See if you can borrow (or hire) an endoscope, send that down through the hole left when you take out a spark plug and have a look around inside each combustion chamber, you will be able to see what you going to be dealing with before you pull the head off the engine, a steerable one should be able to go down and look back up at the underside of the valves - Mike

As stephend said get a decent torque wrench and plenty of tools, also from experience and especially if you don't know what your doing, take pictures and have the ability on hand to sort what you take off especially the nuts and bolts!

I did my first one at age 16 on the Lancia Y10 mum mum gave me that had no compression, ended up taking the engine out and have never looked back, even got me into working as a Formula Ford Race mechanic for a while.

Its essentially quite easy on paper, perhaps buy a Haynes Manual first and read it over several times.

I am new to this Forum but there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people here and its very friendly so i am sure you will get any advice you need.

Take it steady, try not to get frustrated and watch those knuckles and it will be fine!

Thanks guys.

I'm quite pleased to find that I'd already thought of all the things you mention bar the endoscope. Perhaps I'm not completely hopeless after all.

That's right - no VVT on mine.

Can't say that Haynes seems especially easy to follow but I'm hoping that it'll make more sense when I'm actually looking at the engine. And if I go slowly and ask for help when I get stuck... what can possibly go wrong?!! No particular start date in mind yet, but you'll probably know about it quite soon, once I get going, if I do... I have storage space but no proper shelter - something else I'd already thought of. Might be able to rig something up...

Not even a car port or anything...?

Edit: another strategy you might think about is that if you do the donkey work of stripping down and getting the head off, your trusted mechanic friend might sort out the valve for you (if that is indeed what the problem is), saving you a lot on the overall repair costs and giving you extra peace of mind.

If you do decide to strip it down, good luck with it. Will be a fantastic opputunity to learn more about your car.

Yes, I'd thought of that too. Either a replacement head to make life easier... or yes, let Derek see just how keen I am to save the car and beg a bit...

I'm pretty sure that you are tech savvy and that you have common sense about you.

if you have done a cambelt before, then you will find this job just as easy.

go to post 36 here

http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showth...=161064&page=4

its not as intimidating as it looks, everything is fixable if you have the guts to do it and get over that initial "what if" factor. this was the first time i had done anything like this in this much detail on any motor for myself, it took me half a day and the longest bit - changing the cambelt.

Thank you for the compliment.
No, never done a cambelt. For me, this would definitely represent the significant step up from fiddling with the trim a bit to actually doing something to an engine!

Anyway I'm still nowhere with it. Haven't ordered any bits or started to sort myself out properly, so the original plan to make some progress this weekend seems to be slipping a bit. Never mind. Might yet get somewhere.

Take your time, spend some cosy evenings with your Haynes manual by the fire (in the spaces between marking and lesson prep!), and wait until you feel up for it before breaking the spanners out. You don't have to fix Genevieve in order to be able to get to work the following day, so you can do the job at a steady pace, taking the time it takes, and stopping to figure things out when you get stuck. Might be better to wait to order bits until you've done some dismantling and know exactly what you need. By the way, it would be a great time to renew your cambelt and maybe the tensioner. :)

Cambelts: I'd never done a cambelt until I did one, and I'd never done a head gasket until I did one. :) I admit I haven't attempted a cambelt on a twin-cam transverse engine...!

Not sure if you have access to VIDA, but if not, feel free to let me know what you need and I can upload whatever you need.