I did my 8v thing, then i did my 8v Variable geometry Turbo from a John Deere.First 8v VOLVO redblock vgt attempt in the WORLD! I made some linkage to make it work. After a year of beating it to death,On TLAO chips, and TLAO ignition chip. Lord athlon made the comment that "your car wouldn't make over 200 wheel with that junk chit", so i dynoed it . It made 254 wheel and 253 wheel ft lb on the dyno jet dyno.He apologized. It had 4 bent rods and took 24psi to do, which was a bit much, to make such little amount of power,I honestly was expecting 300 wheel, but didn't realize i had hurt it so bad. But i loved how the car drove, and it had instant torque part throttle that a dyno Just can't explain. Many who drove it commented that it felt like it had a v-8 in it right off idle. But my dyno sheet reflected nothing of the sort, and it was already hurt. It was also out of fuel and fuel pump was in the middle of taking a huge dump, as can be seen by erratic dyno plot at end.Totally untuned on lh 2.4, with completely stock head, stock turbo cam, stock 91 exhaust manifold with homemade up pipe, external wastegate, and stock na bottom end.I was also having crankshaft sensor issues at this point too which may contributed to the wavy graph, as the sensor was shorting itself out and causing periodic no start situation, but enough lame excuses it was what it was..Fun and made more power than everyone thought anyways for some thrown together stuff with no electronic tuning support.
So i got a microsquirt, a 16 valve head, and a vw dohc tensioner, and a non turbo redblock bottom end.
At the time, the 16 valve head had not been shaved, so i bolted it right up to the non turbo redblock and let it eat, no bent valves, NOTHING like most ignorant folks said would happen. Had I known this , i would have done this so much sooner.
The problem begins with bent valves when people don't time the cams right, OR the block has been shaved /resurfaced to be flat again, OR the head has been shaved. So measure your blocks and heads before slapping it together , to make sure they have been unmolested, before taking my word for it. I used all data for measurements.
I used a 850 timing belt and a stock 16valve Idler pulley and two spacers behind it with longer bolt, and 16 valve crank gear. I also used an additional stock cam gear for the aux shaft/oil pump drive, and i had to cut the red block crank pulley down a 1/4(iirc, double check for yourself) of an inch for belts to light up due to thicker bottom crank gear on 16 valve being thicker. That puts the crank pulley a 1/4 inch further out, and misaligns all belts.****SPECIAL NOTE*** To make sure the the vw dohc tensioner stayed solid , i cut a cross(x) pattern on the back (hell yes with a cut off wheel
)that mates with block and locktite-ed it with hd locktite. I never EVER move that tensioner, i always remove stock volvo idler to remove belt. It's held solid for three years and hasn't budged an mm.