fixing it up

[T-brick]

hey! I just bought a 1986 760 gle turbodiesel for 300 bucks it seized the camshaft which broke the timing belt and the valves got thrashed by the pistons so i have my work cut out for me hears some pics ill keep you up dated.
-Ian

[v8volvo]

That is going to be quite a project! Should be nice when you get it going though, as long as the pistons/rods/crank/bearings are still OK and you get the head rebuilt. The bottom ends on these motors are tough so as long as the break didn't occur at high RPM your internals are probably OK. Check to make sure the bores aren't too worn though -- if there is a big ridge or any vertical scoring you will want to proceed with a full rebuild, because putting a bunch of money and work into an engine with cylinder wall wear will mean you'll spend a lot and end up with an engine that is already hard to start, smoky, and low on power. These really need good compression and synthetic oil in order to run properly and last a long time. Make sure all that stuff is good and if not you might want to pull the whole thing and have it bored and upsize pistons put in, otherwise your project will get started on the wrong footing.

One other thing to keep in mind on these: the heads are very sensitive and precisely machined, and the cam is matched to the head and bearing caps. There are umpteen different types of bearing cap available. When you get the head done, you will want to bring all your caps and your new cam to the machine shop, have them put it on a torque plate, and make sure everything lines up with no warp and that it doesn't need to be line-bored. These engines are not known for seizing camshafts -- more likely what happened is the timing belt broke first, and then when the valves hit the pistons that caused the cam to break. Even so you'll want to make sure the head is done right otherwise you may have issues down the road.

Good luck! If you have any questions along the way you know where to ask...

[T-brick]

hey thinks for all the advise the dealer that i got the volvo from has extra heads and turbos he said he would throw in is i need to see how they look and take them to get looked at by some one who rebuilds heads. i am going to turn the engine over by hand to see if the rod bearings are bad and etc i might pull them out to but its a great learning experience for me to rebuild an engine thats part the reason why i got it. thanks for the help its much needed!