Typically less than a week before the due date of our first child our primary "get to and from the hospital in labour" car started to show signs of serious trouble. Coolant had been misteriously vanishing for a week or two and on our way down to the midwife for our weekly check early last week, I couldn't see a thing following behind her in the Suzuki. The cloud of white smoke confirmed without doubt that the head gasket had blown and the coolant was passing through one or more of the cylinders and straight out the exhaust.
I had planned to take Tuesday off work and get the job done, but I had to postpone until Wednesday because my local Autofactor thought our Volvo was an 8V not a 16V and ordered the wrong bits the first time round.
The 2-piece head for Volvo's early 90's B234 16V engine was designed by Cosworth apparently. I have no doubt about this fact after completing this job. Fantastic engineering, but not exactly simple! This is what faced me on Wednesday morning. I have two manuals, one in English which doesn't cover the 16V engine and one in Swedish which isn't quite Norwegian. Promising!
The first step was to remove the fan cover, fan, fan and power steering belts and cam belt covers.
As you can see, it's got two belts, the inner one at the bottom drives two balance shafts. This didn't need to be disturbed and looked in good condition so needless to say I left it where it was! Next stage, remove cam belt, tensioner, pulleys and cam carrier.
I wasn't able to get new manifold gaskets at short notice so I had to resort to removing both manifolds with the head. Given the amount of wires and hoses attached to the inlet manifold, it would have been much easier to leave it where it was and unbolt it from the head. The 3 nuts on the exhaust manifold to downpipe flange all loosened and came off with out any major issues. That was one big worry over.
On removing the head I found a significant quantity of coolant in number 2 (you can just see this in the photo) and a little in number 3. I am 99.1% certain that this was there before I started the job as I drained the coolant before I removed the head.
A quick inspection and very course flatness check (with steel rule and feeler gauge) did not show any obvious issues with the head or block so after 5 hours of dismantling it was simply a case of cleaning up the mating surfaces and bolting it all back together!
Despite my best efforts, by the end of the day it looked like this, complete with new water pump, thermostat and cam belt. Lining up the Cam shafts and getting the automatic tensioner back on was a bit of a challenge. However, considering that the new cam belt had marks on it that corresponded to the TDC marks on the crank and the cam pulleys, there was no excuse to get it wrong. I retired to bed knowing that the worst was over and hoping for at least one more day before the first contraction!
After work on Thursday I completed the job with new fan and power steering belts and a thoroughly undeserved oil and filter change. I had a moment of panic when the engine ran like a pig at first until I realised that I had forgotten to reconnect the vaccuum line to the brake servo! It's done a 100 or so Km since and seems to be holding, as is the Misses, typically.