1971 164 B30A rebuild likely.

Hey TB, long time no see! I recently got motivated to get my 164 up & running when my 94 F150 ran up $2000 in repair cost estimates this year then finally puked up a rod. Having a car that I can do repairs on my own and do not need to take to the $hop to reprogram or hunt down any obscure broken plastic part that proves essential to modern car operation. Frugality is a big deal now and I don't want to buy another cheaper car & end up paying even more for someone else's problem...oh and screw car payments. So...

My 164 has sat for a few years. Initially because the timing gear went, then because we bought a house & had 2 kids. I finally located a steel matched set that was installed by a family friend & volvo repair shop owner but we never could get the thing running well on those Strombergs. Vintage Volvo's are not at all his thing. So it again sat for a few more months as other things took priority.

So I just got my SU hif6's rebuilt and put them on this last weekend. Once fuel lines were sorted out the 164 fired up & warmed up and then, knock, knock, knock. Sounds like a rod bearing to me and I know that is part of the deal with the B30. I know a shop will charge at least 3K to do a rebuild on this but I also know I can give up my evenings recording music & rebuilding guitars to rent an engine hoist pull it & work on it in my own garage. I have rebuilt motors in the now distant past (honed cylinders too and yes, they did run) but I really want this car done right and I have never had to go to a machine shop. I am currently trying to work up some estimated $ figures for doing as much of this job as possible myself. I have no idea what a decent machine shop will charge to do the heads or bore the block out if needed.

Or if anyone has a spare B30 or B30F with d-jet...I'm listening.

Man, if I wasn't 400 miles away. I wonder why all junkyards don't have car searches like that. Down here I get a live chat window if I want to sell a car but just a phone # if I want to actually buy things. Step 3 profit!

There is a 164e 1974 at our local junk yard.

;4364548 said:

Man, if I wasn't 400 miles away. I wonder why all junkyards don't have car searches like that. Down here I get a live chat window if I want to sell a car but just a phone # if I want to actually buy things. Step 3 profit!

Click to expand...

I guess but then you'd probably just complain about real world JY prices for an otherwise unobtanium engine.

If it has decent compression, replace the rod bearings only with the engine in the car?

Can be done in a weekend.

I mean if it runs ok, why make a big deal out of it?

Redwood Chair said:

I guess but then you'd probably just complain about real world JY prices for an otherwise unobtanium engine.

Click to expand...

I'm well aware of this hen's tooth, but an 800 mile round trip isn't in the cards. I could always pay Penta prices...the boat guys certainly don't make it any easier to find stuff.

Compression was even before the knock. Maybe less than half a minute with the knock before I got it shut off. Nonetheless my brother in law's wrecked Ranger is loosing it's parking spot soon so I can tow it here, get it in the garage pull the oil plug & check for metal. The car has low enough milage that this is probably the first bearing issue it has had. If it is just the rod bearings & nothing else got screwed up it's at most a $100 investment. It all depends on what I find in there. Other than cosmetically (& some say that can never be fixed on a 164) the car is in decent shape.

Those steel gears make a lot more noise than the fiber ones. Could you be hearing that?

D, do what I did. Hear bearing noise in old pushrod engine coming back from junkyard and FLOOR IT! Blow engine, start 16v turbo project, bail out on car because of rust. OR blow engine and do something faster and less fragile than rotten old B30 engine bay parts. Like finishing a B230FT install.

b30 marine engine $500

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/esd/boa/3366501117.html

So is the B30 a good or not good engine? I always assumed it was better because you heard so much about the B27, 28 and Whiteblock 6 being bad and little about the B30 - but that could just be because there are more PRVs and Whiteblocks around.

Yeah dude, I saw that today I'm going to call on that B30 tomorrow.

The steel gear noise was noticeable but yeah, this was surely from the bottom of the block in the crank area.

The B30 is just a B20 with 2 more cylinders. With all the pros & cons too. A tractor motor on steroids, you can bore the hell out of it too without making it any less rugged. Well, other than the rod bearings needing scheduled replacement every 150K from getting extra torque on the longer crank. I got the car because I want to do everything myself rather than take a car to a shop or invest in a massive tool collection. I wanted tough parts and dead simple mechanics and needed more safety than a VW and more get up to keep up with San Diego freeway traffic than a 140, nimble though they are. I can source some parts from the B20 other than B30 specific stuff like intake manifolds, gaskets, cranks & cams. If I had the money to really do a project I'd look at any number of power plants. Blowing up a squirted B30 with a turbo would probably sound like sex. At this point I just want a car with ease of maintenance like the Bug or 69 Blazer I had where you can usually fix it yourself damn near anywhere, anytime without a shop or special tools if you get in a bind. The cars with the simplest mechanics in my past were the ones I could still usually get home when the entropy hits the fan. I have a newer hyundai Santa Fe that has so much over-engeneering in the damn fuel neck that it gets blocked by dust and won't let you put gas in it at times.

Why not take those carbs, put B23 in 164, get manifold for B23 and dual carbs, put a hot cam in it, like something out of Penta, D, V, K...open up the exhaust and have fun and reliable car easy to maintain
I drove my carbed 240 for a decade, it was bulletproof!

164 is not exactly the "easy" one to keep on the road. Or desired.

Pick a car that's common and similarly robust. Change some rod bearings with the engine in the car if the crank isn't messed up and sell it.

Just an EFI and newer 245 would be fine and much easier to keep in one piece really.

Part of the reason for going with a simpler car was my 93 245. Thought I had it made with that one...hands down the least reliable car I've ever owned and the one that was otherwise in the best shape. Everything looked new. Took it to 2 shops trying to find out why it would randomly die all the time. My Dad was a shop teacher & we looked it over too but NO one could figure it out.

I'm used to driving front heavy rwd cars & trucks. I had my 69 blazer when I was 13 learned to drive in it. Ended up with a nice car which would have just kept going had it not been creamed by a taxi doing a U turn in '02. It was nice having all that metal out there. Drove it (out of necessity) for quite a while after that wreck too. I also commuted in a god awful F-150 for years. Talk about handling...

professor245 I actually did consider something like that. If I have cash to do it down the road I want to swap the slush box for a stick as well. At this point extra fabrication or trial & error isn't something I'm factoring in or have cash for. I'm looking at this next car decision for the long term. As how much initial $ I have to invest and how much long term bullpoop do I want or can take from any car. I'm still trying to run the numbers and options, including parting out the car. Whatever car it ultimately is reliability and a car that lets me work on it easily when I have to are a big factor. I'm awaiting more info on that Penta B30 too. I can also do the bodywork on this guy myself.

Cheers to everyone honestly, keep those suggestions rolling.

Well you can get B23 or B230 in j/y in good shape for a good price and they are both better engines then B30, B30 will always have that ''too'' long crank and flex.
As for dual SU manifold you can get one from Canada probably or on TB, I remember few for sale...Redwood would know more about that.

Canada got b21a. We never got any b23a or b230a or b230k carb auto engines.

It would have the manifold and single hif-6 most of the time. Need a needle swap
And to figure out what cam and ignition curve for b23a for matched running set.

Last of the 240s are better done electrically, but there's a lot more of it.

I'd still be fine with an lh 2.0 or 2.2 240. If the amm works and is taken care of, most everything else is pretty inexpensive and reliable really.

It's a late model euro car and specifically a Volvo. The fi relay, fuse box and main fuse stranding you with occasional hall sensor or crank position sensor screwup should be he norm.

There is some beauty in a carb 140 or amazon with about 6 wires critical to making it move under its own power. Blowing sensors and expensive electrical parts all the time gets old. No regular adjustment needed and "works or it ddoesn't" is nice with efi...intermittent hard to trace in a big bundle of stuff not so nice.

Still, many an 83-88 240 is in service with a few interruptions that are usually fairly easily diagnosed and inexpensively fixed.

Well he already have carbs...so he needs the manifold and the engine to make it run....no wiring mess, no sensors etc, and as I understood he wanted to ride that 164...so he has 164, has carbs...I figured besides rebuilding B30 he would go much easier with B23/230 and slap those carbs/carb on there and drive the piss out of it...

+ he wants reliability, and in my book, fresh carbs+B23/0 = just that

945ti said:

There is some beauty in a carb 140 or amazon with about 6 wires critical to making it move under its own power. Blowing sensors and expensive electrical parts all the time gets old. No regular adjustment needed and "works or it ddoesn't" is nice with efi...intermittent hard to trace in a big bundle of stuff not so nice.

Click to expand...

I'm a big proponent of simple engineering in cars. Zen like simplicity or serviceability. Especially if you are thinking long term and doing everything yourself. I can rewire a simple car alone. I've had 3 240's and two had ongoing electrical issues. I replaced the melted harness in my '83 242 turbo (LOVED that car) but that started me on an endless road to having to replace everything electrical. I also had to periodically clean the light bulb & turn signal sockets to keep it from shorting & stalling out when the amps dipped low & I used the turn signal. The '93 245 was the random shut-off nightmare. The wiring was different from our 91. The 91 worked like a charm until 3 days before my wife informed me that it had been overheating & leaking water for 3 days.

Yeah a B23a with electronic dizzy & dual SU's (if such a beast exists) would really have the power and work like a dream...parts are there, tuned parts actually exist...I can finally get a stick & use 240 parts. Way less weight up front so milage and handling would get a huge boost. Would a B21a be easier to locate? I don't recall ever seeing a carbed 240 in the JY's. I've got to look up the stats on hp & torque. One thing about the B30 is that the torque is there & I've been considering a hitch for a pop up trailer down the line.

You will find a happy medium.

Picking a rare car with a rare engine seems a little steep, even if its a good rare car with a good engine. Whatever kind it is.

All, especially euro, cars can be like that. I think cars have souls to a degree. There are logical and scientific explanations for most everything (whether they can be found, repeated, and tested in a reasonable amount of time who knows).

You can get a car that seems possessed and has terrible intermittent electrical problems.

Honestly though, I've put a lot of miles on 83-93 245s of various sorts. Sort it out okay and get a decent one and it will work ok with what it came with really. Sealed main fuse, sub-harness for 2 cube relays for the FI relay, good copper fuses without cabin leaks, and tying the harness up and zip tieing the mopar ignition brain connecter in place helps considerably.

On the 93 cars I've had the specific ignition switch and the fuse block on the battery + hide some icky gremlins most of the time. I also had one with a chaffed melted alt wire fused to the oil pressure wire.

I've had some that were real lemon POS things and some that just ran and ran without hiccups, leaks or giving me crap. Ive really liked 86-87s, and had a bunch of those. Granted they made the most those years, but boring as they were, they pretty much just worked.

If you intend to put a ton of miles on anything over the 20 year mark, its going to need a pretty big time investment for seamless, continuous, heavy use, whatever it is.