Without starting an engine Holy War, I would like to get the quick version of which B20 is the right B20 for my rebuild adventure. My idea is to build a streetable engine with uprated performance gained through having V-Performance work over the head and installing their street performance cam (with lifters etc.). The rest will remail largely stock. So which stock B20 is the best starting point (no 10.5:1 compression ratios, given gas quality).

I'm thinking a B20F.

Cheers,
Craig

Use a bottom end with the earlier 6-bolt crank. The earlier conrods that go with this crank are both lighter & stronger.

Thanks Paul.

JohnMc's right on the heads.
The block can be B20B,E or F, and swap an F head on it.
6 or 8 bolt crank, for most purposes it does not matter although there are circumstances where there is a particular reason to use one or the other.

John
V-Performance.com

To everyone else, sorry about the hijack.

John, answer my emails. It has been 5 weeks since I made payment and I expect you to either make good on the sale or give me my money back.
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http://www.ecvintagevolvo.com

Ian,
I'm out of town and can't see emails sent to my normal e-address.
Feel free to call my cell # 315 440 6560 if you have any questions.
I can't check your order from where I am today but assume you are waiting for springs from the batch that was due in Dec., was finally made last week, and should be in stock next week. You should have gotten an email before I left for vacation explaining the delay.

John
V-performance.com

Hello John,

NO. No email stating that there would be a delay or that you would be gone arrived. Considering that this stretched on by more than a month without a response you shold be able to understand how I might get upset. Now for a businessman who states that the prefered method for contact is email this is a very poor showing. Especially since location is not a factor for picking up email. There are literally dozens of ways to get email delivered no matter where you are as long as you have internet access. Within 2 minutes I found the easiest one for your ISP, webmail. As long as your email client was not running at home while you were gone you could have gone here and picked it up:

https://webmail.twcny.rr.com/

Or you could have used any one of a number of free webmail services like gmail or hotmail to grab the messages from your ISP. You could use IMAP if it is available through roadrunner which would have allowed you to collect the mail with more than one mail client. You could set up a regular pop3 mail account and set the mail client to leave the mail on server X number of days, setting up two mail clients the same way so you are ensured you get the same messages. Or just the simple method of getting a trusted person in your business to check it and deal with it for you. These are just a few that I could rattle off the top of my head. The point being that not being able to check your email is not an excuse.

Now at this point I will await the shipment, but I think you need to rethink some of your practices.

Iain
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http://www.ecvintagevolvo.com

Thanks for the info...now I just have to cross my fingers and hope there is a doner car somewhere close.

Cheers,
Craig

Sooo where are you located Craig ? Sitting in my barn are Ole Reliable's B20B bored .030 and worn a tad more and totally disassembled, a PENTA B20 short block without cam, and I have just received another B20B complete that came with a parts car I just picked up.I also have a completely rebuilt B18B that has never been started .... been sitting a LOOOONG time though.

Brett
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Brett Sutherland & the 1.5 million mile 122 CANADIAN --- WINDSOR, Nova Scotia the birthplace of HOCKEY www.ecvintagevolvo.com

Hi Brett,

Contact me off line if you're serious. I have another Volvo nut looking for me in Calgary, but I'd be willing to ship if I can't find anything more local.

Cheers,
Craig

Craig just let me know if you strike out locally and we'll make arrangements ...

Brett (suther@ns.sympatico.ca)
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Brett Sutherland & the 1.5 million mile 122 CANADIAN --- WINDSOR, Nova Scotia the birthplace of HOCKEY www.ecvintagevolvo.com

Hmmmm , shoulda looked at your profile ... Lethbridge .... well you would save on Duty .....
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Brett Sutherland & the 1.5 million mile 122 CANADIAN --- WINDSOR, Nova Scotia the birthplace of HOCKEY www.ecvintagevolvo.com

From what I understand, the latest F heads don't flow the best stock, but have a little more metal in the right places and can be worked more for better flow (unless it suffers from 'core shift'). It's easy enough to shave an F head down to get whatever CR you like. But if you think 10.5CR is too high, there is no real good solution to drop the CR on a B20E head, thick head gaskets ruin the squish areas and don't help reduce pinging as much as the lowered CR would lead you to think. however, I'm running about 10.5 in my PV's motor (B21FT dished pistons, and an R-sport head with tiny combustion chambers) and have no pinging problems using 91 octane.

A late F engine will also have an 8-bolt crank, which means it is already using B21 style rods, so if you felt like bumping it up to 92mm bore it would be very easy to do. Perhaps not a great idea if you were going to run a turbo or supercharger with lots of boost, but generally speaking a B20 block has no problems with a 92mm bore normally aspirated. Although on my engine with the 6-bolt crank it worked quite well (I think) to push out the wrist pin bushing (22mm) and ream the steel ever so slightly for an interference fit on the B21-sized 24mm wristpins.
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I'm JohnMc, and I approved this message.