Greetings from the top of a mountain in Ireland

[Aidan]

Hi folks, a little about me, born in England, did a mechanics apprenticeship with a Ford main dealer, worked in the motor trade full time up to 1990, got fed up of it, been building houses since then, moved to Ireland 9 years ago (seemed like a good idea at the time, not so sure now, lol). I put a band together 7 years ago and thats what got me into Volvo's, need a big wagon to carry all the gear around and found a nice '89 740 SE Estate 2.0 petrol auto, 108k miles, FSH etc. Its now got 534k miles on it, the engine has never been out or had any major work done, the only major work I've had to do is change the rear springs once and replace the shox, other than that its all origional and is now taking a well earned retirement, as the big ends are just starting to knock a bit under load and its not really cost effective to do a rebuild on it so I've now got a really nice '95 940 SE Estate auto with the LT6 2.4 TDic engine, it's my first diesel so as a die hard petrol head it will be interesting to see how it works out. Generally I'm very pleased with it, drives beautifully, a vast improvement over the 740 especially comfortwise and handling. There's a couple of very minor items need doing, heater fan resistor needs changing (full speed only) the temp guage has an odd fault, it goes straight to normal temp as soon as you turn on the ignition, but give the dashboard a whack and it drops down to cold and behaves normally then, and its got no "fast idle" when starting from cold, it idle's at barely 600rpm and gradually gets up to 1,000 rpm when hot but I'm not overly concerned about it. The only thing I am concerned about is the injector noise, compared to other diesel's this is really noisy, it sounds as if something is broken in the engine and is flying around, but it goes like a bullet, smooth as silk, no smoke at all, so maybe its just the way these engines are, a few people have said the LT6 is a very noisy engine so hopefully thats all it is, but it does sound excessive to me. Anyway, thats a bit about me and no doubt I'll be pestering you all with lots of silly questions over the coming months, best wishes to all,
Aidan.

[Jason]

Hello and welcome...

Poke around in the videos section to hear what some of the other cars sound like. Being an IDI diesel, they are kinda loud, especially when cold. Once warm however, I don't think they are all that bad. You may want to check your injection timing, as it could be too far advanced which will make the engine "clatter" more than it should.

Jason

[Aidan]

Hi Jason, and thanks, you could well be right about the timing, it had a new timing belt and injector pump belt fitted 19,000 miles ago at a Volvo main dealer, the guy I bought the car from said he thought it sounded louder after the job was done but didn't bother about it as it was running fine. Only problem is I have no diesel tools, tons of petrol engine tools (left the motor trade just as diesels were getting popular) so unless anyone knows an easy "get round it" method of checking the timing, I'll be forced to entrust it to people I simply dont trust,,, honestly, the standard of workmanship over here is appauling, and the prices are a joke,,, 75 euro per hour,,,ouch!!!) BTW, love your big yellow cat, beautiful piece of work.

[Jason]

Thanks! My engine build got a little crazy, but I just couldn't stop!

For 75 an hour, (though I don't know what that is in USD), you can probably buy the timing tools for that much and then have them to keep. All you need is the dial gauge and extender mount piece. They are sold on ebay among other places. Other than the gauge, all you need are normal hand tools to be able to adjust pump timing.

Jason