My trusty 2000 Volvo V70 5-speed wagon mysteriously died last weekend. The car was seemingly healthy, but after 20 minutes, was smoking dead on the road side. The lower radiator hose blew off, dumping the coolant, overheating the engine and destroying it.

It's a mystery to me how this happened so quickly, and with little warning (no dashboard warning lights) and initially subtle symptoms (slight power loss, quiet ticking sound). I've posted all the details.

Paying $5000 for an engine swap and other preventative work is not an option, so I must get rid of it. Can anyone suggest methods of disposal which are more humane than the scrap yard? Donating, selling as a parts car, parting it out myself, etc? It's sad to see a well running car so suddenly wind up in the scrap heap.

Of course, I'll first pull my empeg, Alpine deck, amp and stealth fake stock radio faceplate. And wheels. And catalytic converter. What else?

Thanks.

It sounds like either your water or oil pump failed. That can be pretty catastrophic, very fast.

The scrap yard is probably your best bet, I'd imagine. In the UK it certainly would be. Unless you know someone who either has a good engine and no car, or a car that needs a lot of work.

pca

Lots of people sell parts cars on eBay Motors and Craigslist. It's worth a shot.

In fact, you might want to see if you can find someone selling one with extensive body damage where the engine might be okay.

Oh, and our friend ricin works at Copart. They have a '99 V70 GLT up for auction with rear-end damage. I don't know precisely which model you have, obviously, so that might not be a match.

Gearheads will opt for the Frankenstein route and start searching for a donor car.

Parting out is the slowest, but you get entertainment value of watching the carcass rot in your driveway, secondly if you have one of "those" neighbors, they get to "enjoy" the sight too.

Me, I favor the clean swift parting, of call to the junkyard.

This thread strikes a chord with my present Subaru-less person...


My buddy has done rather well buying late 80s SAABs on Craigslist and then parting them out via eBay and CL when they starting pooping out. He has a driveway and garage, though, and is often around on weekends with his boys while his wife works at a local hospital. Me? No driveway and less interest in waiting for CL buyers to show up.


Around 1982 I sold a Honda Civic for $500 that was totally trashed save for the fact that the engine "ran good". I found an ad in the Boston Globe for a pristine Civic with a blown engine and called the guy. He gave me the cash and drove the engine-cum-wrecked-shell home to Burlington (what, 30 or 40 miles?) with no brakes whatsoever. His wife drove in front and, I must presume, served as an emergency bumper.


My WRX sits about 50 miles north of here, eviscerated, in a barn, while I try to decide what to do with a 2002 MY car with a blown engine. Only 82K miles, but a certain degree of "rode hard and put away wet". Edit: yes I am looking at a used engine from a wreck. But at least I got my Capra moment.

Maybe there is a Volvo heaven someplace

Otherwise I would go with the junk yard then it will get made into more cars and live forever Maybe one of those tech colleges that look for car donations would take it ? You would think rebuilding the engine would be a good project for a auto mechanic class.

Thanks for the input. Patrick, maybe it was the water pump. Perhaps the coolant wasn't circulating, so the coolant temp sensor didn't see a temp change, thus didn't flash a dashboard light. Maybe that was the ticking noise I heard: at first, only when the gas pedal was pressed slightly, but then worsening to be ticking no matter where I pressed the pedal.

I considered leaving the wagon in my garage and selling it, bit by bit as buyers requested. The garage with a dead car would be as full of useless junk as it is now.

If I were a gearhead, I'd buy the $1000 motor and $1500 parts and do the swap. But I draw the line at car electricals, never anything related to combustion (engine) or motion (breaks).

Jim, thanks for sharing your great and well written WRX story. There must be online Subaru scrap yards with a stack of engines for your year/model. I came across Tom's Foreign Auto Parts in my search.

To the scrap yard it goes. But how can I convince them to let me take off the wheels (with new snow tires on) once it gets there?

It's not an issue, they haul totaled wrecks to the junkyard every day.

Just take the wheels off, and tell them to bring a flat bed tow truck to haul it away on.

edit: Don't know if you will actually get any money for it, but leaving the wheels on won't get you more.

Almost certainly your problems began with a blown head gasket. The ticking sound was the compression gasses leaking out between the block and the head.

The blown head gasket dramatically increased the pressure in the cooling system, eventually blowing off the bottom radiator hose. Note that the hose did not fail, but was literally blown off the bottom of the radiator by over-pressure. This dumped all your coolant out in a matter of a few seconds, quickly enough that the engine did not overheat until the coolant was gone.

With no coolant, the temperature gauge did not register an overheat condition (the sensor needs to be immersed in coolant in order to work). At this point your damage was not extreme -- $1500 would cover R&R and resurface the cylinder head since it is an in-line either 5- or 6-cylinder, so just one cylinder head to deal with.

But if you ran the engine until it quit from overheating, there MAY be other damage to rings, pistons, cylinder walls, and POSSIBLY (but not likely) bottom end bearings. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance that you could get by with just the head gasket repair.

It depends on how much of a gambler you are and how much you like the car. Commit to a $1500 repair to save a $5,000 car with a 50% chance you're throwing the money away. Except no, the cost to determine whether you could get by with just the head gasket repair would only be $500-$600 labor to pull the head and check out the cylinders and get an idea of the state of the pistons and rings.

If it were me I'd take the chance.

tanstaafl.

I suffered that type of failure on my 72 Vega. By the time I realized there was a problem, the block was already warping. The net effect was that the cyl walls went out of round. Pistons just can't go up and down when that happens. The engine just slowed to a halt, still trying to make power till it stalled.

The next day when we went to tow it home I tried to restart it by popping the clutch. I did manage to turn the crank far enough that after the head was removed I could see where the rings scraped metal off the sides of the cyl walls, for about an 1" of travel.

Think of this as an opportunity to get a Holy 240. I, just last weekend, bought an XC90. Of the two Volvos left, both '92 model years, one a 240 with 200K miles and the other a 960 with 150K, I sold the 960. There's just something about the indestructability of that cast iron volvo motor...

I guess I like the whiteblock motors enough that I bought the xc90. Not the Yamaha V8 one, tho.

The water pump on your car is driven by the timing belt, so it's not likely that was the problem. You would have noticed the bending valves sooner than the problems you describe. Any water leaking out somewhere would have relieved the pressure such that the hose would not have blown off, and these motors are not known for randomly blowing head gaskets. Probably some mechanic hosed up playing with the hose...

Is it just me or does that sound like a really chimpy design error? There's really no sensor, even perhaps just for the ECU's benefit not yours, that can detect sudden coolant loss and shut down the engine? I hope these people don't also design nuclear reactors.

Peter

Yes it is. That's a very common design "flaw" in (at least) older engines. They are usually screwed into the motor somewhere so there's some amount of thermal conductivity but it's going to have significant delay from the true block/head temperature.

My M3 also has an oil temperature guage which is the one you look at rather than the coolant temperature guage. Although it probably suffers a similar problem if you drop all your oil somehow. At least then the oil pressure light should show up, so there's some redundancy built in there. However, oil temperature is rarely displayed to the driver (possibly monitored though allowing a check engine light) in a regular car. It also has a coolant low sensor which is not as rare. It monitors the overflow tank so once that's empty it's a fair bet something is going wrong.

So for a 2000ish Volvo, I'd be surprised, but for 80s/90s motor or earlier, not surprising at all.

My '92 volvo has a coolant level sensor.

The speculation now is, what else was damaged by the overheating? Radiator, electricals, etc? I could get the car repaired for less if the damage wasn't extensive.

tanstaafl: Regarding the blown head gasket, I didn't notice coolant smoke coming out the exhaust until the ticking sound was severe and loss of power was scary. I didn't drive it until seizure, but rather until compression loss made it stall at the highway exit ramp red light.

Other symptoms of note: In the month before death, I twice noticed a puff of blue smoke from the exhaust when I first started the car in the morning; just that once per day. A friend suggested leaking valve seals, letting oil into the engine overnight. Not fatal, apparently. Or was it a chink in the head gasket?

larry818: Thankfully, my sister has a 1993 245 which I can care for. I love its simplicity, but I need that one extra cylinder of power from the newer models.

I hope my 2000 car had a coolant level sensor, but I never saw it flash. The temp gauge was up two ticks after I'd coasted to a stop. I was too panicked to check it before then.


This is possible, but tough to prove. ~7 weeks and ~1200 miles before death, the car experienced rare rough idle after a drive. The dealership replaced the "camshaft reset valve", whatever that is. If that job was somehow botched, maybe it started the engine death sequence. I'd love to know, but can't think how to prove it.

I'm going to talk to the shop and see if we can get the engine swap bill down to $3500. Skimp a little, which is not my style, but for such a high bill, I'll make an exception. Thanks again.

From personal observation: Water seen literally dripping out the tailpipe is a pretty sure indication of head gasket beginning to fail.

The things most likely to be damaged by overheating are pistons/rings and cylinder walls. If the damage has gone that far, then it will be less expensive to replace the engine rather than repair it. Radiator and electrical etc. will not have been harmed.

You wouldn't have seen coolant smoke from the exhaust until the head gasket failed into one of the coolant channels. Most likely it failed first on the outboard side of the head (thus the ticking) and then got worse and worse until it was dumping combustion gases into the coolant, and vice versa.

Puff of blue smoke is unrelated, very likely your friend was correct and it was worn valve guide seals. These would be replaced routinely during a head gasket repair.

I would definitely spend the few hundred bucks to pull the head and examine the cylinder walls and (as best as possible) the condition of pistons and rings before replacing the whole engine.

tanstaafl.

Different scenario, somewhat. The Vega engine was amazingly badly engineered, with an aluminum block (without liners -- the pistons ran directly on the aluminum!) and astonishingly a cast iron cylinder head. These engines were notorious for head gasket failures (no surprise there) and quite often the results were as you experienced, with severe engine block damage.

tanstaafl.

Maybe down there in the desert, perhaps!

But in *real* climates up North, that's not an uncommon sight for a little while after starting up a cold engine.

(condensation and/or snow in the exhaust)

Cheers

I disagree. I think it was the first failure of the head gasket he saw there.

A lot of times, when people say "Blue Smoke", really they're describing the whitish steam that comes out of the tailpipe when you've got coolant in your combustion chambers. In the right lighting conditions, that can look light light blue smoke.

Gearheads are usually pretty good about being able to tell the difference between coolant-leak steam and oil-leak smoke, but to most laymen, they look like the same thing and people just say "smoke".

I disagree with your disagreement.

He said the smoke appeared only on first startup in the morning. Coolant in the combustion chamber would not display as steam when the engine was first started, that cylinder might not even fire at all until the engine was warm enough to dry the spark plug, and upon first start the entire exhaust system, from manifold to catalytic converter to muffler is cold which would condense any steam into water. There would be no "puff of blue smoke" in that situation.

Tony, you've forgotten more than I'll ever know about computers, but I've been a gearhead since I was 12 years old!

tanstaafl.

But I've had a car which produced that exact symptom: Puff of steam (which looks like light blue smoke) when starting in the morning. It was definitely a leaking head gasket, and the car got a head gasket replacement which stopped the problem.

Sure the offending cylinder starts out wet and cold, but as soon as combustion gets going (just a few turns of the engine, mere milliseconds), the heat from the first combustion cycles starts turning that wetness into steam, which heads right out the exhaust and makes a nice cloud. (For a short time.) And, also, coincidentally, ruins your oxygen sensor which then needs to be replaced.

Blue smoke at first startup in my experience is most likely a leaky valve seal. The oil drains in from the valve when it sits and then puffs a bit of blue when started.

My tractor has been doing that for years. It's just extra lubrication on startup as far as I'm concerned

Definitely agreed that truly blue smoke (dark blue oily smoke) means that oil is in the cylinders, and yes, in that situation a leaky valve is the most common cause.

My point is that sometimes a layman, not used to seeing the difference between the two, might say "blue smoke" when what he really means is "white steam".

A puff of white steam in the morning is a leaky head gasket, not a leaky valve.

Right, or in rare cases a leaky manifold/manifold gasket can put coolant into the motor.

I had a crack in an intake manifold that actually leaked exhaust into the crankcase. I thought I had something bad in the combustion area here that was all fine.

Cracks and leaks can do all kinds of strangeness.

All very interesting. If it was a bad head gasket or leaking valve seals, I couldn't tell by its performance. Started easily, ran strong, perfectly consistent. Until its last ride.

Maybe it was in trouble for a while. My 20 minute drives (three the morning before it died) may have been fatal if they were longer, but the hours between those drives let the engine cool off or drop from elevated pressure.

Tomorrow, the outcome is decided. Two people replied to my offer to sell the car as-is. I'll also see if the shop can get the engine swap price down to ~$3500. Whichever happens first, wins. And if neither happen by Wed, it goes to the scrap yard, sadly.

Thanks for your interesting insights.

You keep saying 'scrap yard' and I do hope you mean 'auto dismantler'.
Out here(west coast), almost any car will get you $500 from such a yard. A 2000 model Volvo would be more than that.

Good point. "Scrap yard / Recycling" was lower on my list than "Sell the car for parts", so I hadn't looked into it yet.

Funny, why are there SO many wreckers/recyclers in Morganville, NJ. I've never even heard of the place before.

Hopefully I can close one of the as-is sale deals I have pending. That outcome is now well with my soul. The car will be in good hands and I won't pay too much into an older car which requires mechanical ability to keep on the road.

Speaking of older cars..

SWMBO's 1995 Civic still drives like a new car -- tight, quiet, and rust-free.

My '98 Scooby Forester is also running well. This fall I decided to try and keep it on the road for another five, no mean feat here in the land of calcium chloride abundus.

So, new struts, new windscreen, elimination of the only rust spot (next-to/under the old windscreen), lots of touch-up paint on chips, new tyres, new belts, and another anti-rust treatment.

I did nearly all of the work myself.

Time will tell if it was worth it or not. Go Scooby-Doo!