I was hoping someone could tell me what is involved in dropping a non-turbo engine in a 740 Turbo Volvo?

I have a 740 Turbo that I love. Had to drop a used rebuilt engine in it a year ago and last week a misdiagnosis by my mechanic resulted in the new engine losing all of the compression in cylinders 1 & 2. I can't afford to drop another turbo engine in the car, but don't want to lose the car either. I was wondering how much trouble would be involved in dropping a B230F basic bullet-proof engine into the car instead.

Would I have to replace the computer? Would there be problems with the shift pattern on the tranny fitting the new powerband? What else would I need to consider?

If I can do this now, I am hoping to return to a turbo-charged engine in a few years.

Any thoughts in this would be greatly appreciated.

Issues would be connecting the exhaust, ignoring the oil cooler lines. Yound have to use the turbo injectors because of the Ballast Resistor Pack incorporated in the engine wiring. To do the job right you'd want to change the ECU and EZK units, eliminate the Ballast Resistor Pack and use NA injecotrs, and change the engine wiring harness and ECU wiring harness to accomodate the Full Throttle Switch.

I strongly recommend against the change. Find another used turbo engine.

What actually happened?
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john

John,

Thanks for your helpful list of needed changes, that makes it sound much less doable than I was hoping. I am just afraid of putting an additional $2,300 (the extimated cost of replacing the engine this time) into having another used motor installed and then being burned again.

In response to your question about what happened, two weekends ago I took the car up into the mountains for the weekend. The car performed great. I was almost home when I noticed a little hesitation in the turbo, nothing serious but noticable. The next day I made an appointment with the shop that put the engine in last year after I first bought the car. That night I began to get some pinging in the engine, I was thinking it was the turbo going out on me. When I took it in the next morning, the shop manager said that the turbo was fine but that they couldn't figure out what the pinging was about. They had found that the number 1 cylinder was down to about 75 psi, but that all the other cylinders were fine. They swapped the #1 and #2 injectors to see if the reduced compression in #1 was a result of a bad injector in the first cylinder. They couldn't find anything else wrong with the car, but the car still ran like crap. The shop manager assured me that it was just bad gas and that I just needed to "drive out" the remaining gas in the tank. This didn't make sense because I had put Chevron high octane gas in the car for the weekend and had run 3/4 of the tank out without a problem.

We put some gas drying agent into the tank and I tried driving the car home. I could quickly tell however that it was running so rough there had to be something other than bad gas going on. I returned it to the shop told them of my concern and asked them to take another look at the problem. The next day I found out that their solution to fixing the problem was to leave the car in their back lot and idle it for several hours to try and remove the bad gas. They never did re-examine the situation, just told me to come and get the car, fill it with some good gas and it would be fine.

I nursed it the four miles to my house and it never did start again. Before it stopped running I did hook up my timing light and found that I couldn't even see the timing mark when the stroblight went off. Out of frustration with the first shop I towed the car behind my truck about 4 miles to another shop (something I learned that I shouldn't have done from the machanic at that shop). The second mechanic did both a wet and dry compression test and found that I now had no compression in the first two cylinders during the dry test and about 20 psi when the wet test was done. Another one bites the dust.

So here I am with a very clean car that I think is one of the nicest looking cars ever designed and the most fun car I have every owned, trying to figure out what to do. I can't justify pouring another 2 grand into the car, but it makes me sick to think about selling the car.

I am considering trying to find a good used engine on my own and swapping the engines myself. I was thinking that a non-turbo engine would be a cheaper and less overwhelming project, but your advise indicates otherwise. This would be the first project of this size that I would be taking on since my dad and I swapped engines in a 72 Chevy pickup during my teenage years. How problematic is it to put a new turbo engine in one of these things. I have worked on quite a few different engines, but not any projects this big. What advise would you give?

Sorry about the length of my explanation, I am just frustrated about how this whole thing has been handled.

Thanks,

Kelly

sorry to hear about your problems. Is an engine re-build out of the question? I'm not sure what the original problem is? Is the compression loss due to a top end malfunction?

Good used 1990 model year and later turbo engines go for anywhere from $125 to about$1200. My son overboosted the engine in his turbo 700 car last year. Now it has a $125 U-Pull It engine, and it runs great.

I'd install a good used engine myself. If you were closer, I might buy the car from you and do the same.
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john

Just get a turbo engine..use YOUR manifolds and turbo.

The block and head are the same on the outside...you'll get a lot less grief with a used turbo engine and the cost is about the same.

I have no experience with that, but I knew the question of converting TO a turbo comes up fairly often. It might be worth your while to search the archives (and maybe check out turbobricks) to find details on converting to a turbo and just figure that your swap would work in reverse.

I believe the computer is different, but I know I was able to salvage quite a few sensors, etc from for my '89 240 n/a (LH 2.4 injection) from an '89 740 turbo (AMM, cold start injector, etc) so hopefully most parts don't change. Hopefully the wiring harness is the same.

Good luck.
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Andy in St. Paul, '91 745 Regina 194K mi, '89 244 138K, '87 245 RIP