system had to have an inspection and be certified safe to use?

Good luck with it anyway, not the best time of year to move into a house with no heating!

[TomSaintJames]

I went for the luminescent orange one, didn't see the double o-ring red type or would have had that. Two o-rings have to be better than one!

Sorry, typo in the last post, new item is shorter!

Good reading there Dave, thanks. I'll have a proper peruse this evening. Luckily for us a family member is a heating engineer at Darch oil, so we have a visit from him booked for Thursday to see if the boiler is fixable or needs replacing.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

I went for the luminescent orange one, didn't see the double o-ring red type or would have had that. Two o-rings have to be better than one!

Sorry, typo in the last post, new item is shorter!

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Just had a quick look on fleabay Tom and found these :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VOLVO-240...7/283252873109

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Volvo-Pet...l/283290868309

First one is a "quality replacement dipstick" so presumably a pattern part, the other is apparently genuine or at least that's how the listing seems to read. Both the same price but the first is Day-Glo Orange, the second (with 2 "O" rings as per original spec) is red.

Links to both dipsticks there Tom!

Good call on getting the boiler etc checked out, have to confess i didn't think they made oil fired combi boilers, just the normal sort. Always been led to believe the heat is more instant with gas which is why combi boilers work on gas but not so much on heating oil which is really only a domestic version of diesel but usually called Kerosene or Kerosene 38 to discourage people from draining their heating oil and filling their cars up!

When is the "real" move in day? Or is that dependent on the boiler?

[TomSaintJames]

Bad news on the disptick front, new item installed just now (I bought the day-glo orange version a week or two ago, that Dave has posted the link to) and the oil level only just covers the very end of the stick it's nowhere near the flattened max/min area- although the car is not quite level. So I will be buying some oil this evening and pushing it to more level ground before filling and starting the engine again...

We spent most of Sunday packing and moved a hearse load over last night, we'll be moving bits and bobs over most evenings this week too. We have a van over the weekend so will move everything else then, so will be officially moved in by Monday (as moentioned to the utilities/council tax/insurance etc).