Quarantine Project Thread

[v8volvo]

While many of us are stuck at home more lately, thought it would be fun to start a thread where we can share pictures and updates from projects we are working on in our newfound spare time. These might be D24-related, or anything else -- other vehicles, house projects, whatever seems interesting.

I'll start it off. My current project is an old VW minivan (picture attached) that was diesel-swapped a few years ago by a builder who did a nice job with the conversion, but unfortunately went way overboard with power increases on the engine. This is a little 1.9L engine moving a heavy, tall van, and they tried to compensate for the extra workload by just turning up the fuel and boost, using a set of huge injectors and an aggressive computer chip.

Didn't take long for the poor guy who bought it to blow the engine up climbing a mountain pass, of course. It still starts and runs now, but sounds like no compression on at least one cylinder and a pretty bad tap. Never lost the coolant or oil so hopefully it's rebuildable at least. I'm expecting either a melted or cracked piston, or two, or maybe a badly blown head gasket and/or head. Plans are to refresh the engine (or replace it if this one is too far gone), and get it back down close to stock power output for reliability.

I'm also finally getting started on my Audi Allroad TDI conversion by doing some work preparing the 2004 Passat 2.0L BHW engine that will be going into it. Attached as well are a couple shots of the TDI engine coming out of the donor car last month and one of the Audi eventual swap recipient.

Volvos are temporarily on back burner, but both of them need transmission work or replacements this year, so hopefully give them some attention soon.

What is everyone else working on?

[ngoma]

Tracking down an intermittent electrical problem. GPs energize intermittently when driving (at least indicated by instrument panel orange GP indicator lamp). First thing to look at for any electrical problem on these cars is the wiring-- Bosch soybean-based biodegradable insulation wiring.

Sure enough found bundles of the degraded insulation wiring at the 4-pin GP relay connector.

Managed to re-insulate, using a mixture of Liquid Tape, electrical tape, and heatshrink tubing. Problem persists so I need to investigate the wire runs further.

[v8volvo]

Started pulling things apart on the van last night. Doesn't look too good so far. I was hoping for an outside chance that the engine problems (rapping and thumping noises and a dead miss) could have been a collapsed hydraulic lifter, which sometimes happens to these, but all the lifters are fully pumped up and seem to be working fine.

One thing that is clear right away is that this engine has seen either a huge amount of heat in the cylinder head, or very poor routine maintenance, or both. The inside of the head is coated with black, slimy buildup from polymerized engine oil broken down by too infrequent changes or excess heat exposure from the aggressive state of tune. This does not give me much hope for the condition of the rest of the engine.

Here are some pictures so far, along with some other pictures for comparison to more healthy engines that have seen less abuse (another AHU TDI and my 745's D24T engine -- sadly showing my shattered camshaft from a couple years ago).

See the strong family resemblance between this TDI engine and the D24 engines. They knew they had a good basic design and no need to change it.

Going to pull the head off next and see what that looks like, hopefully later this week.

[v8volvo]

Head is off of my project TDI and unfortunately it's not good news.

#2 and #3 cylinders are scored and have aluminum deposits from the pistons, and #2 piston has visible missing material on the crown. Looks like #3 cylinder might have still been making just enough compression to fire, since it was dry. #2 is the only one that is washed with fuel and obviously was not running. But the pistons and bores in both cylinders are toast. Surprisingly #1 and #4 cylinders look OK. Maybe the outer cylinders naturally run a little cooler. Or I wonder if the piston oil squirters for 2 and 3 could have gotten slightly clogged or leaked pressure, and weren't able to pull out heat as well as the others.

Fortunately the way the engine is positioned in this chassis the oil pan can be removed easily, as there's no crossmember below it. I think I will drop the pan next and pop the pistons out of all 4. This engine obviously should be fully rebuilt and bored, but I have a few used pistons around, and my current thinking is I might clean up the two damaged bores as best I can and put it back together with used parts to get it running well enough to roll along for a little while. That will at least give me a chance to get it on the road and check out the rest of it, to see if it's worth the work and expense.

[anders]

I have now started a few projects! The current one is setting up part of my other shop to have all my d24/d24t parts organized into one room. It’s a 22’x10’ section just for my d24/d24t parts hoard. I built a section of a wall to close it off from the other part of the building, also set up 18’ worth of shelving on one side.
This is a project I have been wanting to do for a while now, having all the stuff organized and out of my shop that I do my work in.

[v8volvo]

Sounds like an upgrade! I'm envious of the space you have, has to be nice to have all that room for work and storage.

I'll add another update here on the work I'm doing, since keeping these updates rolling seems to be helping me stay motivated with this project.

I had to spend a little time stripping down my spare parts TDI engine that is donating a couple used pistons. This came out of a later year TDI and I had picked it up a while ago mainly for some electrical parts I needed for something else (ECU, harness, etc). The engine had a timing belt break at highway speed unfortunately, but otherwise was in decent shape. It is a second generation ALH code 1.9 TDI that has a different external block and head architecture, but the rods, pistons, and a few other internal parts are interchangeable with the earlier type 1Z/AHU TDI engines like the one in this van.

Once I had freed up a couple pistons from the parts ALH (with valve impressions but they measured out OK), I dropped the pan on the van's engine and popped the middle two pistons out. Next, I'm going to do my best with crocus cloth and a hone to get the bores cleaned up as well as they can be, and throw these whacked ALH pistons in and button it all back up.

This engine is now a bit of a science project, running damaged pistons from one engine in another engine's damaged block. Not even going to put on new rings, since I don't have much hope for a great ring seal here either way, just hoping for enough to run on all 4 and move the van around under its own power for now. Planning to reuse the headbolts this time too, as Tom Bryant always suggests, to add another experiment. Only brand new part going in here will be a head gasket. We'll see how this goes. Best case it runs well enough to get a little use out of it, worst case I hopefully don't have much to lose other than a $20 head gasket and the time I waste messing with it.